On Thu, 2013-04-18 at 23:07 +0930, Glen Turner wrote: > If you think about it from a monetary economist's point of view, it is > inability to readily create new bitcoins which prevents effective > management of the money supply. Since bitcoins only work if they are > difficult to create then they can't be managed like a currency is, and > thus they'll always be prone to rapid inflation and deflation.
The parallels with gold as a currency are unavoidable. Why did Governments dissociate from gold? All the same reasons they will not like bitcoins. Gold is untraceable, in limited supply, takes hard work and time to extract, is unforgeable (well, pretty much), is easily transported, globally the same.... OK, there are some obvious differences, but the similarities are far greater than the dissimilarities. > In short: bitcoins aren't a currency, they are a barter good. Calling them > "coins" is misleading. Only in the same way that gold isn't a currency - and we have cold coins :-) And what do people turn to, even today, in times of crisis or distrust? Gold. I think the critical, overwhelming disadvantage of bitcoins is that they require an enormous pyramid of high-tech to use. Come the crash - gone. Regards, K. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Karl Auer ([email protected]) http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer http://twitter.com/kauer389 GPG fingerprint: B862 FB15 FE96 4961 BC62 1A40 6239 1208 9865 5F9A Old fingerprint: AE1D 4868 6420 AD9A A698 5251 1699 7B78 4EEE 6017 _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
