Just from my lifetime: Hyperinflation in Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Inflation in Argentina. The housing bubble. The internet bubble. Banker bailouts. Our current everything bubble.
The classic example of functional deflation is in technology: computers have been under substantial deflationary pressure from the increase in performance year over year, yet people still have bought computers, and the industry has still prospered despite this.
Likewise, civilization was largely built on hard money economies, and prospered, despite the difficulty of debasing within them. It has largely fallen under soft money conditions, as in the the Weimar Republic, or the debasement of the late Roman Empire.
Note that this "deflation is bad" orthodoxy is propagated by the same economic regime that embraces inflation as beneficial, and profits from the printing of money.
Bubble happens when an actual value of something gets disconnected from its price. When people buy something for ever increasing prices without regard for actual value because they believe the price is going to go up.
In a bubble only the price of that one thing goes up, in relation of everything else.
In an inflation prices are representing the value of products but as value of money decreases the numbers representing prices must go up. In this case the price increase is caused not by increasing demand for the product but rather increasing supply of money.
Printing money causes value of existing money to be diluted because if tomorrow we have twice the amount of money in circulation than today but we are still buying same amount of products and services, then we will need to pay roughly twice the price to keep market equilibrium.
It saved my world, and millions of others.
All the things HN pundits love to talk about, but when it comes to actually making the world a better place, people like you become Luddites and naysayers.
HFSP
It definitely didn't. It may have made you money, or given you a creative programming outlet, or friends. You could also get that from dealing large amounts of cocaine, but you wouldn't be able to pretend you were a revolutionary.
100 Million people have benefitted from Bitcoin and it's censorship resistant network.
If you can't figure out why this trillion dollar network has value, I can honestly say I am jealous of your financial and anglo centric privilege and hope you never acquire any Bitcoin, you obviously don't deserve it.
How? Be specific.
> [...] but when it comes to actually making the world a better place [...]
How is Bitcoin making the world a better place? Be specific.
> HFSP
I had to look this one up. For anyone wondering, apparently it means "Have Fun Staying Poor".
Improving the lives of 100 million people by giving them a way to save money without a government agency. If you can't figure out why that has value, you're probably are a beneficiary of anglo centric privilege, and in that case I hope you NEVER buy any BTC.
> I had to look this one up.
Remember it. It won't be the last time someone says this to you
"Have Fun Staying Poor" is in my opinion a disgusting remark to make to complete strangers.
I heard Ethereum has a GREAT community, they even do synchronized dances in Unicorn outfits! Also they are moving towards PoS, so it won't boil the oceans like BTC.
You should really look into it! People from SV/HN find it much friendlier than the toxicity in the BTC community.
Please do like the OP and make better FUD so we can clown you in the comments further. Also, Bitcoin is a net-positive for the environment no matter how "mean" people like me are to you. Run the numbers
That's unrelated to it being negative-sum though. Running the numbers on this is trivial. You can only profit from bitcoin by selling it to someone else for more than you paid for it. Inevitably for some people to profit, some people have to lose a corresponding amount. This alone would make bitcoin zero-sum. Some people, miners, are special though in that they are by design always making a profit. That they extract from the network making bitcoin negative-sum.
As a consequence it's positive only for those people who find a loser to sell to, are miners or "shovel" makers (electricity, hardware, ...)
Energy is, at this moment, being overproduced by design
The reason for this is because in case there is an emergency (like a snowstorm in TX) energy producers can switch on overdrive and heat homes.
By increasing the amount of energy capacity we have, we become more resilient to situations that require massive amounts of energy. Society needs an increase in energy production in order to uplift the lifestyle of the world, there is no way around that.
Apparently a huge number of blinded people run in amok preaching how Bitcoin is saving the world.
It is not.
There is no single reason for bitcoin to exist other than perpetuate value for people who are invested in it while also burning energy at a rate of not a very small country.
It needs to be repeated until enough people inept in financial or technical matters understand it.