I'm going to keep this somewhat brief and simple so as to make sure the point is understood.
What is fiat, and why is it important to understand?
"Fiat" refers to a certain top level monetary basis whereby the value of currency is based around for lack of a better word, confidence. Also know as speculation.
First, let's look at what fiat ISN'T.
In ye olden days currency was backed by physical or specific quantities. It varied from gold and silver, to gunpowder, even so abstract as physical labor hours. Whatever it was backed by, it was backed by some specific and quantifiable asset.
The simplest version was of course the gold standard.
1$ = 1oz of gold. (Not a real exchange, just an example.)
What this meant was that the government acted as a guarantor for the mercantilism of its citizens. Money is issued into circulation as backed by proportional physical assets of a nation or state. The wealth of a nation was decided quite literally by the projection of their economic might.
It's not quite so simple, but that's the basic idea.
So what's that whole fiat thing then? What does this matter? Wtf are you talking about?
The reason WSB is called Wall Street Bets is right in the name. Our financial markets have become glorified casinos. However, it's so, so much worse. Those in charge of the markets: The Federal Reserve, Wall Street, deep rooted pseudonational conglomerates; they are the House, and the House always wins.
Value is created or destroyed out of thin air as it benefits those in control of the system.
When the FED prints a trillion dollars to feed and inflate the market, where do you think that that value comes from?
They're betting against the common folk. They're betting against your potential. Shaving away an ounce of flesh to indulge their excess.
I say it so flamboyantly because there is no value there. It's all fake. An illusion. It's a house of cards that stands only as long it's safely tucked away out of sight.
Every dollar you own is only as valuable as the confidence in the system that issues it.
That statement is the reason why the Great Depression happened.
The problem of Bitcoin
So Bitcoin. What does that have to do with anything?
Bitcoin is a fiat currency.
The value is entirely codependent on a system of confidence in the system itself having value.
If that sounds like a tautology that's because it is a tautology.
Bitcoin has been shooting up in value over the past few years. "Bitcoin is the future!" people say. Sure. Maybe. But what do you think changes?
That it has grown so fast and continues to grow to excessive proportions should terrify you. What that means is that it's taking the confidence that was once given to other fiat currency. It's not some cycle of infinite growth.
Should Bitcoin grow to eclipse other currencies it will become a captured asset under a centralized system. It was created entirely to replace national fiat for an international fiat. Those who control the exchanges will control the financial foundation.
How many bitcoins are there total? How many are held out of circulation? Who do you think is buying them to support such a massive growth of valuation? What happens in 20 years when the global banking apparatus owns the majority of bitcoin as well as the major exchanges?
Be warned.
You hear about things like the "Great Reset" a lot these days. Be aware that these plans have been underway since before most of your were born. Bitcoin is not something outside of that plan.
We either end fiat-based policy or we continue to live as slaves.
Let's have a little economics lesson, because I swear to God there are a lot of people that need one.
TL;DR: Limited supply commodities make for bad money because they cause deflation, fiat currencies try to fix that by manipulating the supply to maintain a consistent value, people are assholes that abuse that manipulation, crypto might be able to fix it.
Money has three primary functions: a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. Its functions as a unit of account and medium of exchange are pretty obvious, so let's talk about the store of value stuff, specifically in the context of a fiat currency.
In any economy, supply and demand forces work on the money as well as on the goods. Demand is largely determined by the volume and value of transactions occurring within that economy. Determining the supply is where it gets tricky.
One way to supply it is to use a commodity as your money, ie gold. Unlike a lot of commodities, gold doesn't deteriorate over time. It's rare enough that people can't just get more of it without significant effort. But when the economy (and therefore the demand for money) grows faster than the supply, it causes a strong deflationary pressure on the value of that money. There are a lot of problems that can arise from this, but the biggest one is that existing debt becomes increasingly expensive to pay off, which makes fewer people want to take on additional debt, which means the productive capacity of that economy goes underutilized (I can go more into this if someone would like for me to). (Incidentally, this is also the fatal flaw of bitcoin. The limited supply means that its value will increase indefinitely, which means it will almost always be better to hold your bitcoin than to use it.)
The way that most governments have solved this problem is by introducing a fiat currency that can be worked to be mostly stable with a slight inflationary pressure. If carefully controlled, this can be great for an economy, but if you get people in power that are willing to manipulate the currency, you get what we have now.
Cryptocurrencies are trying to fix the problem by tying their supply / value to something that has a greater potential to scale with an economy (specifically the price of electricity and computing power) and making the generation of more of that money tied into its use in transactions rather than the whim of a central bank. It's a good solution, but I haven't been overly impressed with any particular implementations so far.
Neatly sums up my position. I've heard about how the value changes for it. It screams pyramid scheme to me since more people using/mining means all previously gained coins increase in value. But I can't give a proper explanation to it because I'm mostly reading my gut feelings.
Decentralization efforts are great and all, but it's no magic wand to erase problems.
If there were some kind of crypto that had no inflation or deflation, I'd be excited for it, but I haven't figured out a reliable way for that to exist. The desire to reconvert into other currencies kind of forces value fluctuation, so my best guess is to make an isolated currency that cannot be exchanged for other currencies.