Larry Fink Says Bitcoin Could Replace the Dollar as the World's Reserve Currency Because of National Debt (fortune.com) 153
With America's national debt sitting comfortably over the $36.2 trillion mark, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is warning the burden could one day be the reason the dollar is dethroned as the reserve currency of the world.
From a report: He argues that decentralized currencies like Bitcoin could replace the dollar as worldwide organizations lose faith in national currencies and seek an independent solution. Fink explained his theory in his 2025 letter to shareholders, writing: "The U.S. has benefited from the dollar serving as the world's reserve currency for decades. But that's not guaranteed to last forever.
"The national debt has grown at three times the pace of GDP since Times Square's debt clock started ticking in 1989. This year, interest payments will surpass $952 billion -- exceeding defense spending. By 2030, mandatory government spending and debt service will consume all federal revenue, creating a permanent deficit. If the U.S. doesn't get its debt under control, if deficits keep ballooning, America risks losing that position to digital assets like Bitcoin."
"The national debt has grown at three times the pace of GDP since Times Square's debt clock started ticking in 1989. This year, interest payments will surpass $952 billion -- exceeding defense spending. By 2030, mandatory government spending and debt service will consume all federal revenue, creating a permanent deficit. If the U.S. doesn't get its debt under control, if deficits keep ballooning, America risks losing that position to digital assets like Bitcoin."
It could, but it won't yet (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as everyday people can't go into a marketplace and effortlessly, ubiquitously use it, that's not gonna happen.
Even if it did become the world's currency, imagine the power consumption needed to power it for everyone.
And then don't forget the world's banks. They'll want their cut of the action, too.
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The power consumption isn't really related to the amount of transactions -- a block holds a fixed amount of transactions, and the chain adjusts so that blocks happen about every 10 minutes. The power consumption is only due to miners trying to 'win' the mining race and get a payout. You could process the same number of transactions with 10 machines mining blocks as whatever you have now.
Re:It could, but it won't yet (Score:5, Informative)
You could process the same number of transactions with 10 machines mining blocks as whatever you have now.
One machine. You could run the entire Bitcoin network on a single server.
It wouldn't be secure at all though, and that's entirely the point of wasting the energy consumption of a small country - so no one else can alter the blockchain unless they control 51% of the mining hashrate. When you start looking at it in terms of resource consumption though, is it really worth wasting all that electricity when you're going to ultimately spend or transact it through centralized financial entities anyway? With the number of exchanges that have been "hacked", clearly having a decentralized ledger doesn't do much good if a 3rd party with lousy security is holding the key to your coins.
Re:It could, but it won't yet (Score:5, Insightful)
It wouldn't be secure at all though, and that's entirely the point of wasting the energy consumption of a small country - so no one else can alter the blockchain unless they control 51% of the mining hashrate.
This. After I read Satoshi's paper, this appeared to me as the fundamental weakness of Bitcoin: in order to survive, it must remain popular with the "good guys."
Dude with literally millions of computers (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that we've got serious discussion of integrating this bullshit into our main line economy is a sign that we've become a complete kleptocracy and kakistocracy. It's a fundamental breakdown in human civilization and it's going to get really rough from here on out.
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Money laundering is what it was designed for.
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That's currently true. When mining becomes unprofitable, which it will by design, "miners" earn their pay through transaction fees.
This is true and will stay true. The power consumption is related to the security of the network, or rather vice versa. So the more valuable and important bitcoin becomes, the more security you want, which means mo
Re:It could, but it won't yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitcoins are likely dead whenever the world goes sour. No or spotty electricity as well as spotty internet can cause it to split in value on different continents as well as countries banning them due to money laundering and criminal activities.
The US dollar is a risky currency right now. Cash isn't king anymore. Metal and oil is preserving value better even if it can swing up and down it won't become a black hole.
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Even if it did become the world's currency, imagine the power consumption needed to power it for everyone.
It could technically be forked to use proof-of-stake, but you're arguing against a religion at this point. Bitcoin was just supposed to be a proof of concept that would eventually be refined into something better through the typical open source process. Then greed entered the chat.
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no one would use a proof of stake fork because proof of stake would ruin the fundamentals of what makes bitcoin work
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no one would use a proof of stake fork because proof of stake would ruin the fundamentals of what makes bitcoin work
Yeah, translation: it would piss off all the people presently earning profit mining coin on cheap/stolen electricity.
Since the miners are the network, Bitcoin continues to be a massive wasteful energy suck, even if there was a genuine desire to remedy the issue.
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theres a significant difference in terms here. fink is speaking about world reserve currency, which means, an asset that countries hold to store value. its an entirely different thing than currency, which is the definition you're using to represent the thing people use to exchange local value.
the us dollar will and can still exist in a world where it is no longer the world reserve currency. people will still transact in dollars because its the system they're used to, they don't need to use bitcoin for bitco
Won't Ever (Score:3)
As long as everyday people can't go into a marketplace and effortlessly, ubiquitously use it, that's not gonna happen.
Even if people could go to the market and use it, it is still not going to happen. Bitcoin is backed by nothing other than people choosing to decide that it has a value. Fiat currencies are backed by governments that wield political and military power and control significant physical resources. If they say that their currency is worth something they have the means to ensure that it is....and given the reliance of trade on their currency pertaining some stable value they are very motivated to ensure that it
Re:Won't Ever (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitcoin seems to be backed by nothing but greed.
In all honesty, this may explain why it's stuck around so long. Few things are infinite. Human stupidity is one. Greed may very well be another. There doesn't appear to be any shortage of it at the moment.
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Even if the US Government says that dollars are legal tender for all debts, public and private- it doesn't set its value. I do.
You can tell me you think this candy bar you want to buy from me is worth $1.50, but unless I agree with you, you can kick rocks.
i.e., the US Government doesn't ultimately decide the value of a dollar- including it dropping to zero- the people using it do.
The US Government can play with knobs that affect the money supply, but tha
Bitcoin backed by much less (Score:5, Insightful)
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Gold wasn't highly speculative back when it was actually backing something, and it's still nowhere near as speculative as bitcoin.
https://www.macrotrends.net/13... [macrotrends.net]
Note where 1971 is on that graph.
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I don't think that's actually required for something to be useful as a reserve.
Gold is used for a reserve, good luck effortlessly using it.
The hurdles to use start to melt away as transactions increase in size.
Governments buying and shifting large amounts may actually be a good use case.
I don't think it will ever have a stable enough value for that to hold though.
Re:It could, but it won't yet (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason the dollar is going to lose the reserve currency status is not going to be national debt. Yes printing dollars is free money for the US, and while the world is not necessarily thrilled about being taxed like that, it's not a problem big enough to outweigh the benefits of having a reserve currency in the first place. But the team R fearmongering about debt is just talking point wank. Yes money printing in the US takes the form of issuing debt, so what. I will not care to digress too much into that here, because it's offtopic to my main point. But rest assured, all of the interest payments are paid simply by printing more money without consequence, and the US is nowehere near to where any problems may arise. Like, at least two orders of magnitude nowhere near.
In any case. The dollar got to be the reserve currency because the US was a major trade partner of pretty much everyone, and especially Europe, who built itself up after the war on US dollar loans, buying US industrial production. Of no less importance was the fact that in the US there was rule of law, so the environment there was reliable and predictable, and deposits there were safe. This made for a situation where it made sense for everyone to bank with the US, because you wanted to buy a lot from them, and since everyone else did, too, you could be certain that everyone else would always be happy to take your dollars, too.
Contrast this to now. The US only has a few sectors of significant trade left, and China is the major trade partner of everyone. The deposits in the US are no longer considered safe since they confiscated the holdings of Afghanistan and Russia - think whatever you want of those two, taking someones money is about as big a hole that you can shoot in your foot if you want everyone to bank with you. There is no going back from this, every country now has to take into account that if the US decides they don't like you, you can lose your money. The last straw now is of course the orange man, who has taken any premise of predictability and reliability out of the equation. The dollar system is a dead man walking, with no foundations left. Inertia is great of course, and change will take time, but the wheels are turning, and they're not turning back.
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Bitcoin will never be accepted. Only complete tools and morons talk about Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other cryptocoin because they are the suckers who bought in and want to flip it.
The rest of the world, realized how much of a scam cryptocoins are. Rugpulls, all of them.
The "best case" scenario is that the G20 agree to mine and stake a fixed amount of currency per year, for use with international commerce. These coins expire on every G20 meeting and a new series is released, and the oldest coin is discontinu
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While that is a factor, the real problem is its volatility and complete lack of instinsic value. Unless these change, it is a speculation object and not a currency.
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You also can't buy milk with a treasury note or a savings bond.
Crypto would be a terrible choice because it's highly vulnerable to attacks. We may not have the tools today, but eventually bitcoin will be thoroughly cracked. Crypto can only serve as a short term solution
Debt? What debt? (Score:2, Funny)
President Trumpelon will have it down to zero so fast you won't believe it
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The easiest way is to make sure your debt is in the currency you control and then make that currency value approach zero by an inflation race.
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Government spending either comes out of your pay as taxes or out of your savings as inflation. Which one they choose depends on who they think will vote for them.
Nothing is free. When you're in hole in debt, the first thing to do is to stop digging.
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People abuse their lines of credit constantly-- it's an addiction.
Nonetheless, there are a ton of taxes that you don't directly or indirectly pay out of your pocket, even under the theory of pass-down taxes.
Commerce generates many streams of tax revenues. I believe the tariffs will be ruinous to the international portions of commerce because of inflation that inevitably results.
The US Tax Code is bought and paid for, shielded by many corporate activities that make taxation opaque, and the defunding of the I
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People abuse their lines of credit constantly-- it's an addiction.
Under that analogy, it's like if I maxed out my credit cards and went to my boss to say, "Hey, sorry, but you're going to have to give me a raise". And when the answer is no, I find a way to just take the money out of the company's bank account. There's a word for that!
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I get where you're going with that. Thing is, it works out a wee bit differently when you own the bank, and you print the currency that the bank uses.
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Does creating money really have a 1:1 with creating inflation?
I would think that if you do something that increases goods and services with the created money it would at least partially push back on the inflation.
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I would think that if you do something that increases goods and services with the created money it would at least partially push back on the inflation.
The issue with government borrowing, like the issue with any borrowing, is how was the money spent. Virtually every successful company in the world is in debt. The folks who talk about the debt are almost always making an argument against spending they don't approve of. Its tough to find one that wants to raise taxes to deal with it and none that think we should cut government services that they find useful.
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Honestly, it's kind of genius. The downside is it will hit Americans very, very hard in their pocketbooks, particularly lower and medium income Americans. Perhaps there was never any way of getting around
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Re:Debt? What debt? (Score:5, Funny)
President Trumpelon will have it down to zero so fast you won't believe it
First redirecting the path of a hurricane, then naming the "Gulf of America", and now elimination of the national debt. Is there anything Trump's magic Sharpie can't do?!
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Try a word which starts with U and ends with "kraine".
Going back on topic, I'd be with rsilvergun on this (lunatic idea) except for the date - April 1.
Re:Debt? What debt? (Score:5, Interesting)
President Trumpelon will have it down to zero so fast you won't believe it
Republicans are working on that -- or, at least, hiding increases to start ...
The Budget Trick the G.O.P. Might Use to Make a $4 Trillion Tax Cut Look Free [nytimes.com]
Republicans in Congress trying to advance a giant bill that includes $4 trillion in tax cut extensions are considering a novel strategy that would make the extension appear to be free. The trick: budgeting with the assumption that current policies extend indefinitely into the future — even those with an expiration date, like the 2017 tax cuts set to end next year. It’s the difference between making the extension appear to cost $4 trillion or zero.
Google: gop budget trick [google.com]
Honestly those stupid tricks are better (Score:2)
We can recover from that fool adding several trillion dollars to the national debt, it'll hurt because all that money's going to go to the 1% and they're going to buy up competitors and used out to jack up prices. But again we can recover from that.
The damage the tariffs are doing is going to be immeasurable. We are too heavily interconnected with the rest of the w
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The damage the tariffs are doing is going to be immeasurable. We are too heavily interconnected with the rest of the world at this point. And there's too much automation so we're not going to be bringing back those manufacturing jobs even if we managed to bring back the factories.
Even then, companies can't standup local manufacturing overnight and they're going to be wary of relying on tariffs for that motivation when they could be removed on a whim because someone said something nice to Trump or gave him money in some fashion -- the ways are too numerous to list -- or simply removed in 3.75 years by the next administration, which, if things keep going like this, won't be Republican...
Even now, for example, while ostensibly targeting imported autos and many imported parts, most U
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I hate to say it but nothing is really beyond the realm of unimaginable where major western governments are concerned. We are back its 1913 again in terms of possibilities; as far as suddenly dissolving the current order or otherwise executing massive social changes like creating or eliminating central banks.
Fink might know something we don't. Everyone is always worried about dollar failing because the US defaults but what if the US Government decided instead to just make the dollar holders, and Treasury b
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Well, he is in the process of completely destroying the US economy, so he may actually be able to simply default on all debt. Of course, tehre are a few small side-effects to that.
Re: Debt? What debt? (Score:2)
Re: Debt? What debt? (Score:2)
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https://tradingeconomics.com/u... [tradingeconomics.com]
I didn't realize the chairman of the US Federal Reserve in 2020 was named Biden.
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Believing that Trump intends to decrease the national debt requires faith I do not have. Traditionally Republicans have increased the national debt more than Democrats...probably because when the Republicans are out of power they campaign seriously to reduce the debt...but when they're in power they forget about that.
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Technically, in the US it is always orange men doing "borrow and spend" because they dislike the "tax'n'spend" approach.
Exclusively so since the times of saint Ronnie "the Alz" Raygun.
Who is gong to bail out Bitcoin? Gov't or Fink? (Score:2)
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there is bitcoin and there is crypto. they are not the same. every other crypto other than bitcoin is fundamentally compromised by premines and control issues. bitcoin has an absent founder and control of its fundamentals are decentralized sufficiently. no other crypto currency can approach what bitcoin has achieved.
BlackRock CEO (Score:5, Insightful)
Doubtful (Score:5, Informative)
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The only sane post so far. Thank you.
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Another issue is that a BitCoin transaction is CPU intensive.
So much so that it takes a few minutes to process.
It's never going to beat Tap and Go
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"Your money constantly being worth less... so that saving is impossible... that's good actually"
Very bad take. You're also wrong.
Countries got rid of the gold standard because gold isn't flexible, and prevented governments from manipulating money supply.
BTC is more flexible but also is resistant to economic manipulations. It's a good thing for stability. Stability, of course, helps dissuade warfare.
The easy money that's been made available by banks for the purposes of war, to plunder? That wouldn't be avail
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There is nothing about bitcoin that would stop banks from infinitely inflating the m2 and m3 the money supply. That doesn't sound very stable to me.
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A deflationary currency is NOT good for stability of an economy. It's an actively bad idea. Larry Fink who has a useless political science degree along with a useless MBA, doesn't know jack shit about how money or the economy works. He knows how to *make* money. But that isn't the same thing as knowing how it works.
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Bitcoin would be a very silly choice, but I can see value in some sort of cryptocoin. It would need to be firmly tied to something dependable, though.
Gold became a bad choice because the number of people expanded until a ounce of gold is currently worth over $3000, and that's an utterly silly coin. (It might be a reasonable investment, but that's gold itself, not gold futures. And then you've got to worry about it being stolen.)
I can see national cryptocurrencies being reasonable. I can imagine some sor
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Bitcoin is deflationary because a fixed amount of currency is inherently deflationary. Deflation is caused by there being a decrease in currency relative to economic activity. So if economic activity increases and the supply of currency remains the same, you have deflation.
A simple (and grossly simplified) example. There are 10 people with 10 dollars each and 10 apple sellers with 10 pounds of apples. If the apple sellers set their price at $1 per pound the buyers can buy all the apples at $1 per pound. The
Seriously...this again? (Score:2)
The value of dollar (or euro, or yen, or maybe RMB in the future) is the backed by the idea that US economy, military and stability are strong and are going to stay that way, so ultimately when you get money in US dollars, you can trust that the aforementioned facts mean that you can use those same US dollars years later and get stuff of nearly equivalent value. (Nearly, in this context, meaning that inflation stays low).
Same applies for Euro, Yen, and even for bunch of smaller currencies like Swedish Krona
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there's no better asymetric bet than bitcoin still. 1.7 trill market cap, gold is 21 trillion. if you start to include other assets with a higher value than their utility, like housing, bitcoin has the higher utility as a store of value and reserve. its easy to see the further potential growth.
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Every investment is "a store of value and reserve", bitcoin has no "utility" at all, it is merely entries in a database of nothing. The utility of assets is that the perform functions OTHER than as an investment.
"there's no better asymetric bet than bitcoin still."
Sure thing, keep telling yourself that you're an investment genius while betting on a fraud.
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while betting on a fraud.
Shit, given the last decade or so, I'm not sure that isn't the best fucking bet you can make.
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Bitcoin has utility. It's good for sneaking money across borders, ransoms, and buying illegal stuff, in sufficiently large amounts to make the transaction fee worth it.
Maybe not the kind of utility it's a good idea to justify an investment on though.
The 'S' in bitcoin stands for... (Score:5, Insightful)
Stability...
Everyone knows that that a whole continent of semi-independent institutions, companies, and real goods have to be destroyed in order for the US 'dollar' to be useless.
Conversely, bitcoin requires an active internet connection with a global network just to make a single transaction. Any interruption of power, network, servers, etc makes it all disappear--for the present transaction, or possibly forever.
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In addition, the Full Faith and Credit of the US government is what makes the US Dollar the number 1 reserve currency on the planet
This is supported by our naval presence enforcing the high seas, our trade laws holding US firms to ethical standards and are simple ability to starve bad actors (Russia, Iran, etc...) into submission by excluding them from wider markets
The path that trump is leading us down results in a weak country that no longer will be able to support a reserve currency and we will fall by t
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True of the dollar as well, on a macro scale. The difference is that the dollar is backed by an enormous portion of the world's economy while bitcoin is back by a bunch of tech bro frauds.
Ultimately, the dollar is an electronic currency like any other.
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Why bitcoin? (Score:5, Funny)
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It's harder to store viable tulip bulbs.
OTOH, if you've got viable tulip bulbs, at least you can grow tulips.
Any limited supply currency won't be adopted (Score:4)
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Governments are not going to adopt any currency that has any limit to the amount that they can "manufacture" out of thin air.
Very true. But you forgot to add that it's a good thing they'll refuse any currency that doesn't provide an easy way to expand (and contract) the money supply. If the money supply can't expand and contract with the needs of the economy it will return us to the boom and bust business cycle that we had before we ditched precious metals. If you think the economy is cyclical and unstable now, you need to read about what it was like before we wised up and switched to debt-based fiat currency.
Yes it's still April 1 (Score:2)
Hey, Larry! (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you thought of paying taxes to that government?
or are taxes only for little people?
Ha Ha HA HA HA! (Score:5, Informative)
Some idiot thinks a crypto currency is going to be less eratic than ANY countries currency.
Lets ignore that foolishness. The US debt is not high. One of the problems with big numbers is people do not instinctively know if they are 'high' or 'low'.
If I were to tell you that a shoe had 5 billion atoms in it - would you think that is a big shoe or a small shoe? You do not know because you do not know how many atoms are in any shoe.
36 trillion sounds like a big debt. You have nothing to compare it to. The proper comparison is to the GDP.
In the 709s the US debt to GDP ratio was in the 30s. It was less than 40% of the GDP. We made in 5 months than our national debt was. Currently (2024) it is around 120%. That is, it it takes about 15 months to earn back our debt. 120% is on the high side. Canada has 108%, France has 111%, UK is about 97.6%
The problem countries have ratios like Venezuela 146%, Sudan 256%, Japan 255%.
Basically anything below 140% is high but not yet problematic.
Do we need to be concerned? Absolutely. Whether you like D. Trump or not, he has admitted it will be a rough time in the near future. I would expect the Debt to go up significantly at least until the President (whoever it might be) no longer seeks to scare other countries into obeying him. That is going to take at least another 6 months, and quite possibly till 2029.
The problem is, crypto should suffer just as much as the US economy. If only because much of the crypto gain was driven by the same people in the stock market.
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The problem is, crypto should suffer just as much as the US economy.
No, you see it’s a totally separate and independent distributed system insulating against swings from markets. Now hold on a second, money has dried up so I’m going into my bitcoin savings just like everyone else.
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Small shoe. Maybe a protozoan could wear that shoe. As a rule of thumb, don't forget Avogadro constant which is roughly 6*10^23. That number of water molecules is about 18 grams, so that shoe would be around 1.5*10^-13 grams.
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Some idiot thinks a crypto currency is going to be less eratic than ANY countries currency.
And with this data-pont alone you can already see these people are completely delulu.
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It's quite possible for a crypto-currency to be stable. But not one built to act as a scam.
IIRC, I read a story earlier today that was essentially about Sweden having a cryptocurrency that was stable, and asking people to step back from it because of worries about hacking and foreign influence.
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Actually, no. Not for anything that qualifies as crypto-currency. All you can do is have a central bank managing a real currency make a digital version of that real currency. Then it will be as stable as that real currency. But that is something else entirely.
So the national debt is not a problem (Score:2, Redundant)
As for what we owe overseas we could easily pay it off with the savings from a single pair of health care system, $500 billion per year according to the Congressional budget Office. Repeal Trump's tax cut
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National debt, at long as it isn't too crazy, is fine. The ability to create that debt offers some useful flexibility for a national economy. If you keep your debt well below your GDP, it's just spare change lost in your couch.
Of course, any monetary or fiscal tool can be mishandled by leaving idiots in charge to ruin your economy. What most people don't get is we could ruin the economy by paying off our debt too quickly as easily as we could by having too much debt.
Think you missed the point (Score:2)
Locally the debt isn't a problem as long as the money is getting spread out pretty evenly but well, it's not. Now that is a problem. But that's just our classic wealth inequality issue breaking
Most people want significant government regulation (Score:2)
Crazy would be a scenario that leads to hyperinflation. We'd need a few (or several) orders of magnitude for that to happen. And that's only theoretical because no country has ever been in a similar situation. For a vast majority of parameters, what you say is exactly right.
I'm fine with my democratic capitalist system being a little inefficient if it is equitable and fair. I think anarcho-capitalists are obsessed with efficiency in markets and government that they're happy to discard a system that is evenl
Bitcoin inflates faster than any national debt. (Score:2)
A truly stable currency would have to be locked to the value of something that nearly always has the same value for all people. But that can't work in a world where one person can be valued more than anyone else.
For example the innate value of a basic loaf of bread doesn't change, maybe we can base everything off that. Or make the value of a day's work the same for everyone. Flat wages can't help make people feel superior though, so that's out.
The real solution is to outlaw
bitcoin is the currency of failure (Score:2)
Taking the Nigerian Niara as an example, if a national currency tanks, the blackmarket and foreign currencies become the only way to do business. Larry Fink threw digital currencies out there because the people doing financial transactions will not want to hold (hodl) worthless currencies that lose value between transactions.
I personally would not want to hold crypto either, in this case. But in Nigeria, various currencies are floating around even thought its illegal to use them.
It can't and it won't (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, yes US debt is a problem for the dollar as the global reserve. However, it's more likely the BRICs will develop a shared currency that will become the global standard.
Tell us you know nothing of macroeconomics (Score:5, Informative)
There is no single or even leading theory of macroeconomics, but there are several strong schools and some agreed upon basics and underlying mechanisms. Whenever a technology person starts fulminating about "national debt" and "our national debt will bankrupt us", with us being the United States, it tells me they know nothing of macroeconomics, the leading theories of national debt, or the role of the US national debt in light of the role of the US dollar as the global reserve currency.
tl;dr: technobabble baloney
can you imagine? (Score:2)
I love these crypto guys (Score:2)
They're always getting high on their own supply. It makes the grift all that much funnier to me.
Not Straight Line (Score:2)
- Jimmy Carter (D) 33.9 no_change 33.9
- Ronald Reagan (R) 33.9 increased_to 52.3
- George HW Bush (R) 52.3 increased_to 64.4
- Bill Clinton (D) 64.4 decreased_to 55.3
- George W Bush (R) 55.3 increased_to 72.2
- Barack Obama (D) 72.2 increased_to 101 ** Republican Controlled House
- Dona
Translation (Score:2)
More econobabble (Score:2)
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Of course, and dethroning the dollar as the currency of international trade is a principle goal of both China and Russia. Anyone pushing the same should be considered as willing enemies of western societies. It is not a coincidence.
Re:More likely another stable fiat currency (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep.
The decline in the dollar as the world's default choice was already happening some, but Trump has really punched the accelerator on that trend.
And he has managed to do it on multiple fronts:
- distrust in the stability of the US government.
- chaotic tariffs.
- threats to invade sovereign nations (the sanctions will be huuuge).
- talking about to taking over the federal reserve.
- and more!
It's amazing that there are still so many people who support this insanity.
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The decline in the dollar as the world's default choice was already happening some
Little bit. Very gradual decline. Gotta zoom out years to see it well on a graph of all the large FX reserve currencies.
but Trump has really punched the accelerator on that trend.
Not that I can see on the graphs.
I mean- you'd think so- but the data just doesn't back it up, as far as I can tell.
The USD seems to be maintaining its positive valuation trend against the Euro.
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It's more anecdata at this point, with a lot of people warning about what could happen:
https://fortune.com/2025/03/30... [fortune.com]
It won't take much start a stampede out of the dollar.
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But honestly, I doubt it'll happen. At the end of the day, it's just too hard to imagine the USA, largest consumer and producer in the world, certainly the most militarily powerful, is going to decline fast enough that it's worth everyone dumping their USD FX reserves.
Something fucking scary would have to happen, like the President deciding to default on treasury co
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People have been seeking alternatives for USD, but they haven't been replacing it with Euros.
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Most countries, including the US, already keep reserves of a bunch of different currencies, plus gold and sometimes some other stuff too. The USD is "the" reserve currency because it's the most popular and because of some post-war agreements that give it special status in certain ways.
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The petrodollar has an amplifying effect on this- but no agreement guarantees the petrodollar. It's merely an ad hoc system. Claims that it was a pact, a treaty, or the any of OPEC only traded oil for dollars- are false.
The logic behind this system is apparent enough that we're the largest reserve currency even of countries we call our enemies.
If you need some way
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The US isn't headed down any "crypto rabbit hole". Crypto is just another of Trump's scams. The plan is to use the monetary power of the US government to manipulate crypto values to the personal benefit of Trump and his billionaire friends. It's not about the "US", it's about grift.