Refuting a critic about scarcity

Refuting a critic about scarcity. Okay, I normally don't do this, but you know, people troll my Facebook page now and then with stuff that doesn't totally make sense. I should be taking a shower right now. Instead, I'm going to answer a critic. Okay, here we go. So two days ago I posted a image of the Fidelity chart with all the attributes of good money straight from a report called uh Bitcoin first revisited from Fidelity, one of the largest and most reputable organizations in the world. And my post that went with it said scarcity and other properties of money. And I go on the reason Bitcoin is valuable is because it is scarce. And then I continue lower on and Bitcoin checks all of the boxes for what makes an ideal money. See the image from Fidelity. I also mention here that gold is not scarce and fiat currency like the US dollar uh sorry gold is not digital meaning you can't send it over the internet and fiat currency is not scarce. Okay. So someone posted here and I'm going to do a a bit of a line by line reputation. In fact I might read his entire post. We'll see. He says nonsense. Scarcity alone does not guarantee value. Well, of course it doesn't. We've talked about this before. It's not scarcity. It's credibility of monetary properties of which scarcity is one. He says countless things are scarce but worthless like a digital file I make today with a fixed supply of one is quote scarce but that does not make it valuable. It also needs to have some usefulness. What makes money useful is not just scarcity but stability, broad trust and integration into the economic system. Okay. Well, first of all, you're right. Scarcity by itself, I can draw a picture and there's only one in the world, but it's not it's not uh it doesn't have monetary properties because it is not going back to our chart right here from Fidelity. It is not durable. My picture is not durable, divisible, fungeible, portable, verifiable, and it doesn't have a track record. So scarce is one of 1 2 3 four five six seven uh attributes of money that was literally in the post. But again this guy is acting like scarcity is the only one. But again you have to remember it's not the monetary properties it's the credibility of the monetary properties the probability that Bitcoin will only have 21 million. I can copy the code of Bitcoin today. I can reduce the amount to 20 million and I can change the name from Bitcoin to Joelcoin. And Joelcoin technically would be more scarce than Bitcoin because there'd only be 20 million and Bitcoin has 21 million. But there's no credibility in that monetary properties because I can go change it back to 22 million instead of 20 million. So what matters with monetary assets is the credibility of their monetary properties, not just the monetary properties, which again I outlined in numerous videos and numerous posts. Uh but this guy uh you know focuses on just scarcity and then basically says he can uh create a digital file and it's scarce but that doesn't make it valuable. Okay. Then he goes on to say, but again, what matters with money is the credibility of their monetary properties. Not that something is durable, divisible, fungeible, portable, verifiable, scarce, and has a track record. It's the credibility that those things will remain true, that it will stay durable, stay divisible, stay funible, stay portable, stay verifiable, stay scarce, and that it will maintain its track record, the credibility of the monetary properties. Okay, so this guy goes on and says it's not just scarcity, but stability, broad trust, and integration into the economic system. The problem is the US dollar is losing on all of those. It only goes down, it's not stable. It doesn't have uh uh stable purchasing power. The purchasing power of the US dollar is only ever going down and at an accelerating rate. Broad trust, the trust in the US dollar is actually dropping. countries, especially after the United States uh uh confiscated all of Russia's US dollar reserves back at the start of the Ukra uh the war between Russia and Ukraine or I should say Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Um when the US government uh confiscated all of Russia's US dollar uh reserves, countries have started to unwind from the US dollar. So the amount of US dollars held by foreign governments is on the decline because they do not have trust in the US dollar. They don't trust that the US dollars they own will remain theirs. So uh the US dollar so the dollar is losing its stability. It's not stable. It only goes down. It is losing the broad trust it once had because the US government is so fickle with whose funds it confiscates and seizes and who it uh you know puts tariffs on and all of that and also the integration into the economic system. Again, Russia got kicked out of the US dollar system. Other countries are getting kicked out of the US dollar system. Um the current presidential administration in the United States is discouraging foreign investment in the United States. The US dollar is removing itself from the global economic system. Not integrating, but disintegrating from the global economic system. Okay. So then this guy goes on and says, "Bitcoin may be limited in issuance, but it's not scarce in substitute. There are thousands of competing cryptocurrencies." That's true, but that's like saying gold is not scarce because there's tons of other metals. Again, what matters is the credibility of the monetary properties. None of the other cryptocurrencies has the credibility of the monetary properties. So they are not a substitute. If they had equal credibility of those monetary properties, you would start to see substitution. But they don't. Nobody believes that any of those other cryptocurrencies is going to maintain whatever number of tokens. For example, Sheibba anu has 100 trillion. It's either 100red trillion or a thousand trillion. I don't know. whatever it is, some ridiculously not high number of trillions of coins. But nobody believes that's a fixed supply. Nobody believes Dogecoin's a fixed supply. It's not. Um, Ethereum supply is in a constant state of flux. Nobody knows what the supply of any of these uh cryptocurrencies is at a moment in time or what it will be in the future. They have no credibility of those monetary properties. And again, even if they had credibility of the scarcity of those monetary properties, which they don't, they don't have the credibility of durable, divisible, fungeible, portable, verifiable, and track record. None of them have that. So, they are not substitutes regardless. He says there are thousands of competing cryptocurrencies. If scarcity were the only factor, now remember, I didn't say scarcity was the only factor. I literally posted in the post the other factors that are important. I didn't say scarcity was the only factor. There is seven things on here. That's not the only factor. I don't know why he's acting like I said scarcity was the only factor when I literally posted with the post an image that had seven attributes, not one to seven. Anyway, he says if scarcity were the only factor, then every altcoin with a fixed supply would be equally valuable, which clearly isn't the case. Again, we talked about this in numerous videos. It is the credibility of the monetary properties that matter, not the monetary properties. And he says every altcoin with a fix altcoin with a fixed supply would be equally valuable. They're not because nobody believes that any of those are going to maintain a fixed supply. Some small number of people in the case of Ethereum, it's Metallic Buterine and the Ethereum Foundation, some single individual or small number of individuals can change the supply because they are not distributed and decentralized the way Bitcoin is. Um so again he focuses only on uh scarcity which is one of the seven attributes that I literally posted in my post a an image in the post and I put at the top of my post scarcity and other properties of money and I say in my post and Bitcoin checks all of the boxes that make an ideal money see image from fidelity. I literally wrote that in my post and this guy's acting like he like read the first word of my post and then like lost like lost the ability to process everything else I said. Anyway, so then he goes on, "Gold's non-digital nature doesn't diminish its monetary history." Well, I never said it did. In fact, in the literal image, in the literal image here, it gives gold credit for track record. See down there at the bottom, the big green checkbox next to gold over there where it says it gives it credit for track record. So this guy says he says here he says gold's non-digital nature doesn't diminish his monetary history. Nobody says it did. Everybody admits gold has monetary history. The problem is it doesn't work in a digital world. He goes on it's physical scarcity universal recognizability. Um so first physical scarcity. Gold goes up in supply by 2% every year. So it's not that scarce because every 36 years the total amount of gold that humans can transact with doubles. something that is doubling every 36 years. Is that really scarce? I mean, think about that. Okay, so he says gold's physical scarcity, universal recognizability. Gold is not universally recognizable. It takes a $50,000 uh um electrospect, whatever it's called, I can't remember the name of it, to figure out if gold is gold. You don't know if it's gold. You don't know if it has uh an outer layer of gold with tungsten at the middle. Someone gives you a gold coin, you have no way of figuring out that that is actual real gold without very expensive equipment and the only way to know for sure is to melt it down. So again, he says it's physical scarcity. It's not that scarce. Universal recognizability. It's not universally recognizable. It's gold is very difficult to essay. Um essay is when you actually authenticate that a precious metal is what it is. So a 1oz gold coin actually has an actual full ounce of gold in it. that it's actually very difficult and technologically sophisticated to do that. Um, utility. Okay, gold has utility, but the problem is it's utility as money broke down with the invention of the telegraph because gold could not go across a wire. And durability. Now, I'll give it credit with for being durable, but again, this chart very clearly gives gold credit for being having a track record and being durable. Nobody's saying gold's not durable. It actually literally says it in the image that I posted. allows it to function as money across civilizations for millennia. Again, it functioned across uh millennia until one second. Hey, y'all play on the sideyard, please. Sideyard. Um, again, the only reason it worked across millennia was prior to the invention of the internet, but really the invention of the telegraph because the telegraph was the first uh opportunity to communicate electronically. And so with the invention of the telegraph, gold's ability to work across the millennia broke down. Especially with the invention of the the internet, the internet the invention of the internet was the the uh nail in the coffin of gold because suddenly the entire world was communicating and transferring value electronically and gold cannot do that. He says meanwhile fiat currencies one second. Hey y'all go play in the side sideyard. He says, "Meanwhile, fiat currencies, despite infla inflationary tendencies, inflationary tendencies like it's completely out of control. 40% more US dollars were created out of thin air in the last 5 years. Inflationary tendencies. It's a rampant epidemic." Okay. He says, "Meanwhile, fiat currencies despite inflationary tendencies remain dominant precisely because they are backed by states." Now, let's remember first of all, the gold is losing dominance. Go look at the charts for the percentage of gold held in foreign reserves and things like that. The percentage of foreign transactions happening and denominated in US dollars that is falling not rising. Okay. So he says because they are backed by states every single fiat currency has eventually failed except that you know the ones that were invented less than you know the US dollars only came off the gold standard in 1971. So it's only what you know 55 years old 56 whatever 54 years old whatever that is. So every fiat currency has failed and every one of them was backed by a nation state. Every failed fiat currency was backed by a nation state. He says enforced by law. Every failed fiat currency was also enforced by law. And he says integrated with the global financial system. Every failed fiat currency was once upon a time whether it was the Dutch currency or the Spanish currency or the French uh was French ever world reserve. I can't remember. There was like five world reserve currencies that lost their place as a world reserve currency. Every one of them was at one point integrated with the global financial system until they weren't. So then I recommend uh uh Natalie Brunell's book, Bitcoin is for everyone. And he comes back and says, "Our difference is not due to a lack of understanding on my part." Oh yes, my friend, it absolutely is due to a lack of understanding on your part. I'm sorry you didn't read the Fidelity report, which you could. You didn't even read my whole post, which you could. You didn't look at the uh image with all sever attributes, which was literally right there at the post. Um he says, "Our difference is not due to a lack of understanding on my part. It's due to a difference of opinion and integrity." A difference of difference of integrity. Like look, when you're losing an argument, you start attacking the integrity of the person. Now, again, he's he he's questioning my integrity coming from a locked Facebook account. So, this guy's got a locked Facebook account, so you can't even see who he is, what he does, anything about him. I got a wideopen Facebook account for the entire world to see. You can see all my friends. You can see everything about me. It's there for the entire world to see. I am the most transparent person out there. Um, and he says, apparently, he's questioning my integrity. So, everything this guy needs to know, which I posted in a reply, everything he needs to know is on my website, in my YouTube videos. We talk about the attributes of good money. We talk about why the credibility of monetary properties is what really matters. We talk about why all those other cryptocurrencies don't have the credibility of the monetary properties. We talk about each of the monetary properties. We talk about gold versus fiat currency versus Bitcoin. We address literally every concern this guy has in every conceivable way has been addressed in one of my more than 400 videos and thousands of Facebook posts. It's all out there. He could keyword search the word scarcity. He could keyword search the word gold. He could keyword search the word monetary properties. Basically, almost any big word he uses in his post, he could keyword search on my Facebook page or my YouTube channel. And I meticulously have all of the best resources right there where I step step by step and explain it all. So, normally I don't engage. Normally I don't uh post videos like this, but it's a Saturday morning. I couldn't resist. I should be taking a shower, but here we go. So, that is my reputation of this guy's post, and I will post it as a reply to his post. And there you go. Have a wonderful weekend.