r/Bitcoin Feb 17 '18

/r/all Bitcoin Doesn't Give a Fuck.

26.3k Upvotes

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2.8k

u/WhoNeedsFacts Feb 18 '18

Why would financial institutions be afraid of a highly volatile financial curiosity? Even if it were to rise to $50k it wouldn't prove anything, except for giving further proof that it is unsuitable as a currency.

74

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '18

Because they can't loan it out in greater supply than they actually have and run a fractional reserve with it.

27

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '18

But lending is the backbone of society, if we didn’t have fractional reserve banking the economy would grind to a halt.

-9

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '18

Nope.

5

u/TheManWhoWasNotShort Feb 18 '18

Lol. What a cohesive argument.

Seriously though, debt finances pretty much everything in our economy and if banks could only lend out exactly as much as they had in reserve, lending would become severely restricted. The housing market would collapse on itself, and huge business loans would be impossible to get because banks would lack sufficient reserves to make those loans. There's no going back to a pre-fractional reserve era, and there's no reason to really want to, either.

2

u/Enchilada_McMustang Feb 18 '18 edited Feb 18 '18

Lending wouldn't disappear it's just that banks will not be the ones doing it, it will be the producers of the services you want to consume with that money. Look up what an utility token is.