Bitcoin / Cryptocurrency Discussion (And Predictions)

[Jobless]

Did we get here BECAUSE of how fiat currency works? Or in spite of it?

In spite of it, I'd say. The nature of fiat currency systems is that is built on trust, and for this reason it is very fragile. It works fine, until the day it doesn't (when trust is lost). To build trust / reputation takes decades or centuries, and it can be ruined in one day. Any lapse in judgement and governance. Any corruption. And the cracks start to form.

Trust, as a foundational mechanism to a system, work fine in small networks of people. A town in a high-trust society, where people know each other, for example. In a nation or an empire, or globally, it often ends badly. You can't trust others to that extent, especially not your rulers, who can easily abuse any power afforded to them. Single-point-of-failure and centralization of power, makes for a fragile and short-sighted system.

The day you move from, for example, a decentralized gold-standard, to a centralized fiat-standard, you have set into motion a series of future events with extremely high hidden risks.

Putting a monopoly on the price of money (interest rate) also causes unnatural and unstable economic cycles. Boom-bust cycles are not natural, and they are net-negative, wasting time and resources. It also has strange economic effects, where anyone close to the money printer gets an advantage over the rest (cantillon effect). Creating value in the marketplace is no longer priority number 1.

The incentives to get government positions, government contracts, or to run a bank/finance company, far outweigh the risk-reward found in other sectors of the economy. The financial sector becomes bloated, and cements itself and its innate unfair advantages, through intertwining with the power that be (the state), to preserve the fiat system. That's how central banks work.

It's not a new system, even though it's gone through a few iterations and been improved upon to form the modern capitalistic system. In the past, there are numerous examples of fiat collapses that ended in quite bad ways.

Ming dynasty of China, France under John Law leading to the French revolution, Weimar Germany leading to WW2, Zimbabwe, Venezuela.

It probably lead to the October Revolution as well, thus causing the scourge of communism. It's hard to finance large wars without fiat inflation.

When trust is lost in a fiat currency, there are incurred dues to pay, and this cost is often catastrophic for those who trusted in the system.

In ancient Rome the precious metal %-content of their coinage, dropped over the years, correlating exactly with the downfall of their empire.

 

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