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Re:Bitcoin and positive vs. normative economics by ubernostrum on Saturday December 28, 2013 @03:55PM (#6976528)
he doesn't even bother to mention that very few people actually use dollars as a store of value: people don't keep their retirement funds in cash under the mattress.

Individual people, perhaps not. But the US dollar is the most widely-held reserve currency in the world, followed by the Euro. Wikipedia states that approximately 2/3 of reserve currency holdings are dollars.

Re:Bitcoin and positive vs. normative economics by pdonis on Saturday December 28, 2013 @04:35PM (#6976723)
You're assuming that reserve currency holdings are stores of value. I'm not sure I buy that assumption, since central banks use those reserves to manipulate the monetary system in a number of ways, not to store value. Also, as far as I can tell, the total amounts in these holdings are small compared to the total amounts held in stocks, real estate, gold, and other non-monetary stores of value.