First part of your argument - Isn’t this literally the argument against every new anything?
Second part - I think you’re also misunderstanding? Central banks hold gold and other countries currencies for international clearing, export/import, and national security reasons. A central bank is not holding them for price stability and inflation control. Only a small handful of central banks (the fed) meaningfully target those goals, and if they do it is for their own fiat currency.
If you think a central bank is going to hesitate to hold a useful asset for international exchange purposes if a ‘ceo or worse your enemy’ could send it spinning, you’re not paying attention? China’s central bank holds at least $1 trillion US dollars for instance [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign-exchange_reserves_of...], along with Euros and every other currency useful for it’s goals. There is a huge variety of foreign reserves currencies in wide use [https://data.imf.org/?sk=E6A5F467-C14B-4AA8-9F6D-5A09EC4E62A...] covering everything from Chinese renmenbi to Swiss Francs and UKP. All of these change dramatically relative to each other on short notice, all are enemies or economic competitors with some selection of people using them as reserve currencies, and there is no central authority to go crying to if one of them defaults on their debts or inflates their currencies.
And third part - I’m not saying it’s likely any government would replace it’s fiat currency with BTC or any other currency out of it’s control. I’m saying Zimbabwe and many other places don’t really run on their local currency, they run on what people use (currently dollars in most cases, but some places BTC is getting traction) - because their gov’ts destroy the utility of the their local currencies and people can’t trust it.
> First part of your argument - Isn’t this literally the argument against every new anything?
Oh, that wasn't meant to be an argument against something new. As I said repeatedly, it's an argument against BTC as it exists now and as it will be for the foreseeable future. The expectations for a stable "national" currency are incompatible with the pillars of BTC. That was my original point.
The Fed, the ECB, the Central Bank of China all have price stability and inflation as a mandate, of course for their own currency. And this should already hint that they want control over their national currency. Gold and other countries' currencies are explicitly things that are regulated by the respective countries and/or "relatively" stable. I'm not aware of any national currency as volatile as BTC. They're all substantially more more resilient to outside manipulation because they're regulated and traceable. Governments and Central Banks don't want their country or citizens to rely on a currency they don't have any control over especially in places like US, EU, China, Japan. Just think of the UK refusing to give up the GBP to adopt the EUR because it involved losing control of the currency. So while I can imagine a bank (central or commercial) holding BTC one day as an asset, I'm having a really hard time seeing the "unregulated currency BTC" being used as a "national currency" in any place that matters.
> If you think a central bank is going to hesitate to hold a useful asset for international exchange purposes if a ‘ceo or worse your enemy’ could send it spinning, you’re not paying attention?
If you were to ask Mario Draghi or Christine Lagarde they would tell you no CB should hold BTC. I'm not saying I can see the future but I'm trying to understand what you know and they don't.
When China deliberately weakened the yuan to gain an advantage in the trade war with US (to boost exports) it was immediately noticed and attributed and that could be (was?) used as justification for sanctions and tariffs. Bitcoin is decentralized and pseudo-anonymous.
> I’m saying Zimbabwe and many other places don’t really run on their local currency, they run on what people use (currently dollars in most cases, but some places BTC is getting traction) - because their gov’ts destroy the utility of the their local currencies and people can’t trust it.
So they rely on a well regulated currency like the USD. How would BTC improve on this? The USD is stable enough for Zimbabwe to use because it's under central control.
Taking more practical approach for the regular person, at the absolute minimum a currency is supposed to come with consumer protections that are derived from regulation. BTC was specifically designed to curtail regulations. This won't be fixed by faster or more efficient networks. That can't be "fixed" at all because it's one of BTC's tenets: stay unregulated and out of gov't control. So your citizens are not only using an unregulated currency that offers them no protections, they're also extremely vulnerable to outside manipulation.
BTC is an unstable coin, that cannot be regulated to offer consumer protections or complying with anti money laundering laws. In theory this recommends it to speculators and people who are looking to be shielded from the law. The reality just happens to match the theory to a T.
Some e-currency will surely fit the bill one day though but I'm not entirely sure if there's one to be both regulated and unregulated at the same time, to make everyone happy.
I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding my comment, and we're mostly agreeing with each other - apologies if I wasn't clear!
I was quite explicitly referring to speculative future events, and how their odds of happening directly impact current pricing of bitcoin.
USD is reasonably well regulated now and has been historically - by some definition - at least as well as any of its competitor currencies, though none of them are looking particularly great right now by traditional measures.
What are the odds it will remain so for 10 years? 20 years? 50 years? Less than 100%, better than 0%.
As BTC addresses issues over the next 10, 20, 50 years - could it be a viable option for central bank clearing in the way JPY, USD, or gold is now? What are the odds? 100%? 0%?
With the work, attention, and considering the existing progress it's made, will it be a viable option for a trans-national or even national currency over the same time frames? What are the odds? 0%? 100%?
I'm pointing out that 1) none of those options is clearly a 0% or 100% outcome over the time frames we're talking about 2) depending on your individual judgement and how optimistic or pessimistic you are about various parts of these equations, depends on what you think BTC's value currently is.
Even people just hedging their bets against a not impossible outcome can lead to a deflationary spiral, leading to high prices until there is clear data one way or another where things will end up.
Second part - I think you’re also misunderstanding? Central banks hold gold and other countries currencies for international clearing, export/import, and national security reasons. A central bank is not holding them for price stability and inflation control. Only a small handful of central banks (the fed) meaningfully target those goals, and if they do it is for their own fiat currency.
If you think a central bank is going to hesitate to hold a useful asset for international exchange purposes if a ‘ceo or worse your enemy’ could send it spinning, you’re not paying attention? China’s central bank holds at least $1 trillion US dollars for instance [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign-exchange_reserves_of...], along with Euros and every other currency useful for it’s goals. There is a huge variety of foreign reserves currencies in wide use [https://data.imf.org/?sk=E6A5F467-C14B-4AA8-9F6D-5A09EC4E62A...] covering everything from Chinese renmenbi to Swiss Francs and UKP. All of these change dramatically relative to each other on short notice, all are enemies or economic competitors with some selection of people using them as reserve currencies, and there is no central authority to go crying to if one of them defaults on their debts or inflates their currencies.
And third part - I’m not saying it’s likely any government would replace it’s fiat currency with BTC or any other currency out of it’s control. I’m saying Zimbabwe and many other places don’t really run on their local currency, they run on what people use (currently dollars in most cases, but some places BTC is getting traction) - because their gov’ts destroy the utility of the their local currencies and people can’t trust it.