🇳🇱
@realcaseyrollins how do you define "stronger" and "more value"... not that i disagree per se, but that isnt an easy thing to say, especially when talking about cryptocurrencies as a whole.
They are highly volatile, for example. While that means high possibility ofmaking money it also means high possibility of loosing it. For every millionaire that invested early in ethereum there are 10,000 people who invested in a now defunct crypto.
the store doesn't update the price of milk in live time, so the money appears stable, when it's just as worthless as btc.
The question doesnt have an answer, not a single one. There are many opinions and different answers. Though I am glad you are sharing your particular opinion.
To address your question, the price in milk in dollars or BTC is not really where the perceived instability comes from . It comes from the fact that on exchanges between any nationally recognized fiat (USD, Euros) etc and any cryptocurrency, or between any two cryptocurrencies, the exchange rate between these vary wildly, and these prices very much are "real time".
Contrast this by comparing any two nationally recognized fiat like USD to Euros against eachother and while the exchange rate does change it is many orders of magnitude more stable than against a cryptocurrency.
So the argument of instability of crypto is very much legitimate relative to traditional fiat.
the weight of actual world use at fixed values counteracts the volatility of speculation. regardless of how its absolute to-gold changes by the minute, people are still paid an agreed upon amount and then spending agreed upon amounts.
there isn't a mass of contracts moving fixed amounts of BTC that have to be renegociated to account for the fluctuations, leaving only speculation, so it's "more volatile."
fiat dies in to volatility when it doesn't have the weight behind it anymore (ex. reichmarks) too
@realcaseyrollins
It doesnt just appear less stable, it is less stable. I cant think of any metric where it could be defined as stable.
To your specific point, no far far fewer people are agreeging to and paying a stable fixed amount of crypto in any regard. The price fluctuates by large percentages and these are the values the vast majority of people can actually use the crypto for. When crypto goes down 10% overnight me and the overwhelming majority of people with crypto now have 10% less buying power than before. This isnt just an "illusion" it is quite literal and measurable.
The reason being is what you already touched on, the price of most goods is fixed stably to the USD, this makes it literally (not just an illusion) stable. The fact that USD is trusted enough to "set it and forget it" while the price in bitcoin is a live price on those same goods, assuming the store takes bitcoin at all (usually you need to convert it) is exactly why, pretty much by definition cryptocurrency is unstable, literally and measurably.
Yes a fiat will die when it doesnt have the "weight" of people using it as the measure of value.. again thats the point. If a government fails then yes its currencies value will fail. Cryptocurrency is no different, when people stop supporting a cryptocurrency (giving it weight) then it fails too in much the same way, except not being tied to the success of the government but rather the success of its people (which might make it more democratic but not necessarily more stable unless and until that support is a majority)
Most arguments about money boild down to incompatible semantics, and this is one of them. But also those incompatible semantics ultimately cause very different conclusions from the same facts.
@freemo @icedquinn @realcaseyrollins what are those different conclusions then? it seems to me that they are both compatible with the same conclusion: that a given crypto will become (seen as) stable when (or if) prices are set in it (and prices will be set in it when (or if) it becomes a dominant currency)
also, wouldn’t this mean that currencies that already have prices fixed in it for goods built in to the network (such as Namecoin, and possibly Arweave, but probably not Handshake due to it using a auction) would already be stable? because that’s not what I’ve noticed
As far as I can tell Ice is arguing that cryptos only **appear** unstable because the prices of goods in crypto adjust in real time (as in they are priced in dollars/euros and you pay via conversion). This would imply that traditional fiat is just as stable or almost as stable as crypto.
I am arguing this isnt an illusion at all, the fact that goods are priced according to USD is because people trust the USD value not to fluctuate and that trust and pricing scheme ultimately makes it stable in reality.
As for currencies that "already have prices fixed in it for goods"... that depends how. If it is a backed currency then it will be exactly or close to as stable as that which backs it. Moreover if it is simply that it is truely a fixed cost for a good (like namecoin) then the issue is simply that only a very fixed quantity and scope of goods with limited demand are priced according to it. So its stability wont approach that of something like the USD where virtually all goods of any level of demand are priced according to it.
@Hyolobrika yes stability is strongly linked to how much a currency is used. Couple that with the fact that many currencies are deflationary and it stands to, in the future, be more stable than traditional money
@Hyolobrika I didnt say all were deflationary, I said many were.
