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Topic: Does bitcoin hold the answer to the many challenges of fiat currency? (Read 259 times)

legendary
Activity: 1638
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bitcoin is also a payment system that is solving one of the biggest issues that the merchants have been facing for years. the issue with charge backs and scams related to that. with bitcoin when a payment is confirmed (included in a block) it is finalized and there is no way the customer can scam the merchants. and I think this is one of the biggest benefits of bitcoin that people sometimes forget. and that is one of the biggest problems that fiat oriented payment systems all suffer from.
legendary
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Some of those are not issues for fiat anymore, most fiat is in electronic form so the cost of storing it or moving it are low, the real problem of fiat is the faculty of governments to print as much as they want,

That is not technically true, fiat is still inherently a physical fiat commodity.
Yes, we can make transactions digitally, but the actual movement of cash from one location to another still happening manually, banks are interlinked, so you can transfer using your device, but money did not actually move, some other funds was used to effect the transactions.

Bitcoin has lots of qualities, mainly, immutabilty and decentralization. This is what sets it apart from conventional currencies.
full member
Activity: 784
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I agree with the OP, that bitcoin will solve the problems facing fiat. Although for now it is possible, bitcoin has not fully been able to fix those problems. But I believe, someday bitcoin will become a better payment system than fiat
legendary
Activity: 1666
Merit: 1196
STOP SNITCHIN'
i somewhat agree with @magneto. the problems that OP mentioned are the small and secondary things that bitcoin can solve. the main feature of bitcoin is that decentralization that it has and all the benefits that come from it.

The OP mentions "loss of value due to inflationary pressures" and I think most Bitcoin users consider that very important. I think Bitcoin's predictably scarce supply is integral to its use as sound money. While the primary objective of Bitcoin was to remove third parties from financial transactions, Satoshi made very clear that built-in scarcity was an important part of the economic design.
hero member
Activity: 1722
Merit: 528
I don't think some of these problems are fiat's, I think we are now talking about electronic cash or maybe cryptocurrencies.

If the government will be just printing and printing fiats, I don't think that would be great for the country. I remember my economy teacher saying that it would be really bad for a country to print a lot of money continuously so I think they still have their limitations. The value decreases while the supply increases.
hero member
Activity: 1274
Merit: 516
Bitcoin could solve some of the fiat problem, it is easier to do global transaction with bitcoin (if bitcoin already adopted in a lot of countries), bitcoin is not affected by the inflation rate, and from security side, bitcoin is quite secure, so from the economic side bitcoin could solve some fiat problem, but bitcoin could not be the answer to control inflation, and if bitcoin being over used then it could create a big problem for the country
legendary
Activity: 2128
Merit: 1293
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Some of those are not issues for fiat anymore, most fiat is in electronic form so the cost of storing it or moving it are low,

no, fiat is still in physical form (cash) and that has not changed. it just happens to also have an alternative form which is digital but still is backed by that physical form.

i somewhat agree with @magneto. the problems that OP mentioned are the small and secondary things that bitcoin can solve. the main feature of bitcoin is that decentralization that it has and all the benefits that come from it.
newbie
Activity: 28
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Crypto has solved the permissionless problem and is a trustless system by design, stopping monopolies like paypal and giving you control over your wealth, but it has not solved the problem of people getting greedy, nor of people trying to scam people out of coins. Only humans can fix that, not an invention.
hero member
Activity: 1666
Merit: 753
Economists and financial experts have alluded to the fact that fiat currency have been encumbered  by several challenges.
Some of which include the costs of printing and allocation.....
the cost of moving it from place to place ( security)
the cost associated with storing (saving)
the cost associated with inherent loss of value due to inflationary pressures and so on.

If bitcoin holds the answer to some or all these issues, then the implication is that the prospects of the bitcoin is grater than any of us can imagine.

None of these are really problems that bitcoin solve, because these are only problems that commercial banks and central banks are concerned with.

The main problem that bitcoin solves in my opinion is centralisation of financial services, and the money supply. Since bitcoin is decentralised, it means that no central entity will ever be able to abuse their power to issue currency, nor will banks be able to potentially block any transactions and/or fail in a financial crisis due to the fact that the entire economy operates under fractional reserve.

And as you mentioned, bitcoin is a hedge against inflation. It's disinflationary as opposed to fiat being inflationary, which makes it in my opinion a much better store of value in the long term.

But the problems like the cost of printing money, and the cost of storing money, etc. can be solved by cashlessness alone. The central bank settling transactions electronically (which they already do) solves these issues. Bitcoin is a subcategory under cashless payments, and there is a clear distinction to be made.
member
Activity: 420
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Now fraudsters and alarmists sell all cryptocurrency for the sake of buying fiat money.

This is the biggest advantage of the dollar. He does not lose liquidity
member
Activity: 126
Merit: 29
Get Maximalist or Get Wrecked
Economists and financial experts have alluded to the fact that fiat currency have been encumbered  by several challenges.

People have been saying this since the gold standard ended in the 70's. Fiat is just paper.

Wait until more fiat dies next year (rupee anyone?) and see if there isn't a rumor that countries want to bring back the gold standard.

Most likely the IMF will try to get G20 countries to adopt a "crypto" that the IMF or Fed control and claim to everyone's citizens it's valuable.... that would not be good for anyone.

The bankers and governments have obviously been having closed door talks about this whole thing, what their plan is for when the fiat finally crashes, is anybodies guess.

Their plan will be hatched next year or 2020. Then bitcoiners will fight about how the banks "solution" is still just printing money like they always did.
hero member
Activity: 1092
Merit: 501
Economists and financial experts have alluded to the fact that fiat currency have been encumbered  by several challenges.
Some of which include the costs of printing and allocation.....
the cost of moving it from place to place ( security)
the cost associated with storing (saving)
the cost associated with inherent loss of value due to inflationary pressures and so on.

If bitcoin holds the answer to some or all these issues, then the implication is that the prospects of the bitcoin is grater than any of us can imagine.
Some of those are not issues for fiat anymore, most fiat is in electronic form so the cost of storing it or moving it are low, the real problem of fiat is the faculty of governments to print as much as they want, this has gotten so bad that some countries are no longer printing some of their lower denomination coins they used to have because now the costs of creating those coins are higher than their face value.
jr. member
Activity: 38
Merit: 1
Economists and financial experts have alluded to the fact that fiat currency have been encumbered  by several challenges.
Some of which include the costs of printing and allocation.....
the cost of moving it from place to place ( security)
the cost associated with storing (saving)
the cost associated with inherent loss of value due to inflationary pressures and so on.

If bitcoin holds the answer to some or all these issues, then the implication is that the prospects of the bitcoin is grater than any of us can imagine.
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