A)I don’t have $150k+ To just go invest in land or real estate that I’m not going to reside in.

B)Are stocks and bonds inflation resistant if they are priced in the inflating currency? Not just normal year over year inflation but the type of inflation that happens when you debase a currency. Regardless, I already own these, the first rule of investing is diversification.

C)gold is inflation resistant and tangible so I agree that is the best option if you are truly worried about SHTF but it’s also heavy and more expensive to secure.

Bitcoin, in my opinion, is a hedge on the hegemony of the US dollar which I see weakening going forward. The US dollar is the global reserve currency thanks to the global oil industry. That gives the US a lot of power. But between the switch away from oil, the weakening of the dollar, and the rise of China the US currency dominance looks to be coming to an end. There is no other currency that could act as a global reserve currency except China, which would essentially make China the worlds superpower. That is where Bitcoin comes in: it can be the new global currency instead of China when the US dollar loses its place. Gold and paper only has value because we imagine that they have value, I don’t see how Bitcoin is any more or less imaginary.

A) REITs exist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_estate_investment_trust

B) Yes, stocks are not directly affected by the currency in which they are nominally denominated! Yes, inflation-adjusted bonds are not affected by inflation in the currency in which they are denominated, assuming you believe RPI to be a good measure of inflation.

C) You can buy gold without having to store it yourself! For example SGLN or https://www.bullionvault.com/ (no connection other than being a happy customer)

> Bitcoin, in my opinion, is a hedge on the hegemony of the US dollar which I see weakening going forward

If you really wanted a hedge on the US dollar you could buy oil, gold, JPY, EUR, CHF, GBP. Buying the hugely volatile asset called bitcoin doesn't seem like a good way to hedge USD.

> Gold and paper only has value because we imagine that they have value

No, gold has value because of demand in industrial process and jewellry. "Paper" has value because governments can demand you to pay it to them in return for participating in economic activity within their borders.

If these arguments are really what bitcoin supporters believe about the value of bitcoin then the whole bitcoin enterprise is in for a big shock.

> A) REITs exist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_estate_investment_trust

Are there REITs that don't deal with interest?

I don't know what you mean.

REITs that buy properties with cash, without taking a mortgage.

i doubt it-- from what i've seen they're often levered up fairly aggressively (though i'm sure this is usually paired with having more senior claims on the mortgages in their portfolio)

A share of Weyerhaeuser stock costs around 35 bucks and gets you a (modestly levered) claim on forestland, one of the most inflation-protected assets in history. A round lot costs around 3500. If you prefer hard metals, there are highly liquid ETFs that trade in even smaller denominations. If you want exposure to these asset classes you can mostly get them.

> B)Are stocks and bonds inflation resistant if they are priced in the inflating currency?

The parent comment said "inflation-adjusted bonds". If you don't know what that means, look it up.

As for stocks, they are priced in an inflating currency in the same way that real estate or dogecoin are priced in an inflating currency.

> A)I don’t have $150k+ To just go invest in land or real estate that I’m not going to reside in.

Then I doubt that inflation should be much of a concern to you. Just make sure that other income you clearly depend on is adjusted to inflation.

I think the major point is that Bitcoin seems to benefit disproportionately from inflation. It may be the case that it's the single best hedge against inflation. But yes, there are lot's of things that protect against inflation.

> Bitcoin seems to benefit disproportionately from inflation

Does it? On what basis would one know that? Why should it benefit from inflation more than gold, say?

Nobody knows how much gold is in the earth, much less in not-so-distant asteroids.

The supply of gold might, technically, be "fixed" in the sense that no more of it is being created, but more of it could be discovered at any time.

Bitcoin's supply is mathematically demonstrably fixed. Nobody's ever going to discover a new vein of Bitcoin in the earth's crust, or on an asteroid.

We know to a pretty good approximation how much gold is in the earth, and where it is. That's not even a minor consideration for mining geologists and engineers anymore.

The primary limitation as of now is ore quality, which directly dictates how much energy is required for smelting, and we have a good idea of the decline curve thereof. We know roughly when it will be economically profitable to extract the stuff from seawater, which isn't too far off. In the end, it's a question of energy. Very similar to proof-of-work tokens like BTC, in that regard.

We certainly think we know. But we've thought an awful lot of things as a human species that turned out not to be true.

Gold is presumably scarce. Bitcoin is provably scarce.

You are wrong about gold, either learn or drop that, its not central to your argument.

A lot of things are scarce. Some of those things are valued. Bitcoins may or may not be valued in the future, and if they are it is unknown at what price point they might be valued. Scarcity is only part of the equation.

Alright. I tried to do this. I'm certainly open to learning.

But it looks like I'm actually going to need citations from you because everything I'm finding so far confirms that we do NOT know how much gold exists in the earth, or where it might be found, or whether it will become economically feasible to extract it. All we know is that discoveries are slowing down.[0][1][2][3]

I've tried to read a variety of sources, from a scientific journal to a metals dealer to a mainstream news outlet to an industry-focused site. By all means, though, if you have citations for your confident claims that you're willing to provide, I'll be happy to read them too.

[0] Earthquakes are still forming new veins: https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo1759

[1] There may or may not be large undiscovered veins left, especially under the ocean and in Antarctica (and we don't know whether new technology will make them easier to discover and mine): https://www.providentmetals.com/knowledge-center/precious-me...

[2] New technologies are gaining adoption that could reveal veins that were undiscoverable before: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54230737

[3] There's no reason to believe the discovery of large gold mines is nearing its end: https://www.mining.com/web/were-a-long-long-way-from-running...

This is ultimately a matter of perspective.

If you're a cornucopian, and you're certain that new technology will unlock much more efficient smelting/separation/filtration/asteroid mining techniques, then sure, gold is virtually limitless.

If you're a realist, you understand that ore quality degrades as a function of the fact that we smelt the highest purity ores first, and that while (usually very small) new vein discoveries do occur, they occur as already understood as a statistical variance against a much much larger backdrop of averaging functions.

I'm not discounting the possibility of an extraction breakthrough - it's certainly possible. But revolutions of the kind you're assuming are certain to occur extremely infrequently.

And to that point, I'm a "very long term corncucopian", in the sense that a thousand years out, we will probably eventually realize the Minsky dream of nanobots that can act effectively as the Maxwell's Demon of elemental extraction. But I'm old enough, and have awaited the Singularity long enough, to realize that optimism doesn't make a science, and that this won't be for at least a few hundred years, at minimum. (I'll leave what 300 years of quantum computing work could do to 256 bit hash collisions as an exercise for the reader.)

And that's assuming that we even survive the coming climate and/or resource catastrophe that awaits 10 billion souls in 20 or so years.

Upvoting you because you are precisely me, 20 years ago before understanding how things actually work :)

I can see how this would affect one of the articles' points, that there may be gold it isn't ever going to be profitable to mine, but what about the other points that new veins are still being formed and we don't have any specific reason to believe we've found all the ones that would be profitable?

I'm definitely not meaning to argue with you. I ask that sincerely. I wasn't particularly interested in this subject before, but any time I have a chance to ask questions of someone 20 years ahead of me in anything, I try to make the most of it!

The argument is that Bitcoin not only has a provable total fixed supply & rate of future supply and that it has more utility than gold because it's easier to transfer and harder to fake.

> harder to fake

Also harder to take.

My argument would be it's the only thing on that list of inflation hedges that has a fixed supply.

Lot's of gold is mined each year. Houses are built. Stock is issued, etc. Bitcoin has a well-established upper limit.

> [Bitcoin is] the only thing on that list of inflation hedges that has a fixed supply.

Aha! That brings me to my next question. In what sense does bitcoin actually have a fixed supply? Sure, a loose coalition of people agree for it to have a fixed supply at the moment, but if enough of the miners, core developers, etc. agree they can change the rules arbitrarily, viz. hard forks.

Why should we believe that bitcoin really has a fixed supply, just because everyone has roughly stuck to the rules so far?

Every single thing you said applies to the greenback.

Therein lies your answer: if a large enough number of people place faith into something, it "takes".

That's mostly a matter of economic incentives. It's technically possible but it's similar to the idea of a rich person lighting a pile of money on fire.

If a proposal to raise the cap is introduced, price would react negatively, hurting miners, and making it more (relatively) expensive to mine. It's unlikely there is any scenario where it is economically feasible to try to raise the supply cap.

A [relative] lack of block rewards to earn hurts miners too...

Can you point me to some more thorough analysis of your claim? I've heard such things before but I've never seen it modelled and worked through. Until I see such an analysis I can't help thinking the argument is "we've thought about it a bit and it seems like it will be OK".

Stocks and bonds are still coupled to fiat currencies and will be directly impacted by their perceived deficiencies when compared to crypto.

Hard assets like real estate, land, gold don't fit that bill, but each of their own tradeoffs. Right now cryptocurrencies are making gains against those hard assets so they are more attractive. An investor may wish to diversify among some or all of these options.

No, neither inflation-adjusted bonds nor stocks are "coupled" to fiat currencies. You may argue that RPI is not a true measure of inflation. OK, sure. You may argue it's hard to persuade people to buy a hamburger for $2 when it was $1 last year. But the same applies to cryptocurrency (when it's not in a mass speculative bubble)!

Stocks are not coupled to fiat, fiat is just the common medium of exchange for them. Nobody will stop me from trading my GOOG share for a goat, or a baseball card, if I so choose.

Stocks are coupled to the productive output of the firm the stock is issued by, which is coupled to it's real world productivity - which, again, for convenience is measured in a fiat currency.

> Nobody will stop me from trading my GOOG share for a goat, or a baseball card, if I so choose.

Nitpick, but the SEC would object to that. That said, American securities regulation has a unique philosophy, i.e. every securities trade must be registered and follow a narrow book of rules unless specifically exempted.

Your broader point, of financial and real assets being proven hedges against inflation, stands.

The transaction must be denominated in dollars, but must dollars actually change hands? I don't think so. Companies buy other companies with stock issues all the time.

> transaction must be denominated in dollars, but must dollars actually change hands?

I believe it's the other way around. It can be denominated in anything, but trading e.g. the deed to your house for some Apple stock is a no no. (Doesn't have to be U.S. dollars, though.)

They're very similar to gold in this regard. They have a value because people think they have a value. They're a lot easier to store, transport and transact with than gold bars though.

And I have my doubts whether Bitcoin mining is more destructive than gold mining. It's possible (it's a LOT of energy), but gold mining is also pretty nasty.

Bitcoin mining is not destructive. The production of electricity via Coal, natural gas, oil, and biomass is. It makes more sense to ban the direct source of these carbon dioxide emissions than the downstream users of the electricity. Cryptocurrency mining is very compatible with renewable energy sources because it can be mined from anywhere, the energy usage is very predictable, and the mining can tolerate rare occurrences of loosing power. The publicly traded company RIOT sources 100% of it’s bitcoin mining energy from renewable sources.

Also, as a comparison, nearly all the gold mining machinery runs on gasoline.

Real estate has clearly been shown to not be resistant to inflation over the past year.

actually 15% sounds about right and normally would be higher this time because of all the printed money. I would of expected something like 35-45%.

Resistant to inflation means that the price increases roughly with the same % as inflation.

Could you elaborate?

Home prices in my area are up around 15% over the past year.

That makes real estate investments a good defense against inflation. A good defense against inflation are assets whose price increases at a rate higher than the rate of inflation. A bad defense would be an asset whose price increases at a rate lower than that of inflation.

I'm not sure anyone in this thread knows what inflation is. If the cost of housing rises, that is inflationary against all other fungible assets that could be used to purchase housing. That is, one requires a larger quantity of all assets -- dollars, crypto, stocks, bodily fluids, etc. -- to acquire a roof over one's head. Only if the cost to purchase housing is somehow lower by holding value in a particular asset could you get ahead of the inflationary pressure caused by rising housing prices. Too many cryptonuts think inflation just means "money supply." That is play time economics.

Inflation as it's being used in this conversation and in general is measured against a specific currency. I mean you could, I suppose, use the term to measure the cost of a specific asset against a basket of other assets, but that is not really standard and if you wish to use it that way you should qualify your usage as such to avoid confusion.

Using your approach you'd end up saying something like Apple is experiencing inflation because its price has gone up more against housing, oil, General Electric stock. Yeah, that could be done, but it's not the way the word is being used in this conversation. We're talking about inflation of US dollars against a basket of goods as measured by the CPI as opposed to talking about an increase in housing costs relative to Apple stock.

The only thing you said that is true is in the last sentence. The basket of goods affecting inflation is heavily influenced by the cost of housing. All you care about when holding a store of value is how much of that denominated fungible asset can be exchanged for things you need to live.

Ah, so according to you my first sentence is false then? Let's see what a simple Google search yields:

>Inflation is the decrease in the purchasing power of a currency.

>Inflation is the decline of purchasing power of a given currency over time.

>Inflation is a persistent rise in the average level of prices over time in a given currency.

> Inflation occurs when prices rise, decreasing the purchasing power of your dollars.

Those are literally the top search results for "inflation" when I Google the term. Now certainly your Google search for that term may differ from mine and you are certainly welcome to share your findings. Until then I will rest satisfied that my first sentence expressing that inflation is almost always understood to be with respect to a currency is also true.

I think you're definitely learning more just reading Google. Enjoy!

Do you really believe real estate should be an investment, rather than a place to live?

I absolutely do think it should be an investment and I think treating housing like an investment has substantially increased the quality of housing. A great deal of advances in materials, construction, electrical work, plumbing, you name it... is because housing is treated like an investment and people are willing to spend money to keep their asset in top shape.

Furthermore I believe that investing in real estate promotes those asset owners to contribute to the neighborhoods they've invested in. When you invest in something you are participating in its growth and you're attempting to align your well being with the well being of the asset you're invested in. That's a great thing.

The downside to real estate investment is that it could prevent future people from participation. The solution to that isn't to stop treating real estate as an investment, it's to allow more opportunities for building and to incentivize people to build entirely new communities instead of pigeon holing everyone into a handful of existing mega cities.

> I absolutely do think it should be an investment

I think this is treated differently in different cultures. In Germany, while there is a real-estate as investment market, many people don't (expect to) move much during their lifetime. They buy their home ('Eigenheim') essentially for life (sans the tail end in a nursing home). Still many put a lot of time and money into those houses they don't expect to sell. It's a quality-of-life thing (and some bragging rights). You can (and some do) spend easily a fortune on a kitchen alone. You even find more than one kind of light switch there.

So I'm not quite convinced that real-estate as investment is necessary to drive housing quality.

An investment isn't marked by the expectation to rapidly sell. I have many assets that I've held for years and intend to hold for the rest of my life, they are still investments.

I am not an expert on the German real-estate market, but the first search results on Google indicate that Germany has a very active real-estate investment market and that home ownership in Germany is among the lowest in the world, the majority of Germans rent their home.

Either those people are renting from the government, or they are renting from a private landlord, either an individual or a corporation. If they are renting from a private landlord, and once again my very cursory research indicates 96.7% of housing is privately owned, then that's a big sign that the landlord owns the property for the purpose of deriving an income from it. Given that 56% of homes in Germany are rented out (one of the highest rates in the world), that indicates that at a minimum, 56% of homes in Germany satisfy the textbook definition of being investment properties.

Why not be both?

I'm confused. That suggests that real estate is very much resistant to inflation.

Haha I was wrong, I see what you were saying now. I thought you were saying that resistance == unaffected. But you were saying that the price of real estate rises when inflation occurs, so buy it before inflation happens. My bad. :)

There seems to be an inverse correlation between the value of BTC and DXY.