The transition of Croatia into the euro currency zone these days can teach us a lot about bitcoin in the U.S. According to the ideology of bitcoinism, the citizens of Croatia are making a huge mistake in obeying this transition and abandoning their legacy currency, the kuna. According to bitcoinism, the kuna will become ideal money for the people of Croatia because the government of Croatia decided to kill it. If that seems strange, then you haven’t spent enough time in the upside-down world of bitcoin enthusiasts. Let me explain.
There are about 3 billion physical kuna — notes and coins — in the hands of Croatians. That number will never increase. Everyone agrees that the kuna can never again suffer from inflation. That’s because the kuna has become obsolete and nobody will use it; it cannot experience inflation any more than Confederate dollars in the U.S. can. But the logic of bitcoinism says the kuna’s finite supply should make it a superb living currency. That’s what we are constantly told about bitcoin: Its programmable upper bound of 21 million units guarantees it will never suffer from inflation. Even better, while the amount of bitcoin is still growing, here we already have a currency that has just experienced full stop in its quantity. What a bargain.
Moreover, the kuna is already a functioning currency in the economic network that is the Croatian economy. Bitcoiners presented with the problem that bitcoin has no intrinsic value like gold or the medieval marten furs for which the kuna is named respond by saying that the network itself is the intrinsic value. Well, the kuna already has a full-fledged 28-year-old nationwide network, one that as of 2022 bitcoiners can only dream of.
