TL;DR
Now that bitcoin exists, it is no longer merely the subject of an intellectual debate. Instead, we now have two competing monetary systems that present great contrasts: one attempts to create stability through active management of the money supply, while the other tolerates interim volatility in the interest of maintaining a fixed supply. For the last ten years, the bootstrapping upstart has been gaining ground on the incumbent system, as demonstrated by its adoption and steadily increasing value relative to other currencies. Opting in to bitcoin means opting out of quantitative easing, and while it may be a volatile path, the long-term trend will continue because central banks continue to pursue the very policy tool which bitcoin prevents.
While attempting to be a source of macroeconomic stabilization, central bankers inadvertently create instability through the manipulation of the money supply. By manipulating the supply of money, all global pricing mechanisms become distorted. As Hayek describes in The Use of Knowledge in Society, the price mechanism is the greatest distribution system of knowledge in the world. When the price mechanism becomes distorted, false signals are distributed throughout the economic system and the result is an imbalance between supply and demand which ultimately creates instability and fragility. Today, this instability has primarily been created and sustained as a function of quantitative easing. The financial crisis made it clear that the size of the credit system was both unstable and unsustainable; rather than allow the system to naturally deleverage, the Fed reflated asset prices and induced further credit expansion, such that existing debt levels could be sustained.
Practically speaking, the central banking approach to solving a problem of too much debt was to induce the creation of even more debt, which was the original source of instability. Fortunately, bitcoin fixes this.
Parker Lewis