Re:Warren Buffett: Stay Away From Bitcoin. It's A Mirage
by dllthomas on Friday March 14, 2014 @12:06PM
(#7399733)
I expect that's dominated by "infant mortality", because situations that cause currencies to die aren't fixed by rolling out a new currency. If that's the case, it tells us very little about the safety of well established currencies.
Re:Warren Buffett: Stay Away From Bitcoin. It's A Mirage
by atom-morgan on Friday March 14, 2014 @12:22PM
(#7399867)
They aren't fixed by rolling out a new currency if they're just repeating the previous process (printing money aka inflation, backed by nothing, etc).
Re:Warren Buffett: Stay Away From Bitcoin. It's A Mirage
by dllthomas on Friday March 14, 2014 @12:40PM
(#7400019)
Sure, but the ones rolling out a new currency here are bitcoin, which fixes only some of the issues.
Incidentally "printing money" is not "aka inflation" - it causes inflation if the money supply grows faster than demand for the money but they are different things.
Re:Warren Buffett: Stay Away From Bitcoin. It's A Mirage
by mpyne on Friday March 14, 2014 @12:09PM
(#7399760)
A figure that might actually mean something, if we were able to assume that any given fiat currency was the same as another.
Re:Warren Buffett: Stay Away From Bitcoin. It's A Mirage
by atom-morgan on Friday March 14, 2014 @12:21PM
(#7399852)
Well they're almost all monopoly currencies (not a reference to the game) that are run by people who can increase the money supply.
Re:Warren Buffett: Stay Away From Bitcoin. It's A Mirage
by mpyne on Friday March 14, 2014 @12:26PM
(#7399910)
So basically we can just plug your 27 year figure into a probability density function to find out how many more years we can expect the USD to be kicking around? How many years does it have left, at varying levels of probability?
Re:Warren Buffett: Stay Away From Bitcoin. It's A Mirage
by dllthomas on Friday March 14, 2014 @12:44PM
(#7400046)
The incentive of a monopoly is to underproduce.
Re:Warren Buffett: Stay Away From Bitcoin. It's A Mirage
by atom-morgan on Friday March 14, 2014 @01:32PM
(#7400409)
The Fed and a government that likes to spend has proved otherwise.
Re:Warren Buffett: Stay Away From Bitcoin. It's A Mirage
by dllthomas on Friday March 14, 2014 @01:59PM
(#7400614)
Not at all. If production of dollars was competitive, they would be priced near the cost of production. I'm not saying there are no valid critiques of USD and our monetary system. I'm saying that it is not bad for the reasons monopoly is usually bad.
[1] http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2011/08/average-life-e...