Bitcoin is only worth anything because someone says it is. At one point 10,000 bitcoin could buy you two pizzas. At another point it took only 5 bitcoin to buy a Lambo. At a later point you couldn't buy a toyota with a bitcoin. I missed the crypto craze so i'm not the smartest guy in the room. I read about bitcoin in 2010 and thought to myself, why would i let anyone use my electricity and my computer for essentially free. That brilliant lack of vision is why i am a derivatives trader and not a tech billionaire.
So you are one the bitcoin believers of the magical coin going to 10 million. 27 million. 500 million or is it a billion?
You say the price of Gold is suppressed/manipulated by paper Gold (derivatives). What's to stop the price of Bitcoin in future being suppressed/manipulated by paper Bitcoin (derivatives)? There's nothing special about Bitcoin which prevents it being swamped by a derivatives market (naked shorting and all that).
Yet maybe not, simply because the institutional price for crypto when absorbed in to the fiat world is $2k to $5k depending on the metrics used, everyone wanted crypto to be more accessible to the public, be careful what you wish for. Sure it could spike up to $150k which is where everything points but would first have to drop to $15k to sustain it opening up the lower institutional ranges, and not crypto institutions or firms but real asset class institutions. You see, I've spoken to some of the "good ones" mostly funds in crypto who were interested in the arbitrage have access, those firms target 70-100% per year returns but, they run as prop firms outsourcing to traders, which obviously induces major whipsaws in their nav. The investors along with the traders who partner with these crypto non-hedge funds have no clue, most of the funds spoke to are fixated on maker taker fees, but if you have a strategy that is consistent these just become a cost of business, try explaining it to these people and you can actually see the smoke stacks as their little ZX Spectrums try to process the information. This is the state of the crypto industry and once some deep-dive is performed on these firms many will go under because they require forever higher crypto prices, which is the opposite direction to where the current price is with mainstream adoption, happy days.
If I get paid in USD, and hence I exert energy to work all day and make $100, I am converting my labour for something that will hopefully have value. Then when the government just prints it, they devalue my labour at their discretion. The fact that bitcoin can't be printed and has a fixed supply and release schedule means there won't be any surprises, and this means that it has a much better chance of keeping its value. If the whole world turns away from using bitcoin, then yes, the value will drop. But I would much rather let the market decide this for me, rather than my government who is absolutely always trying to screw me. Also, the way the monetary system works today, is that its inflationary and debt based, and this is at direct odds with where technology is taking the world, which is a deflationary world. Everything should be getting cheaper. But since the government has to steal your money, it means this savings isn't coming to you. The money is broken, and isn't working for most people. Only the well connected and upper part of society gets to experience the gains while the lower part has to finance this.
People do say that this is a worry, but spot bitcoin is what all prices should be set from, and spot bitcoin can be easily delivered and verified. Its not like most people take delivery of their gold. So its much easier to verify if the parties actually have what they say they have.
im not an economist so I don’t pretend to understand this stuff. But the gold standard was essentially like bitcoin and it caused volatile inflation. Volatile inflation is bad. You can’t plan. We saw a small glimmer of this 2 years ago, but the last 50 years have been pretty clean. That is you know how much you need to retire. Who knows what that would equate in gold, bitcoin, or tangerines?
Yes, the guaranteed debasement of the USD has been slow and steady, with bouts of sharp drops. The gold standard had to be removed because the US could no longer give away gold that other European countries were asking for in exchange for their USD. The government is spending way more than we think, so instead of collecting taxes, they have to debase the currency and fund all the bullshit in this way. There is no hope for retirement for many people anymore, and lots of seniors are back to working because they just can't make ends meet anymore. So this system is on its last legs.
If you are at all curious, there are excellent books written by bitcoiners on exactly why the current system is trash. They of course talk about bitcoin, but the idea is to discuss how we got to needing bitcoin and how fiat is the root of all evil.