Topic: Why do people trust fiat money? - page 6. (Read 7473 times)

Unfortunately, that's simply not true.  If you know of an exchange where i can turn my bitcoins into dollars, i'll gladly use that exchange to play the spread between Gox & Bitstamp.  If by "exchange," you mean some place on the interwebz that will take my BTC for a promise to give me a few dollars sometime in the future, i'm afraid i'm already there  


If bitcoin was no different from any other currency, we wouldn't be having this discussion, would we?  It's quite different, if only because there is no Foregny that issued it.

It's not *fundamentally* different, of course.  
If a state with no land, no foreign reserve, no economy & no political clout issued a currency, and a bunch of currency traders started using that currency as chips in a game of bluff, you'd have something very similar to bitcoin.

Edit:  Reading your link now.

It makes sence, it would be a mess if every shop had to use more than one currency.

Exactly, as long as you are in US, you can't spend euro to buy anything, but you can always go to an exchange to convert them to USD

Same, if there is no one accept bitcoin around you, you can't spend bitcoin to buy anything, but you can always go to an exchange and convert them to USD

This means that bitcoin is no difference than any foreign currency, I have detailed analyze here:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitcoin-is-a-great-foreign-currency-272028

LOL'ed after looking it up on Google. (I am too old or too sheltered)

But ... No

Equestria?

I don't use euros in US.  Everyone uses dollars here.  No groceries, landlords, or gas stations that i visit accept euros, either. 
If you're  interested in learning how euro is different from bitcoin, i'll be glad to give you a detailed answer.

There is no bitcoin economy or dollar economy, there is really one world economy which is sometimes divided due to tariffs and monetary controls. The money that is used, is simply the best money available to the traders. We think that bitcoin is the best money ever by traits, except for a few fringe trade scenarios. If you don't see that, it is ok for me, just sit back and let it happen, and start using bitcoin as the last user. The bitcoin enthusiasts here see that, buy into bitcoin before the rest, and take a nice profit.

The "value" of the bitcoin economy is increasing... If you measure it in fiat. A bitcoin is worth $100 only in USD. If measured in material goods it is worthnext to nothing, as you simply cannot buy all necessary items with bitcoins. Until this happens it is impossible to have a bitcoin economy.

There is one country that accept bitcoin payment, but this country does not physically exist, in fact it exists everywhere on this planet where people accept the bitcoin payment. And this country's economy is growing at an amazing speed

Do you believe this?

Fiat is trustable, whereas Bitcoin is subject to the lovely scheme of pump-and-dump, courtesy of people out there carrying quite a few BTC.
Not to say that the lovely USD isn't subject to that, but Bitcoin tends to have that kind of mentality...

If everyone everywhere transacted in Bitcoin, I'd happily never touch fiat again. Sadly this won't be the case in my lifetime, but we can try to get there!

You can barley call it a currency exchange if it doesn't accept XBT 

That's why I don't have Euros here in the US... However if I went to Europe I could pay for gas, rent, and food with Euros. I can't pay for those anywhere with bitcoin.

Also, I believe the topic says "Why do people trust in fiat money?" not "Why do people trust in Euros?" or "Why do people trust in USD?" It is implied that when someone says "fiat" they are talking about the government issued legal tender, ie; what people actually use. There is no country where fiat is not accepted because it is the official, legal tender of a country.

 Money is a Tool used to Facilitate Trade.


This means it doesn't matter what people use as money (Paper, Gold, Bitcoins) because
at the end of the day the most important thing is "trade" of Goods and Services. That
is where value and wealth are derived, not in the money used to complete the transaction.

Because people are preached that fiat money and banking is safe from childhood and that the country will bail out the banks should they reach a state of crisis and piss away the savings of millions of people.

Doesn't every walmart have a currency exchange?

You can buy those things, just in Europe.

I trust fiat because my entire life I have been able to spend it almost anywhere.  That's all that matters for currency.  Can you spend it today and in the future?

People have evolutionary reasons to not just randomly try new things with no track record.  That's why gradual changes are so prevalent and it's tough to introduce revolutionary ideas.  Society and people through trial and error find a lot of things that work, and it doesn't matter if they understand why it works or not.  People tend to get angrier around red things, for example.  They don't need to understand it.  It just served us well for a while.  There are societal customs that don't make sense, but people aren't about to change them or even question them.

Now there are times when superior ideas do come about and take a while to catch on.  Usually it takes some set of early adopters to test it out and prove it works, then more get on board.  This is the case with almost any new idea that ever happens.  And a lot of the time, the better ideas win out.

So trusting fiat will work until it doesn't.  No one needs to know why Bitcoin is superior.  Only the early adopters do.  The rest will follow along once they see it works and see some tangible ways.  They don't need to know how it works any different than knowing how an internal combustion engine works when they drive their car or how structural engineering works when they drive across bridges.  They see lots of cars driving down the street and across bridges and figure that's good enough.

fiat money is backed by gov & economic . btc is still young now , ppl need time to understand it .