Crypto is great, until the power goes out.
If things get so bad electricity and comms become a thing of the past, you'll have much bigger problems than deciding on a currency.
This exactly. Any scenario where there is no electricity anywhere also means that fiat doesn't work and gold and silver also would not work. Brass and lead are the most precious metals as currency in that scenario.
In theory gold and silver will become valuable again quickly as soon as things settle down, but good luck holding on to them until that happens.
That's very true. If you could somehow defend your hoard of difficult to secure/transport metals you could be rich if things stabilize. But you'd still need a massive stockpile of the most precious metals, lead and brass, to do it, not to mention a lot of very trustworthy/saintlike warm bodies to help you guard and transport it all.
The amusing thing is, you'd have a much easier time of just buying everyone's crypto wallets in that scenario. Trade one hardtack biscuit per bitcoin wallet and then if things stabilized again you'd be massively more wealthy than the guy who collected gold/silver, assuming that he wasn't dead in a ditch somewhere killed by thieves because he was carting around an enormous pile of heavy, shiny metals.
Also, the power going out only means that you can't exchange it. That true of credit cards.. yet people use those. If you have a mix of bitcoin in your own wallet and stored on exchanges, the exchanges haven't changed their legal relationship with you and you still have money.
It's like saying a bank is useful until the power goes out. I'm pretty sure a physical bank can't check your balance on their system without electricity. I guess I'm stupid to have a bank account now.
I guess I'm stupid to have a bank account now.
Well yes, but not for that reason :P
Speaking of which, I saw an interesting hardware wallet design the other day. It's a USB key with the public key to the wallet available whenever you plug it in. In order to access the private key you have to break the seal by snapping off part of the circuitboard. In theory you could exchange those without power, although some trust would still be involved.
I also assume bitcoin backed credit notes are going to get popular eventually.
McDonalds also has arguably produced an inflation proof currency: They hand out tokens worth one big mac.
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