Oddbean

Alice has a debt to Bob. For Bob that's an asset, for Alice that's a liability. The denomination of the debt has a backing. That can be fractional or full, or, psychological. Full or fractional reserve debt can be done with either bitcoin, gold, or any bearer instrument. But each of these things has an addressable market, and practical limits on what size of that market it can occupy. Yes it can be done, but it's complicated.

The problem with the debt is it isn't "owed" to anyone. If I lend you $10 you owe me $10. If the US government print $10 and sell to the market for existing $10 + interest, their is no creditor. You are simply diluting all other dollars. When they have to pay back the debt created by the purchaser of the printed money (the original $10) to the creditor, they can return they can't return the original $10 because that's been spent and they haven't generated any wealth (they are a government, not a company), so everything they return the original $10 + interest) is printed again. This is monetary recursion and destroys all fiat systems eventually. So what happens when you insert a hard asset into the equation? Do you destroy or weaken that asset, you certainly don't strengthen that asset. Does this turn Bitcoin into an inflationary currency despite its inherent deflationary properties. After all, they HAD to come off the gold standard, because they didn't have enough gold to pay back. I think best case scenario is Bitcoin repeats what happened to gold. It weakens Bitcoin until it makes it flacid, at which time the government will be forced to leave the Bitcoin Standard and Bitcoin will be a shadow of its potential.

No, that's not quite right. Money has both an inflationary and deflationary aspect. It has a life cycle. Money can be both created and destroyed. When I incur debt it is created. When I pay it back, it is destroyed. When I default it is destroyed. I can pay back debt with worh in lieu of my debt, if I dont have ready cash. The system has both stable states and unstable states. There is a theory that stability is destabilizing, too.

I disagree, currency can be created and destroyed. Money (the measure of wealth) is absolute. You may wish to use a different word, I would not argue this moot point. I think this is the fundamental flaw, we believe money can be created and destroyed simply because we are used to printing or burning government fiat and have copied that model for Crypto currencies like Ethereum or Thether, which are mined or burned. So no. Money (invent better word) cannot be printed or destroyed, it is a measure of wealth and if you increase or decrease the supply you change the unit measurement, not the money.

This is quite nebulous and difficult to fully comprehend. Money must have a life cycle of some sort, just zoom out and this is self-evident. Bitcoin was created, for example, by Satoshi. New bitcoins are created every day. If you did your Bill Still video homework he explains all of this in much more detail. Money has layers. Just like bitcoin. Most money is created by commercial banks in exchange for a loan agreement. This money or currency (to Joe Public it's the same) is either fully or fractionally backed. You would rather full reserve than fractional, but the end user seems to have been conditioned not to care, very much.

np, I almost grasped what you were but I think with some refinement it would be easier there is a time aspect to money which is inherent in loans, and a static aspect which we associate with assets perhaps if you develop your ideas along these lines it could develop into quite a good concrete theory. Great day to you too!