That doesn't make sense. The value of anything can be volatile if you price it in units of a volatile currency. 1 BTC is still 1 BTC, just as 1 USD is still 1 USD. 1 USD isn't worth the same amount of Argentine pesos as it was yesterday, nor is 1 BTC.
If an apple was priced in BTC, you wouldn't care if it was worth a different amount of rupees or ounces of gold yesterday, just as you only care about the dollars and cents on the price tag now.
USD is sure as hell not stable. It's unstable by design - it is constantly declining in value as the money printers continue to churn. If you are hoping for a stable BTC-USD then you are hoping for a bizarre and unlikely situation where BTC declines in value at the exact same rate as the USD. I don't understand.
> That doesn't make sense. The value of anything can be volatile if you price it in units of a volatile currency.
This is only true if you are holding the thing for the sake of holding it. Generally currencies, as a medium of exchange, are held for the purposes of later use in buying goods and services: so while 1 BTC is 1 BTC, the fact that sometimes it would take 1 BTC to (e.g.) buy a car, something 2 BTC, somethings 3, makes it less useful for knowing if you have (saved) enough for trade.
Similarly for treating currencies as a store of value: is x BTCs enough for retirement? If it keeps jumping around, how do you have "enough"?
> USD is sure as hell not stable. It's unstable by design - it is constantly declining in value as the money printers continue to churn.
Yes, because having it stay exactly the same in value is impossible (and generally undesirable), and having it go up in value (deflation), is considered even worse. An inflexible monetary system is not a good thing.
Indeed. It'd be curious if someone started publishing a CPI basket priced in BTC just so we got to see the in/(de)flationary metrics alongside USD terms just to have a fair comparison. Shouldn't be hard as it's just a matter of factoring in the price of BTC on at the time the normal CPI data is calculated.
Surely someone's got a few lines of python in 'em to be up to the task...
> Indeed. It'd be curious if someone started publishing a CPI basket priced in BTC […]
This was done in Canada accidentally: at one point Pierre Poilievre (a right-leaning politician) put forward cryptocurrencies as a hedge against inflation:
> Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre said Monday a government led by him would do more to normalize cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum in Canada to "decentralize" the economy and reduce the influence of central bankers.
> As early as September 2021, then-finance critic Poilievre touted “digital currencies … giving people an opportunity to protect themselves against inflation.” Six months later, as a Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidate, he doubled down. At a campaign event at a restaurant, Poilievre bought a shawarma with Bitcoin and extolled “the freedom to use other money, such as Bitcoin… Choice and competition can give Canadians better money and … let Canadians opt out of inflation with the ability to opt into cryptocurrencies.”
> The number of bitcoins needed to pay for shawarmas, groceries, gas, and housing is up 73.1 per cent compared with 5.2 per cent annual inflation measured in Canadian dollars.
While not having a very inflationary currency is certainly important, not having a deflationary one is even more important, and one that is somewhat predictable (at least over 'short' time frames like <3 years) is especially important. BTC, being the poster child for cryptocurrencies, hardly seems to fit the latter two criteria.
Come on - there is a difference between mild currency fluctuations and wild swings in value (relative to all other currencies, not just USD). You know it, I know it, GP knows it, and this kind of nitpicking isn’t helpful to anyone. Nobody wants a Zimbabwe dollar currency.
If an apple was priced in BTC, you wouldn't care if it was worth a different amount of rupees or ounces of gold yesterday, just as you only care about the dollars and cents on the price tag now.
USD is sure as hell not stable. It's unstable by design - it is constantly declining in value as the money printers continue to churn. If you are hoping for a stable BTC-USD then you are hoping for a bizarre and unlikely situation where BTC declines in value at the exact same rate as the USD. I don't understand.