I don't think so. Once people realise they can buy real stuff with cryptos without being on the darknet (obligatory mention to particl), they'll see that they actually are a real. useful currency that doesn't need to be converted back to fiat.
As I understand it, reflationing is fine provided you have a strong sovereign currency so you aren't at the mercy of the international forex markets. The US ticks this box, therefore it can pump out new money without the same risk of hyperinflation.
ZMB OTOH probably had a weak currency and an economy largely dependent on imports. Therefore when they started printing money it became worthless since it was a proxy for a currency they didn't control (the USD), and a strengthening of the USD would have a huge impact in reducing confidence in the ZMB dollar. A similar thing happened in Venezuela and Post-WW1 Germany I think.
For a better explanation see Big Debt Crises by Dalio.
MobileCoin isn't the only fast privacy coin in town - particl has most of the same features if not more, including a private ebay-style marketplace which should be ready for prime time in just over a month (all being well). And you can buy it on US exchanges today.
> Oil is ... worth something only if you can turn it into fuel, plastic or some other product for which there is demand. Same goes for gold.
You clearly don't understand what "intrinsic value" means if you believe this. The very fact it can be fabricated into something of value gives it some intrinsic value.
> The only question that matters is: is Bitcoin better than commodity X
No. The only question that matters is will people collectively continue to agree that it's worth something, lacking any intrinsic value?
If interest rates go up and people need to call in their assets to repay their debts, what do you think will happen? Would people rather lose their houses or their bitcoins?
I think people will dump stocks and risky "assets" like BTC and take flight into cash with some percentage in traditional safe havens with a proven track record (like gold) until things settle down. This is exactly what happened a year ago. There's no reason in my mind to believe anything would change regarding BTC's status now - I think it'll be dumped like it was last year. It may recover faster (I'd certainly buy it for a heavy discount), but I just don't buy the "store of value", "digital gold" argument.
It's an early-stage speculative asset IMO - let's not pretend it's a stable, low-risk store of value.
> A house depreciates over time
Tell that to people unable to buy because house prices have shot up. Property can also generate a good rental income - yield obviously dependent on the price paid. BTC doesn't provide any such perpetuity.
> I really don't understand this urge of breaking down anything digital into its fundamental units to try and diminish its value. It's the equivalent of evaluating anything in the physical world as "just a bunch of atoms".
Because in the good times, people think these things are great investments. But as soon as things go south they look at what they have from a different perspective. Something with some intrinsic value (e.g. a "bunch of atoms" that can be eaten or lived in) is likely to be much easier to rationalise holding on to in that scenario, rather than something that's only worth something due to consensus by a bunch of strangers.
And that's the risk - it doesn't matter if as an individual you see great potential. If everyone else disagrees, gets scared and sells, then BTC could be battered.
The question is, will people run to it as a safe haven in the event of a huge stock market crash, or away from it? Nobody knows for sure. It's a game of chicken - not having the heritage of gold, I don't think it'd take much for people to get scared and realise that all they have are a load of strings of characters (scarce or not) and want to dump it. After all, it's crashed before.
Until then, it's potentially a great investment in today's climate (especially if you don't care about the climate).
No, I mean a depression. What we've seen is investors scrambling to find returns in riskier assets due to low interest rates, but the bubble hasn't burst yet.
Once it does, we're likely to see a depression at some point [1].
Since Bitcoin is famously volatile I'd bet that once there's a scare, people who've pumped the price up to the current highs will abandon it in droves. After all, there's a huge difference in risk between buying in <$5k vs ~$30-50k
It's going to take some pretty big balls to dump your money into bitcoin instead of gold or cash the next time the stock market crashes. Then we'll see how good a store of value it is.
Potentially. Or for sellers of particularly high value goods where buyers and sellers both have to put up the same amount again as a deposit. It still seems like a novel approach and I'm curious how it'll pan out.
TBH I imagine developing smart contracts is clunky right now, like developing using AWS Lambda frameworks was a few years ago. But the tooling will improve. Perhaps it could be possible to digitally sign a smart contract's version, linking it to some proof of automated test coverage, or some other open way of verifying that it works as intended - e.g. attach the test suite and test results to the contract somehow and sign them. If you weren't happy with the quality of tests or their coverage, etc, you could decide not to use the smart contract.
> What do you do if you pay someone online with bitcoin who then just doesn't deliver what you've ordered?
This is the big problem with crypto. Trust moves around. But there is one solution: escrow backed by smart contracts - see here for one implementation [1]
Personally I think what we'll see in future is people being offered the option of going through existing institutions as a form of insurance for the reasons you mention, but an alternative on offer for people who just want to minimize fees or who don't think they'll need those conflict resolution services.
This. Smart contracts have lots of possible uses such as removing brokers (housing deeds), flattening distribution (there's one musician selling on etherium via a smart contract) etc.
Projects like particl [1] are creating a decentralised, anonymous marketplace with very low fees. Imagine being able to sell on ebay or amazon and only paying pennies in listing fees.
This is an early stage in crypto but the trend is inevitable.