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103 sats \ 12 replies \ @grayruby 20 Feb \ on: Are bitcoins meant for spending or savings? bitcoin_beginners
Bitcoin is money it is for both spending and saving.
Yes. Agreed. But it only becomes money if it is accepted for goods, AKA spent. If 100% of people saved and never spent, it would have zero economic value.
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Even then, it's only accepted as collateral or a reserve asset because it can be exchanged (expected to be exchangeable) for other things later, right?
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This.
We use the word spend. But it only has fiat value because it's being exchanged ALL THE TIME. If one were to imagine a counterfactual where it was never swapped for fiat (which is crazy because then you'd only have miners owning it), then one would agree it's valueless economically, and you'd just have insane miners losing money for nothing.
Fiat is (usually) our current unit of account, even for things being sold for bitcoin. Read the book "Debt" to learn more about how something can be a unit of account EVEN AFTER IT ISN'T IN USE. So one could envisage a hyperbitcoinization world where people still price in dollars.
But I digress perhaps
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That seems inverted. People use shit fiat currencies all the time who have no faith in their future value. Medium of exchange is a pragmatic thing.
Agreed. I think we as humans have a hard time accepting that two different things can be true at the same time. Perhaps embracing bitcoin as both at the same time to varying degrees represents our evolution as a species from “this or that” dualistic thinking to “nondual” thinking where we are able to hold the paradox.
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