Quote from: Qoheleth on April 12, 2013, 01:04:30 AM

Warning: below post is a pipe dream, which I'm sharing just to make a rhetorical point.

Quote from: crazyfingers on April 12, 2013, 12:49:34 AM

More importantly in the coming years it is inevitable that the dollar will continue to lose value. The national debt is what, $15+ trillion? Trillion+ dollar deficits have become the norm. There is another tens of trillions in unfunded or underfunded liabilities. The Fed is stuck between a rock and a hard place, with interest rates way artificially low but not being able to raise them without crashing the economy. The only way out for them is to print money and that makes cryptos a problem for them.

The US federal government has a $15T+ debt. They could just print $15T+ and pay it all off, but that'd hyperinflate the dollar and tank the economy.

But if there was another currency poised to take over in a hyperinflation scenario? Maybe you could do it without messing up the economy.

Imagine it! Bitcoin is getting popular. Rising against the dollar, more and more folks using it, there's some companies where you can get your salary in BTC, some stores where you can use it to buy bread.

At that time, the government quietly prints a bunch of USD and buys enough BTC with it to last a couple years. Money enters the economy. Huge inflation out of nowhere. US dollar loses confidence and inflation becomes hyperinflation. People run for BTC, and before long nobody wants to hold dollars any longer than necessary. All of a sudden, $15T+ doesn't sound that difficult to pay off, right? And the government changes the rules, makes BTC legal tender, and sends its creditors BTC to pay off the USD-denominated pittance they're owed.

I came to pretty much the same conclusion:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=167767.0