I can get 4.2% interest for a 3 year guaranteed treasury/whatever it's called in english deposit.
Inflation in the UK is 4.2% if measured by the CPI, 5.1% if measured by the more realistic RPI, and a bit more still if measured by how much the cost of living is increasing for the average person.So an interest rate of 4.2% is, at best, not making any money. At worst, it's losing a few percent of real value each year. And that's before taking into account that most people will need to pay tax on any interest that they earn. And before taking into account that inflation will probably be a lot higher before this 3-year investment matures.
When I was younger, you could generally count on making 3% from a savings account after tax and after inflation. That hasn't been possible for a few decades now.
bitcoin doesn't change any of this. the inflation of fiat currencies, and its effects, are very poorly understood on these forums in general.
the income from interest came from the participation of your savings accounts in the growth of the economy. the income from the hoped-for deflation of your bitcoins (based on bitcoin's future monetary policy, because of course bitcoins are right now substantially more inflationary than any fiat currencies, monetarily speaking, and they will remain so for some time) will come from exactly the same source. if the economy does not grow in real terms, there's no way that everyone can receive positive risk-free returns; there's nothing to do but shift the existing or dwindling wealth from person to person.
i still bristle when i see people in these forums angry at the inflation of fiat currencies. the comparison to bitcoins is misleading. nobody received a dollar in 1913 and expected it to have the same purchasing power in 1999. and during the inflation that the original poster's chart shows, the united states was, with a handful of exceptions, both prospering and increasing its prosperity; the inflation of the money supply did not stop that. moreover, as i've tried to explain before, monetary policy does not force inflation's effects on people; anyone could purchase other assets (though not with infinite flexibility, given the outlawing of private holding of gold, which is a more serious regulatory intrusion than monetary inflation) with their cash if they wanted to avoid the effects of inflation. other regulations, including tax laws, have imposed limits on people's abilities to invest arbitrarily, but that is not the fault of monetary policy. the anger at the 'inflation' of 'fiat currencies' is, for these reasons, rather bizarre, and honestly the frequency with which it's repeated here increases the amateurish and fringe feel of the community.
there are a lot of things to be angry at central banks for. that the dollar inflated throughout the 20th century is not one of them.
