https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/a...d-other-cryptocurrencies-are-better-than-gold The cryptocurrency world was the subject of much derision in early 2018. It had all the signs of a bubble, complete with shady promoters, a speculative frenzy and investors with precious little knowledge piling into the market. I was a vocal bear at the time, but no longer. There has never been a greater need for a stateless currency and store of value held outside the financial system. Sure, Bitcoin behaves a bit more like an asset than a currency at this point; there’s not much you can buy with it, and most people intend to simply buy and hold it forever. And the “forever” part doesn’t really make any sense, with the die-hard crypto fans thinking that someday there will be no cash and we will just be zipping Bitcoin around between our phones to pay for things. Maybe. Admittedly, it hasn’t been a terrific store of value, as it is prone to getting vaporized fairly frequently. Perhaps it is a feature, not a bug. The more immediate issue for me is that the philosophical basis for fiat currencies has never been more fragile. No politician in the U.S. is talking about the need to shrink what are becoming very large budget deficits, with the possibility that they can only be financed directly by central banks. This is known as Modern Monetary Theory, or the printing of as much cash as a government needs to fund its spending. Governments can print currencies, but not Bitcoin. You can mine it, but there is not much mining left to do. Governments can’t print gold, either, though I suppose we could discover a lot more of it. Despite an almost doubling in dollars outstanding since before the financial crisis to $15 trillion as measured by M2 to pay for three rounds of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve, there is no inflation. In fact, the concern is deflation. I’m not smart enough to figure out why it played out this way, but it just seems like common sense that you would want to avoid any currency that is being debased to such a degree. We are very early in the 2020 presidential campaign. The types of things we are talking about—student loan forgiveness, medical debt forgiveness, Medicare for all, a wealth tax—would require bond issuance that might not easily be absorbed by the capital markets. Of course, even that idea seems ludicrous today, as debt outstanding has tripled and interest rates have done nothing but go down. We seem to be past the point where we worry about paying for stuff. Direct financing by the central bank is probably the only way to accomplish these goals. President Donald Trump has been busy obliterating presidential norms through his harassment of the Fed, and it’s not unreasonable to conclude that his successor will do the same or maybe even eliminate the institution altogether. The Libertarians like to point out that the dollar has lost 96% of its value since the Fed was created in 1913. Wait until they see what happens when there is no Fed, which at least makes some pretense at maintaining purchasing power. I like gold, but I like Bitcoin better - and I own both. The technology of blockchain is actually quite boring (a distributed, open ledger), and if you didn’t take the time to learn about it, it would be easy to miss its significance. No government can ban Bitcoin or seize it. It is technologically impossible, without a piece of technology known as a quantum computer. It is the ideal way to move capital seamlessly and secretly around the globe at minimal cost. “CoinDaddy” and “Bitcoin Jesus.” Now we get down to the hard work of realizing the potential of the technology, which could be as influential as the internet itself. I believe there will be another bull market, much larger than the first one where the potential is finally realized. Bitcoin is currently in a state of neglect. I don’t think we’ll have to wait 20 years for the second act.
A major problem with Bitcoin is that when your power grid goes down it vanishes. Gold remains the medium of exchange of last resort.
Duhhh...guess someone needs to do some research. You can put your keys on a piece of paper. No power needed
Without electricity there is no way to transfer bitcoins from you to me. In times of crisis no one is going to accept pieces of paper with numbers written on them.
ms ayn rand, how long are we talking here? hours days months quarters years decades centuries nuclear facilities, they don't behave well without tlc, no? There may well be items other than gold that are quite valuable depending on the timeframe. What do you suggest besides, gold, metals, . . .
Bitcoin doesn't vanish in the scenario you're describing. It runs on a decentralized network with over 10,000 full bitcoin nodes distributed worldwide, each one has a copy of the blockchain (public ledger) that shows the amount of bitcoin you have ownership of in a given bitcoin address (that you have the private key to) is there and will always be there. If you turn off electricity everywhere, or turn off internet everywhere, then yea, maybe bitcoin stops (although they have bitcoin nodes that operate off the grid power and using satellite internet, so maybe not), but you'll have bigger problems that gold may not work for you, either, you'll need guns and ammos and an army of soldiers. https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/03/01/bitcoin-blockchain-nodes-network/
civilization without electricity https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=civilization+without+electricity
Luckily I don't read such news. I don't get influenced by such people. I do my own analysis and the best source of info is actually from the chart.