Gold’s value originated from Noblemen’s and Rich Merchant’s wives wanting to status-signal with shiny ornaments. Money is a hallucinatory consensus. All value is subjective.
Bitcoin will succeed because it is controlled by math and not people. I trust math and open-source code infinitely more than people. Millennials and Gen Z’ers will demand and adopt open-source forms of money controlled by no single entity and will refuse government-controlled fiat money. They literally have more faith in World of Warcraft coin rather than some bullshit paper printed by an old fart on the Hill who can barely send an email.
All politicians are corrupt. NO EXCEPTIONS. The very fundamental nature and game-theory behind politics and their careers incentivizes short-term, selfish gains at the expense of long-term gains for all.
Any form of money that is easy to produce WILL BE TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF. Governments and Commercial Banks can print money out of thin air to finance their inefficient, bureaucratic enterprises, schemes, and wars — and these are governments in the first world.
The average people pay for it all via tax, that is inflation. If you don’t own a dozen apartments, businesses and other cash flow producing hard assets - saving money and storing value over time is a challenge in and of itself.
Governments around the world have control over billions of people by arbitraging and taking advantage of the proletariats extreme lack of understanding of monetary economics. The less you understand political and public economics - the more you are a slave to your circumstances and to your government. They control your life with money because money is the strongest weapon. It’s even stronger than religion, because you can live without God, but you can’t live without bread.
There exists an enormous need for sound, un-inflatable money that AT LEAST maintains its purchasing power over time and that is UNDER CONTROL OF EVERYONE AND NO ONE, for our civilization to flourish.
In fiat-based systems, all value accumulated in the hands of asset owners - those who own massive swathes of real estate and corporate equities. These people are monetarily nimble and can adjust price-tags on their rent-earning and cash flow-producing assets whenever there are changes in the money supply. They also have the access to the most lucrative investment opportunities due to governments around the world only allowing the wealthy to legally invest in “high-risk” enterprises.
If you are a middle-class salaryman, you are not as nimble. Please note how a sharp rise in income inequality coincides with the time the United States moved OFF of the Gold Standard. The year was 1971. I am not a socialist, but fiat, non-scarce money is a tool with which the upper class remains in power generation to generation, and the hopelessness of the bottom 90% continues.
Please explain to me how a middle-class salaryman in the 2nd world is supposed to save money.
Fiat money creates this world: the rich get richer, the poor barely make ends meet, consume 1 annual vacation, a dozen beers, some food, and the cycle continues.
In a libertarian society, the “upper class” would be more “revolving” because there would be no monopoly privileges, government protections or taxpayer bailouts.
Fiat currencies disincentivize you to save. You need savings to plan to open a business in the long-term. Fiat currencies are depreciating assets that incentivize you to CONSUME CONSUME CONSUME TODAY. What do you consume? Products manufactured by the 1%. They are shareholders of companies that produce everything you consume and believe me, they DON’T keep their received quarterly dividends in fiat-denominated bank accounts.
More and more people will realize the above in the coming years and a gigantic paradigm shift will occur globally. Big governments and bankers will collude on unprecedented, global scale and undoubtedly try to stop it. They will attack the lowest hanging fruits - miners, cryptobusiness-related bank accounts and crypto-fiat exchanges or “gateways” between these two monetary universes. For a time being, in the short-term, they will make it seem like cryptocurrencies have no future. But in the long-run, they will simply add fuel to the fire that is the story of decentralized central banking.
Ultimately, they will lose. It is impossible to stop an attractive abstract idea from spreading like wildfire, and it is impossible to stop concurrent computer programs running on hundreds of thousands of laptops and smartphones around the world. They will first collude to make crypto-assets as cheap as possible, then they will buy out huge chunks of them as a hedge against their own demise. This is a smart strategy as the trust in the Old World institutions held by the collective unconscious of my generation will inevitably diminish.
My advice to you - don’t be the last one standing holding bags of worthless fiat.
Game theory says Central Banks have either already begun buying major cryptocurrencies, or will begin soon. Buckle up boys and girls.