Larry Fink Says Bitcoin Could Replace the Dollar as the World's Reserve Currency Because of National Debt (fortune.com)
- Reference: 0176895243
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/04/01/1840253/larry-fink-says-bitcoin-could-replace-the-dollar-as-the-worlds-reserve-currency-because-of-national-debt
- Source link: https://fortune.com/2025/04/01/larry-fink-letter-bitcoin-dollar-national-reserve-currency/
> He argues that decentralized currencies like Bitcoin could replace the dollar as worldwide organizations lose faith in national currencies and seek an independent solution. Fink explained his theory in his 2025 letter to shareholders, writing: "The U.S. has benefited from the dollar serving as the world's reserve currency for decades. But that's not guaranteed to last forever.
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> "The national debt has grown at three times the pace of GDP since Times Square's debt clock started ticking in 1989. This year, interest payments will surpass $952 billion -- exceeding defense spending. By 2030, mandatory government spending and debt service will consume all federal revenue, creating a permanent deficit. If the U.S. doesn't get its debt under control, if deficits keep ballooning, America risks losing that position to digital assets like Bitcoin."
[1] https://fortune.com/2025/04/01/larry-fink-letter-bitcoin-dollar-national-reserve-currency/
Debt? What debt? (Score:3)
President Trumpelon will have it down to zero so fast you won't believe it
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The easiest way is to make sure your debt is in the currency you control and then make that currency value approach zero by an inflation race.
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Government spending either comes out of your pay as taxes or out of your savings as inflation. Which one they choose depends on who they think will vote for them.
Nothing is free. When you're in hole in debt, the first thing to do is to stop digging.
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People abuse their lines of credit constantly-- it's an addiction.
Nonetheless, there are a ton of taxes that you don't directly or indirectly pay out of your pocket, even under the theory of pass-down taxes.
Commerce generates many streams of tax revenues. I believe the tariffs will be ruinous to the international portions of commerce because of inflation that inevitably results.
The US Tax Code is bought and paid for, shielded by many corporate activities that make taxation opaque, and the defunding of the I
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> People abuse their lines of credit constantly-- it's an addiction.
Under that analogy, it's like if I maxed out my credit cards and went to my boss to say, "Hey, sorry, but you're going to have to give me a raise". And when the answer is no, I find a way to just take the money out of the company's bank account. There's a word for that!
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> And when the answer is no, I find a way to just take the money out of the company's bank account. There's a word for that!
I get where you're going with that. Thing is, it works out a wee bit differently when you own the bank, and you print the currency that the bank uses.
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Does creating money really have a 1:1 with creating inflation?
I would think that if you do something that increases goods and services with the created money it would at least partially push back on the inflation.
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I always thought the the US government would be forced to inflate away the debt at some point. What I didn't anticipate was the method being employed: tariffs, which will act as a de facto tax, generating revenue for the treasury, and which also cause inflation, decreasing the real value of the debt.
Honestly, it's kind of genius. The downside is it will hit Americans very, very hard in their pocketbooks, particularly lower and medium income Americans. Perhaps there was never any way of getting around
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It's a standard method for redistributing wealth. You take from the ones paying for taxed goods and funnel it to them holding bonds.
Re: Debt? What debt? (Score:2)
Technically it grew about 1 billion more between 2016-2020, then 2020-2024, but do not let facts get in the way of your Idiocracy.
Re: Debt? What debt? (Score:2)
Sorry trillion more.
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You don't need to increase the debt when you can just print all of the money you need! Given the option, the Biden administration chose to inflate the currency rather then add debt. It's a bold strategy, and we saw how it worked out for them.
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[1]https://tradingeconomics.com/u... [tradingeconomics.com]
I didn't realize the chairman of the US Federal Reserve in 2020 was named Biden.
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/money-supply-m2
Re:Debt? What debt? (Score:4, Funny)
> President Trumpelon will have it down to zero so fast you won't believe it
First redirecting the path of a hurricane, then naming the "Gulf of America", and now elimination of the national debt. Is there anything Trump's magic Sharpie can't do?!
Oh God you just reminded me (Score:1)
Of those bloody idiots who say we should mint a coin worth the entire national debt. I mean it's a funny thought experiment for economist nerds but Jesus I don't even want to think about the kind of person who takes that seriously.
One of the worst things the internet did was encouraging incredibly stupid people to find communities of equally stupid people and encouraged themselves altogether to be even more stupid. Doesn't help that hostile for an actors enter those communities and encourage even more s
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> Is there anything Trump's magic Sharpie can't do?!
Try a word which starts with U and ends with "kraine".
Going back on topic, I'd be with rsilvergun on this (lunatic idea) except for the date - April 1.
Re:Debt? What debt? (Score:5, Interesting)
> President Trumpelon will have it down to zero so fast you won't believe it
Republicans are working on that -- or, at least, hiding increases to start ...
[1]The Budget Trick the G.O.P. Might Use to Make a $4 Trillion Tax Cut Look Free [nytimes.com]
> Republicans in Congress trying to advance a giant bill that includes $4 trillion in tax cut extensions are considering a novel strategy that would make the extension appear to be free. The trick: budgeting with the assumption that current policies extend indefinitely into the future — even those with an expiration date, like the 2017 tax cuts set to end next year. It’s the difference between making the extension appear to cost $4 trillion or zero.
Google: [2]gop budget trick [google.com]
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/17/upshot/budget-baseline-metaphors-republicans.html
[2] https://news.google.com/search?q=gop+budget+trick
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I hate to say it but nothing is really beyond the realm of unimaginable where major western governments are concerned. We are back its 1913 again in terms of possibilities; as far as suddenly dissolving the current order or otherwise executing massive social changes like creating or eliminating central banks.
Fink might know something we don't. Everyone is always worried about dollar failing because the US defaults but what if the US Government decided instead to just make the dollar holders, and Treasury b
Who is gong to bail out Bitcoin? Gov't or Fink? (Score:2)
Larry is just talking his books (his holdings). When will he talk about cryptos that has no revenue or income being able to hold value absence of speculation? At least with a government, there are real people generating useful work and revenue.
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there is bitcoin and there is crypto. they are not the same. every other crypto other than bitcoin is fundamentally compromised by premines and control issues. bitcoin has an absent founder and control of its fundamentals are decentralized sufficiently. no other crypto currency can approach what bitcoin has achieved.
BlackRock CEO (Score:2)
Say no more
Doubtful (Score:5, Informative)
Bitcoin is a deflationary currency. And no, that is not a good thing for a national currency or one for international trade. Best is a steady value or a very small inflation, meaning you let the money supply grow along with the size of the economy underpinning it. That's why countries got rid of the gold standard.
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The only sane post so far. Thank you.
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Another issue is that a BitCoin transaction is CPU intensive.
So much so that it takes a few minutes to process.
It's never going to beat Tap and Go
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"Your money constantly being worth less... so that saving is impossible... that's good actually"
Very bad take. You're also wrong.
Countries got rid of the gold standard because gold isn't flexible, and prevented governments from manipulating money supply.
BTC is more flexible but also is resistant to economic manipulations. It's a good thing for stability. Stability, of course, helps dissuade warfare.
The easy money that's been made available by banks for the purposes of war, to plunder? That wouldn't be avail
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There is nothing about bitcoin that would stop banks from infinitely inflating the m2 and m3 the money supply. That doesn't sound very stable to me.
Re: Doubtful (Score:1)
While I'm Bitcoin is used as a digital currency it's value is more aligned with a speculative asset. People have a difficult time separating the two concepts... Correlation between Bitcoin and NASDAQ equities is .6 to .7. Correlation between Bitcoin and Gold is closer to .1. Those thinking Bitcoins value increases like Gold aren't looking at this correlation. It's more likely to follow the NASDAQ... NASDAQ is overvalued and has been selling off since last year. Gold is making new highs.
Seriously...this again? (Score:2)
The value of dollar (or euro, or yen, or maybe RMB in the future) is the backed by the idea that US economy, military and stability are strong and are going to stay that way, so ultimately when you get money in US dollars, you can trust that the aforementioned facts mean that you can use those same US dollars years later and get stuff of nearly equivalent value. (Nearly, in this context, meaning that inflation stays low).
Same applies for Euro, Yen, and even for bunch of smaller currencies like Swedish Krona
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there's no better asymetric bet than bitcoin still. 1.7 trill market cap, gold is 21 trillion. if you start to include other assets with a higher value than their utility, like housing, bitcoin has the higher utility as a store of value and reserve. its easy to see the further potential growth.
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Every investment is "a store of value and reserve", bitcoin has no "utility" at all, it is merely entries in a database of nothing. The utility of assets is that the perform functions OTHER than as an investment.
"there's no better asymetric bet than bitcoin still."
Sure thing, keep telling yourself that you're an investment genius while betting on a fraud.
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> while betting on a fraud.
Shit, given the last decade or so, I'm not sure that isn't the best fucking bet you can make.
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Bitcoin has utility. It's good for sneaking money across borders, ransoms, and buying illegal stuff, in sufficiently large amounts to make the transaction fee worth it.
Maybe not the kind of utility it's a good idea to justify an investment on though.
The 'S' in bitcoin stands for... (Score:3)
Stability...
Everyone knows that that a whole continent of semi-independent institutions, companies, and real goods have to be destroyed in order for the US 'dollar' to be useless.
Conversely, bitcoin requires an active internet connection with a global network just to make a single transaction. Any interruption of power, network, servers, etc makes it all disappear--for the present transaction, or possibly forever.
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In addition, the Full Faith and Credit of the US government is what makes the US Dollar the number 1 reserve currency on the planet
This is supported by our naval presence enforcing the high seas, our trade laws holding US firms to ethical standards and are simple ability to starve bad actors (Russia, Iran, etc...) into submission by excluding them from wider markets
The path that trump is leading us down results in a weak country that no longer will be able to support a reserve currency and we will fall by t
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True of the dollar as well, on a macro scale. The difference is that the dollar is backed by an enormous portion of the world's economy while bitcoin is back by a bunch of tech bro frauds.
Ultimately, the dollar is an electronic currency like any other.
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Not exactly. The dollar is legal tender. That's something often overlooked. If you are in debt within the jurisdiction of the United States, you can pay off that debt with dollars. Your creditor is forced by law to accept a payment in dollar. He can not refuse to be paid in dollar. He can of course at any time refuse to be paid in Bitcoin or any other item.
Why bitcoin? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't understand why you'd pick bitcoin to be the reserve currency when we already have tulip bulbs.
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I understood that reference.
More likely another stable fiat currency (Score:1)
The US Dollar, along with just about everything else American these days, is losing prestige. Whether this dip continues enough to dethrone the USD as the preferred reserve currency in the next few years, well, time will tell.
But for a "reserve currency," I'd be looking at the Euro or another currency with a very large economy that's using it, or a "basket" of currencies. I'd also be looking at precious metals or even a "basket" that combined relatively-stable, large-economy currencies with precious metal
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Don't expect the rest of the world to follow the USA down the crypto rabbit hole because Mr Trump's tariff war has deliberately sabotaged their relationship with 190 other countries.
The American people voted for this.
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The US isn't headed down any "crypto rabbit hole". Crypto is just another of Trump's scams. The plan is to use the monetary power of the US government to manipulate crypto values to the personal benefit of Trump and his billionaire friends. It's not about the "US", it's about grift.
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Of course, and dethroning the dollar as the currency of international trade is a principle goal of both China and Russia. Anyone pushing the same should be considered as willing enemies of western societies. It is not a coincidence.
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Yep.
The decline in the dollar as the world's default choice was already happening some, but Trump has really punched the accelerator on that trend.
And he has managed to do it on multiple fronts:
- distrust in the stability of the US government.
- chaotic tariffs.
- threats to invade sovereign nations (the sanctions will be huuuge).
- talking about to taking over the federal reserve.
- and more!
It's amazing that there are still so many people who support this insanity.
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Won't be the Euro. Hasn't been a significant change in Euro FX reserves in ages.
People have been seeking alternatives for USD, but they haven't been replacing it with Euros.
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Most countries, including the US, already keep reserves of a bunch of different currencies, plus gold and sometimes some other stuff too. The USD is "the" reserve currency because it's the most popular and because of some post-war agreements that give it special status in certain ways.
Any limited supply currency won't be adopted (Score:4)
Governments are not going to adopt any currency that has any limit to the amount that they can "manufacture" out of thin air. That's why we jettisoned the gold standard. Bitcoin is limited and it doesn't do small rapid transactions well. Not going to happen.
Yes it's still April 1 (Score:2)
And crypto enthusiasts still think it's 2017 and they can get rich off the financial equivalent of fidget spinners.
Hey, Larry! (Score:4, Interesting)
Have you thought of paying taxes to that government?
or are taxes only for little people?
Ha Ha HA HA HA! (Score:5, Informative)
Some idiot thinks a crypto currency is going to be less eratic than ANY countries currency.
Lets ignore that foolishness. The US debt is not high. One of the problems with big numbers is people do not instinctively know if they are 'high' or 'low'.
If I were to tell you that a shoe had 5 billion atoms in it - would you think that is a big shoe or a small shoe? You do not know because you do not know how many atoms are in any shoe.
36 trillion sounds like a big debt. You have nothing to compare it to. The proper comparison is to the GDP.
In the 709s the US debt to GDP ratio was in the 30s. It was less than 40% of the GDP. We made in 5 months than our national debt was. Currently (2024) it is around 120%. That is, it it takes about 15 months to earn back our debt. 120% is on the high side. Canada has 108%, France has 111%, UK is about 97.6%
The problem countries have ratios like Venezuela 146%, Sudan 256%, Japan 255%.
Basically anything below 140% is high but not yet problematic.
Do we need to be concerned? Absolutely. Whether you like D. Trump or not, he has admitted it will be a rough time in the near future. I would expect the Debt to go up significantly at least until the President (whoever it might be) no longer seeks to scare other countries into obeying him. That is going to take at least another 6 months, and quite possibly till 2029.
The problem is, crypto should suffer just as much as the US economy. If only because much of the crypto gain was driven by the same people in the stock market.
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> The problem is, crypto should suffer just as much as the US economy.
No, you see it’s a totally separate and independent distributed system insulating against swings from markets. Now hold on a second, money has dried up so I’m going into my bitcoin savings just like everyone else.
So the national debt is not a problem (Score:2, Redundant)
We owe most of it to ourselves. As a government money you owe yourself isn't debt it's money supply. There is a problem that we are currently giving most of our money supply to the top 0.1% and they are using it to buy up all their competitors and destroy capitalism but that's another matter entirely...
As for what we owe overseas we could easily pay it off with the savings from a single pair of health care system, $500 billion per year according to the Congressional budget Office. Repeal Trump's tax cut
Bitcoin inflates faster than any national debt. (Score:2)
Worse problem, new name.
A truly stable currency would have to be locked to the value of something that nearly always has the same value for all people. But that can't work in a world where one person can be valued more than anyone else.
For example the innate value of a basic loaf of bread doesn't change, maybe we can base everything off that. Or make the value of a day's work the same for everyone. Flat wages can't help make people feel superior though, so that's out.
The real solution is to outlaw
bitcoin is the currency of failure (Score:2)
Taking the Nigerian Niara as an example, if a national currency tanks, the blackmarket and foreign currencies become the only way to do business. Larry Fink threw digital currencies out there because the people doing financial transactions will not want to hold (hodl) worthless currencies that lose value between transactions.
I personally would not want to hold crypto either, in this case. But in Nigeria, various currencies are floating around even thought its illegal to use them.
It can't and it won't (Score:3)
This is just nonsense. This is the statement of con man trying to pump up holdings. "Bitcoin" is not backed as the national currency of a nation state. There is no economy to base the value on. Bitcoin is technically throttled to 8 transactions per second globally Not exactly optimal for high speed transactions.
That being said, yes US debt is a problem for the dollar as the global reserve. However, it's more likely the BRICs will develop a shared currency that will become the global standard.
Tell us you know nothing of macroeconomics (Score:3)
There is no single or even leading theory of macroeconomics, but there are several strong schools and some agreed upon basics and underlying mechanisms. Whenever a technology person starts fulminating about "national debt" and "our national debt will bankrupt us", with us being the United States, it tells me they know nothing of macroeconomics, the leading theories of national debt, or the role of the US national debt in light of the role of the US dollar as the global reserve currency.
tl;dr: technobabble baloney
It could, but it won't yet (Score:2)
As long as everyday people can't go into a marketplace and effortlessly, ubiquitously use it, that's not gonna happen.
Even if it did become the world's currency, imagine the power consumption needed to power it for everyone.
And then don't forget the world's banks. They'll want their cut of the action, too.
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The power consumption isn't really related to the amount of transactions -- a block holds a fixed amount of transactions, and the chain adjusts so that blocks happen about every 10 minutes. The power consumption is only due to miners trying to 'win' the mining race and get a payout. You could process the same number of transactions with 10 machines mining blocks as whatever you have now.
Re:It could, but it won't yet (Score:4, Informative)
> You could process the same number of transactions with 10 machines mining blocks as whatever you have now.
One machine. You could run the entire Bitcoin network on a single server.
It wouldn't be secure at all though, and that's entirely the point of wasting the energy consumption of a small country - so no one else can alter the blockchain unless they control 51% of the mining hashrate. When you start looking at it in terms of resource consumption though, is it really worth wasting all that electricity when you're going to ultimately spend or transact it through centralized financial entities anyway? With the number of exchanges that have been "hacked", clearly having a decentralized ledger doesn't do much good if a 3rd party with lousy security is holding the key to your coins.
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> It wouldn't be secure at all though, and that's entirely the point of wasting the energy consumption of a small country - so no one else can alter the blockchain unless they control 51% of the mining hashrate.
This. After I read Satoshi's paper, this appeared to me as the fundamental weakness of Bitcoin: in order to survive, it must remain popular with the "good guys."
Dude with literally millions of computers (Score:2)
The Bitcoin market is so pathetically slow it is completely useless for anything except money laundering. The only reason anyone tolerates the costs and wait times involved in cryptocurrency is because if you're laundering money you can afford to lose quite a bit of it.
The fact that we've got serious discussion of integrating this bullshit into our main line economy is a sign that we've become a complete kleptocracy and kakistocracy. It's a fundamental breakdown in human civilization and it's going to g
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> The power consumption is only due to miners trying to 'win' the mining race and get a payout.
That's currently true. When mining becomes unprofitable, which it will by design, "miners" earn their pay through transaction fees.
> The power consumption isn't really related to the amount of transactions
This is true and will stay true. The power consumption is related to the security of the network, or rather vice versa. So the more valuable and important bitcoin becomes, the more security you want, which means mo
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Bitcoins are likely dead whenever the world goes sour. No or spotty electricity as well as spotty internet can cause it to split in value on different continents as well as countries banning them due to money laundering and criminal activities.
The US dollar is a risky currency right now. Cash isn't king anymore. Metal and oil is preserving value better even if it can swing up and down it won't become a black hole.
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> Even if it did become the world's currency, imagine the power consumption needed to power it for everyone.
It could technically be forked to use proof-of-stake, but you're arguing against a religion at this point. Bitcoin was just supposed to be a proof of concept that would eventually be refined into something better through the typical open source process. Then greed entered the chat.
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no one would use a proof of stake fork because proof of stake would ruin the fundamentals of what makes bitcoin work
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> no one would use a proof of stake fork because proof of stake would ruin the fundamentals of what makes bitcoin work
Yeah, translation: it would piss off all the people presently earning profit mining coin on cheap/stolen electricity.
Since the miners are the network, Bitcoin continues to be a massive wasteful energy suck, even if there was a genuine desire to remedy the issue.
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theres a significant difference in terms here. fink is speaking about world reserve currency, which means, an asset that countries hold to store value. its an entirely different thing than currency, which is the definition you're using to represent the thing people use to exchange local value.
the us dollar will and can still exist in a world where it is no longer the world reserve currency. people will still transact in dollars because its the system they're used to, they don't need to use bitcoin for bitco
Won't Ever (Score:2)
> As long as everyday people can't go into a marketplace and effortlessly, ubiquitously use it, that's not gonna happen.
Even if people could go to the market and use it, it is still not going to happen. Bitcoin is backed by nothing other than people choosing to decide that it has a value. Fiat currencies are backed by governments that wield political and military power and control significant physical resources. If they say that their currency is worth something they have the means to ensure that it is....and given the reliance of trade on their currency pertaining some stable value they are very motivated to ensure that it
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> Bitcoin seems to be backed by nothing but greed.
In all honesty, this may explain why it's stuck around so long. Few things are infinite. Human stupidity is one. Greed may very well be another. There doesn't appear to be any shortage of it at the moment.
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Oh come on, money used to be backed by a highly speculative asset, Gold.
Bitcoin backed by much less (Score:3)
At least that was something and the gold was controlled by a government and, as we learnt, what mattered most was the government not the gold which is why we all dropped the gold. Bitcoin is backed by greed and based on an algorithm that, if we ever get quantum computers working properly, will not be worth the bits used to store it.
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Gold wasn't highly speculative back when it was actually backing something, and it's still nowhere near as speculative as bitcoin.
[1]https://www.macrotrends.net/13... [macrotrends.net]
Note where 1971 is on that graph.
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-year-chart
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This argument never held a lot of weight for me.
Even if the US Government says that dollars are legal tender for all debts, public and private- it doesn't set its value. I do.
You can tell me you think this candy bar you want to buy from me is worth $1.50, but unless I agree with you, you can kick rocks.
i.e., the US Government doesn't ultimately decide the value of a dollar- including it dropping to zero- the people using it do.
The US Government can play with knobs that affect the money supply, but tha
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I don't think that's actually required for something to be useful as a reserve.
Gold is used for a reserve, good luck effortlessly using it.
The hurdles to use start to melt away as transactions increase in size.
Governments buying and shifting large amounts may actually be a good use case.
I don't think it will ever have a stable enough value for that to hold though.
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The reason the dollar is going to lose the reserve currency status is not going to be national debt. Yes printing dollars is free money for the US, and while the world is not necessarily thrilled about being taxed like that, it's not a problem big enough to outweigh the benefits of having a reserve currency in the first place. But the team R fearmongering about debt is just talking point wank. Yes money printing in the US takes the form of issuing debt, so what. I will not care to digress too much into that
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Bitcoin will never be accepted. Only complete tools and morons talk about Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other cryptocoin because they are the suckers who bought in and want to flip it.
The rest of the world, realized how much of a scam cryptocoins are. Rugpulls, all of them.
The "best case" scenario is that the G20 agree to mine and stake a fixed amount of currency per year, for use with international commerce. These coins expire on every G20 meeting and a new series is released, and the oldest coin is discontinu