> IMO if an asset isn't comparable to the M2 it is quite questionable;
M2 has shrunk for the last 18 months. Anything correlated to M2 would have similarly shrunk for the last 18 months... which is basically nothing being discussed in this topic.
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"Inflation Hedge" is traditionally CPI, maybe PCE if you're being fancy. There's a few other inflation indicators but they're all within a magnitude (and well correlated) to CPI / PCE.
Unless you expect people to cash out their life's savings every 12 months, I don't see why anyone should care if an asset's price is correlated to the last 18 months of the M2. It just needs to be something that tends to do better than the M2. If it isn't doing at least that well, sell out and buy something that is.
And "Inflation hedge" has been redefined to be something that isn't very useful for investing. You'll notice I'm talking about prices going up due to money creation, not inflation. I choose my words carefully there, we don't have a pithy term for that effect as far as I know.
> Unless you expect people to cash out their life's savings every 12 months, I don't see why anyone should care if an asset's price is correlated to the last 18 months of the M2
So you're saying that your "inflation hedge" has no appreciable correlation to inflation or monetary supply over 18-month periods?
> And "Inflation hedge" has been redefined to be something that isn't very useful for investing.
"Inflation Hedge" is just bullshit. Its easy enough to call out. If you want a real reason to invest, then tell me the real reasons. Don't make up bullshit terms.
I'm specifically not calling anything an inflation hedge [0]. I don't consider anything you'd accept as inflation in my investing. I'm looking at money creation.
And you are correct that I also disregard correlations over 18 month periods. I suspect most small-timers do. It isn't clear to me why that would matter.
[0] To clarify what I meant a few comments ago, I meant what most other people would call an inflation hedge in common parlance - ie, something that can't be printed. I don't think they'd be using the term in a way that has an actual definition though, and I don't expect that sort of asset to have anything to do with the inflation rate when it comes to price performance.
> I meant what most other people would call an inflation hedge in common parlance
In 2021, "Inflation Hedge" meant that if inflation would happen, BTC would protect you from it. Inflation then happened, and BTC failed to protect anyone. Now that its been disproven, people are changing the term "inflation hedge" to mean things that they never meant before.
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If it takes over 18-months for an "Inflation Hedge" to protect you from inflation, I think I can safely say it fails at its job. (A hedge is supposed to protect you from the event, so that you can reallocate your money from the hedge into all the assets that drop during said event).
Now if you want to argue to me that "inflation hedge" never meant anything with regards to inflation or hedging, then sure, we're both in agreement there. Its a meaningless term inside of the cryptocoin community.
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Meanwhile, the people who actually were worried about Inflation bought TIPS, and then sold TIPS during their height (making money, that they could use to purchase other assets). That's what a hedge actually looks like.
I mean, we (probably) do agree and this is an exercise in talking past each other - but the issue here is that Bitcoin appears to be preserving its value and, all else equal, something that preserves it's value is going to appreciate in price faster than the inflation rate [0].
So if someone is worried about monetary creation devaluing the currency, based on what we've seen so far, they'd be doing well to buy Bitcoin. Now you are correct that that isn't an inflation hedge. But typing out all that is a lot of words so unless someone invents a new short phrase to describe "monetary creation devaluing the currency" people are going to keep misusing the word "inflation" to mean that. And, frankly, that is what the word should mean in monetary contexts; the technocrats can go hang. Hopefully not literally, but they seem on a mission to upset people.
[0] Assuming the situation snaps back to pre-COVID trends, anyway. At the moment there is a lot of excitement and the M2 is going down.