By the time the volatility is gone so is the opportunity. Bitcoin would need to expand its userbase massively to be stable. Stability can't happen unless the price goes up massively.
Bitcoin could be stable. I think it will have a hard time being stable because of the deflationary pressures, but it could theoretically be a stable currency someday when there's a significant economy of people using Bitcoins.
Experimental evidence suggests that having lots of users isn't a guarantee of stability. See Venezuela (right now), Zimambwe Dollar, German Reichsmark, Argentine Peso, Mexican Peso, Thai Baht, etc. All of these had tremendous collapses despite a solid user base.
However, I think you are right in that a small user base implies some level of volatility. A large user base is perhaps a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for stability. Bitcoin's instability is also generally overstated, in my opinion. There have only been a few instances where it was so volatile that you wouldn't want to use it for day-to-day transactions.
Mass adoption of bitcoin would certainly lower volatility, however bitcoin won't be massively accepted until volatility gets lower. It's a catch 22 game. So you are right, bitcoin doesn't seem such a good option for now, I was thinking a little bit down the road.
That's true, but it's also the only thing you can expect if Bitcoin succeeds. Eventually the volatility should subside somewhat, as the market grows. It already has, although obviously it's still a roller coaster ride. How much volatility an uncontrolled currency exhibits should be interesting to see if Bitcoin sticks around for good.
Bitcoin will only be unstable as long as there is disagreement about the economics of it. Once we get reasonably close to consensus about that, price will stabilize to where the consensus model says it should be.
I suspect that won't happen until some time after the current crop of incoming economics PhDs are tenured.
If Bitcoin is not inherently stable why do you think it will become stable in the future? Do you believe it is subject to manipulation by parties other than central bankers? I don't understand this line of thinking but I am not an expert so I am curious to hear your perspective.
Bitcoin will stabilize in time, when it's big enough to absorb short time supply and demand shocks. It will eventually follow the value of all economic activity through its network. The more economic activity, the less volatility in aggregate.
There's a huge cost in "stabilizing" a fiat currency, in terms of debt and inflation.
Bitcoin is an unbelievably stable platform with an uptime of 99.98% with only 13 years to draw from. It's been sticking with it's algorithmically defined inflation rate with perfect predictability, unlike any other currency or scarce asset like gold, which depends heavily on incentives to mine and accessible reserves.
Don't mistake the volatility of the USD price of bitcoin (which is based on the erratic, unpredictability of human emotions and massively distrusted market decision making) with the complete and utter lack of volatility of the actual underlying system.
You're appealing to future data that are not available yet. Bitcoin has never been stable in its existence. You are positing without evidence that it will become stable in the future.
I believe to be stable Bitcoin market cap should go much higher than it is now. It needs to be at the point where it's hard for someone even with a lot of money to manipulate it. It should be at the level where governments are afraid to seriously tamper with it because it can cause global recession.
My long term bet is that it will get there at some point. It might be in 5 years, 10 years or more, but we will get there. We are in a bubble now, but that's just market/human nature and I don't see any way to avoid it. This bubble will pop. There might be more bubbles to come, but what doesn't kill it makes it stronger.
Bitcoin isn't "unstable". It's very stable, as money is released on a very predictable and predetermined schedule. You know precisely how much inflation is going to occur and when it will end.
The only "volatile" is the exchange rate market of Bitcoin to USD. Obviously, this is going to be volatile for some time because demand varies from day to day. What's obvious, however, is that the trend in demand is continuing to increase over time. If you look at purchasing Bitcoin to hold for 4 years or more (or indefinitely), then you aren't concerned about the day to day fluctuations in the exchange rate.
If you purchased Bitcoin at any time in the past 10 years, and held onto it for 4 years, there is no point at which you could've made a loss. In fact, on average, you would've almost doubled your money if you converted it back to USD after 4 years.
They say past performance is no indication of success, but next month we enter another "quantitive hardening" period in Bitcoin, where the new supply released over the next 4 years is half of the supply released over the previous 4 years. If the rate of growth in demand stays the same, the exchange rate will continue to rise - but that itself causes an increase in demand because more people want to hold onto an appreciating asset rather than a depreciating dollar. Especially true given that the Fed has committed to rapidly devaluing the dollar this year in a struggle to deal with COVID-19.
Bitcoin doesn't care about the virus. There's nobody to bail out bitcoiners. The State is the virus, and Bitcoin is the remedy.
Sooner or later bitcoin must stabilize. Either because it goes to zero or because it starts tracking inflation with volatility way down. That's when we will know.
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