Gold standard is great for individuals who want to store wealth, but a bad idea for a fiat currency with policy goals like increasing spending, investment and economic velocity. Deflationary currencies are good stores of value, but slow the economy (because why invest/buy now if your money gets more powerful the longer you refrain from spending it).

I think Bitcoin is similar to the gold standard, and its popularity lies in the mismatch of goals between government desires for fiat issuance and individuals for storing value.

> Deflationary currencies are good stores of value, but slow the economy (because why invest/buy now if your money gets more powerful the longer you refrain from spending it).

Logically speaking it is irrelevant; instead of holding gold and calling it money an investor can still hold gold except it gets called an investment; but their holding will perform the same way because it is linked to the value of gold. The practical difference is tax treatment which gets complicated. Theoretically if I recall expected inflation/deflation in the currency doesn't change the economic equilibrium because everyone just factors it in to the interest rates and salary negotiations to keep the focus on real value.

And in execution any consistent % inflation/deflation of the money supply makes things weird and confusing because the measuring stick used to measure wealth keeps changing.

Bitcoin attracts three different niche markets:

- Crypto enthusiasts who are infatuated with the technology or the math involved

- Anti-Fed Libertarian types who want to use something that isn't controlled by a government

- HFTs and speculators who either use it in part of their models or as a pump and dump vehicle

Some people also use it to buy illegal stuff, but most of them have moved onto Monero as the primary privacy-based cryptocurrency.

> Crypto enthusiasts who are infatuated with the technology or the math involved

I agree that it attracts these people, but I can't figure out how they make the leap from "clever math" to "this has monetary value and I want in."

So where do online drug dealers fit in the first 2 options?

Or Saudi / Chinese / Russian business types that are trying to extract wealth and avoid the blowback of a regime change?

They probably fit under #2 but I certainly wouldn't call a lot of those libertarian in ideology or even in practice, just opportunists.

Exactly, like a currency on the gold standard. But not an asset like gold.

It's nothing like the gold standard. What made the gold standard a bad idea does not apply to Bitcoin.

You mean that there is a cap on the supply that cannot keep pace with the growth of the real economy?

The cap is irrelevant. Instead of printing more the value per unit goes up in the end it does the same it adjust for growth just fine. It's just not practical for a fiat currency to change it's value depending on the economy situation. If for example the USD would have a fix cap and its value would swing with the economy, people would speculate with it. At peaks everyone would want to buy and at the lows everyone would pay salaries and debs etc. the growth isn't the problem the swings and uncertainty about the value makes it unusable for a currency. Bitcoin doesn't have this problem is kinda like gold no one really want to pay with it (beside the bitcoin maxis).

You sound like you know nothing about how currencies actually work. Both exchange rate and purchasing power of the USD do change over time. People do speculate with currencies. And the cap is absolutely not irrelevant if you were to have a global Bitcoin economy. The US would not be able to set the prices on its own, and those would instead be determined by the global market forces. This means the country loses and and all ability to do monetary policy.

No one care what you think I know or don't know bring arguments that support your opinion.

Whats the mcap of USD? Whats the mcap of EUR? Whats the mcap of Gold? Why does no one know exactly? Because It's irrelevant meaningless and basically impossible to know because of lost units and secret holdings (in case of gold)

Ofc people speculate with currencies but not the average joe, whos supposed to use it as a medium of exchange. And that's the whole point. Small fluctuations or small inflation doesn't matter for its use as medium of exchange.

The whole "global bitcoin economy" thing wasm't the topic of my post no clue why you tell me this. Also the price of btc is already determined by "global market force" if you wanna call it that way. although it has not much to do with any other market. It's just supply and demand that make the price.

>> Whats the mcap of USD?

Start here https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=CURRSL,

and here

https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2014/09/how-much-money-is-th...

The currency component of USD doubles every 10 years.

I didn't ask for the mcap of USD. It was a rhetoric question. Ofc you can find numbers and statistics about it. But they are obviously not correct as stated above they do not include any lost money. Also the value is meaningless. Not a single person on this planet does any educated decision based on that value. It's completely irrelevant. And that was my whole point.

If you trade fiat/precious metal or similar assets no chart will ever show the mcap of said asset. But somehow bitcoin and crypto included that value. The only obvious reason that this is a thing, seems to be because crypto space was created by people who have no clue about "money" or how irrelevant the mcap is for these assets.

Read again "The currency component of USD doubles every 10 years."

Therefore,

"they do not include any lost money"

is irrelevant unless you believe people lose about half of their money over a single decade

"Not a single person on this planet does any educated decision based on that value. It's completely irrelevant. And that was my whole point."

That is false. Smartest people do take into account the fact that the market cap of USD doubles every decade. Printed money have to go somewhere, they do go in US stocks with the smallest loss on the way. Therefore, US stocks also double every decade. Therefore, it does not make sense to search for investments which deliver less than 8% a year since you are basically losing money relatively to the actual total amount.

>> If you trade fiat/precious metal or similar assets no chart will ever show the mcap of said asset.

Seems like you never traded in your life. First, look at Interactive Brokers, the most popular retail platform. For any stock you click, you see its market cap. Investor do invest differently depending on whether it is large cap or low cap. Google it, learn something. Even Yahoo Finance shows market cap.

You basically have no clue what you are talking about. Not need to reply, you are wasting my time. Cheers.

You can not see that the mcap doubles in 10 years if you check the current mcap. You just explained why the mcap is pointless. Everyone know USD gets printed. Inflation isn't a secret either. No one need to check the mcap daily over several years to see that. People may wanna know the inflation rate in % per year or how much money was printed in the last year etc. The current mcap however says nothing. The history may show a trend but that's something completely different and the actual current value isn't relevant do determine a trend.

Also you totally bullshitting neither Interactive Brokers nor Yahoo Finance shows mcap for any fiat or precious metals. It however show mcap for cryto (Yahoo) but that doesn't make it a useful value. Its most probably just copied form CoinMarketCap.

>For any stock you click, you see its market cap.

Sure, but I said fiat/gold not stocks. The whole discussion started because people think the mcap of bitcoin somehow makes bitcoin or other cryptos comparable to stocks or fiat/gold. But that's nonsense because the value itself has no meaning for these assets.

Again, no none care that you think I have no clue. Bring arguments/sources for your claims or stop wasting everyone's time.