The metal-backed currency requires trust. Something banks/politicians have squandered the last millennia.
If people learn about an asset that doesn't require trust, and is available worldwide (bitcoin) they will flock to it.
Not saying it will replace every day money immediately, but it might at the end. Why would you start trusting anything else?
About the haircuts, anything of value will get haircuts, that's how the government rolls, be it fiat, crypto, metals, real estate etc.
metals have a intrinsic value while bitcoins does not. i no longer trust bitcoin because it is, in my opinion, manipulated by whales and exchanges.your in the club or your not... their are predators out hunting for some poor newb who invests a bunch money into the scheme while they pump it and then they turn around and dump on them causing them to fear and dump their coins at a loss for their gain.. you trying to claim that is a system we can trust ?? this is my new opinion about bitcoin.
the haircuts come from bank accounts, and then from the reset of the value of things into the new metals backed currency. if you own metals then you will trade the metals for the full value of the metal for the new metals backed currency. in my opinion the govy would prefer their citizens to buy metals. the reason they would want citizens to buy metals is because it keeps those metals in the country, and those metals will eventually be returned to the govy when the citizens trade them into the depository in exchange for the metals backed currency... all the citizens who are stacking act as a giant savings account of metals for the govy .. the govy doesnt want or need bitcoins, they want and need metals.
What the government wants is not something you should want, looking at their history.
If it were up to them, everyone would be taxed 100% and you'd get some fast devaluing currency in return just enough to make a living. Even foodstamps would be too much of value, since in 20 years they would still hold their value, not something 'they' want.
About the whales playing the market, sure, right now they can play around like it's nothing. The marketcap is laughable and I'm guessing less than 250k people are actually into bitcoin. But when bitcoin reaches enough people that it becomes mainstream, any 'dump' those whales try, will be swallowed up by the majority and they'll have to buy in higher resulting in less bitcoin. This will go on and on and result in a more even distribution of coins. Maybe there are smart whales (most of them lucky to be in the right place at the right time), but eventually they'll die of age or sickness. So future generations won't have to deal so much with this manipulation.
I'll say it again, the main issue here is
trust. And bitcoin solves that issue quite nicely.