Ofc I understand, I meant that as a joke haha xD

Of course they can. Digital fiat currency can be used as a tool for total control, as a means of restriction and keeping you in line like a horse with those eye things...

It’s more that the vast majority of people *want* a government and *want* that government to provide some modicum of a safety net, security and a provisions for general welfare, so there is an in-built market for taxation by which the government can induce demand for its own currency. I predict this dynamic will persist.

Or if one stupid nation that nobody likes decides to go all in on it

You have to spend enough to protect yourself against any coalition of adversaries who may stand against you. Your adversaries in turn need to be able to spend enough to ward off any attack that you and some of your allies threaten them with which means they have to spend more meaning well now you need to increase your budget because all of your adversaries just increased their budgets and so on und so weiter until you just sort of say gosh I don’t know this game seems kind of silly

Storing gold has relatively fixed and predictable costs. You don’t have to update your vault size to be one brick higher than the vault in some other country. Your threat model involves people who are physically near your vault.

Storing gold has relatively fixed and predictable costs. You don’t have to update your vault size to be one brick higher than the vault in some other country. Your threat model involves people who are physically near your vault.

Why would all the adversarial/competitive pressures tilt the system toward stability and not towards instability?

This is an argument why governments will resist having it become a reserve currency. Why would you want a reserve currency that you have to have a special set of weapons and a new budget to defend?

The other thing here is that the second the government starts mining with defense budgets every basement miner is just running an expensive heater. All the mining corporations will shut down and we’ll have some form of NATO or OPEC or TPP negotiation the mining which means they’ll be able to enforce sanctions at the drop of a hat.

By this time we’re a bit afield from peer to peer electronic cash.

I definitely don’t think it will fail, but even if it does, at the absolute least it will educate a lot of people about money on its journey

Why would all the adversarial/competitive pressures tilt the system toward stability and not towards instability?

The halvenings are going to make the security budget an extremely small fraction of market cap. Fees might pick up a little but this will be a major obstacle for many purposes. At some point during one of these market crashes when all the miners are over leveraged and going bankrupt, someone with a billion dollar or so will be able to come in and take the whole thing over.

Yes, I'm betting they will adapt. Bitcoin will force them to.

Can’t believe I’m writing this but…earthquake?

I don't see why that would be. Paper notes have the advantage of portability over gold, but a fiat currency, even a digital one, would do nothing that bitcoin couldn't do.

I think Bitcoiners may be surprised that no matter how successful Bitcoin becomes, that state-issued currencies will continue to exist, and bitcoin will be more like a world-reserve currency, that central banks hold, and people use as an inflation hedge, and people resort to as freedom money in hostile environments.

This is a very real possibility as to what Bitcoin's future looks like.

Don't hurt yourself trying so hard!

Don't hurt yourself trying so hard!

If Balaji's $1M call is right, it doesn't seem like it would stay at just $1M. That's way too conservative for total system collapse and flight to bitcoin. It would definitely skyrocket to $10M or become where it was impossible to buy with fiat currency. Might as well just make the bet $10M in 95 days.