Posted by MarkB_MI on February 28, 2014 at 03:03:05 from (75.241.111.170):
In Reply to: Re: Bitcoin posted by Bret4207 on February 27, 2014 at 16:03:50:
For the record, the deficit as been dropping for many years. (Look it up to see when it started to drop.) The national debt continues to rise, which it will do until the deficit goes negative. That's not to say we're out of the woods; we have long-term structural problems with entitlements that are quite serious and nobody has a plan to fix them.
But that and everything else you say is irrelevant to whether or not Bitcoin is a viable currency. There seems to be a misconception that a currency needs to have some fundamental value and if it's not backed by a physical commodity like gold it's no good. That's simply not true, and that's why no major government today backs its currency with gold or silver.
What do need in a currency? 1. It needs to be portable (extremely so in the internet economy). 2. It needs to impossible to counterfeit, forge, or alter. 3. Enough buyers and sellers of goods and services must be willing to accept it that it has a viable market. That's pretty much it. Bitcoin has all three attributes, with the added attraction of being untraceable. It would be nice if its value was more stable, and that will probably come with time. But it's far better than gold, silver and US dollars when it comes to portability and resistance to counterfeiting.
Now, just as it's a bad idea to use commodities as currency, it's equally bad to use currency as a commodity. Most of the news around Bitcoin is the result of its rapid rise and fall in value. I didn't buy Bitcoins when I first heard about them (they were trading at six bucks then), and I haven't bought any yet. I wouldn't recommend them as investments. But as a currency, the Bitcoin concept is quite viable.
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