Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: Bitcoin can never become a currency. Part 2: reward distribution.
by
Petryakov
on 30/06/2020, 01:13:42 UTC
It depends on how strict your view about money. If it's so strict, then Bitcoin is "near money" or M3.
It's more "hard money" (not about politics) or "sound money" compared to fiat currency.

I don’t think it’s correct to mess with money aggregates here, we will simply end up comparing apples and oranges. Although it’s said that money aggregates are classified according to liquidity, it seems a different flavor of liquidity, more in the sense of accessibility. It’s like money is absolutely liquid itself but is packed into different containers, each of which obstructs our access to the money inside to a different extent. The harder it is to pull the money out of the container, the higher M it gets.

According to this approach, money in the narrow sense is an aggregate that provides near-instant access to the money inside, which is usually M1. We also have a notion of Money Zero Maturity, which also coincides with the logic of accessibility. If we apply the same logic to Bitcoin, we can state that its natural form (a record in the blockchain) is close to M1, because it is accessed almost in the same way as a common demand deposit account. We can also ponder on the LN form of Bitcoin, but i'll leave it to someone else.

At the same time, we cannot compare Bitcoin directly to an M1 fiat currency supply, because it has an obviously lower liquidity (in the sense of convertibility into other assets in a given economic zone).

Moreover, it can be used not only as SoV but also as MoE, although limited.

Perhaps what you mean is about Bitcoin to be the legal tender or currency, well at the moment, it's unrealistic because, for that to happen, countries need to abandon their fiat currencies.

A lot of sufficiently liquid assets can be used as a MoE, which doesn’t make them money. Legal tender is not necessary, just a wide acceptance. The problem is that something tending to be a SoV cannot be money in the modern times. Gold performed both functions simultaniously, but that was long ago in a completely different setting. Nowadays, we cannot go back and adopt a similar asset as money, the economy won’t accept it under normal conditions. It's only possible in some extreme situations.