Comment Re:It's a con... (Score 2) 109
I am not sure what you mean by "value ", but I am going to make 3 points.
First, does money have value at all? The minority view is the "Metallist" (a.k.a. hard money or gold bugs), which believes that money has (or should) inherent value. The majority view is "Chartalists", which view money as a type of credit – chits to be used for trading and have no value in itself. But this point might be more philosophical than what you meant.
Secondly, there is inflation / (deflation), which is what you are thinking about. That is based on the change for the demand in money divided by the change in supply of money. So you can pump new cash into the system, but as long as the demand for money increases you won't see any change in value. Demand for cash is closely tied to the economy. As productivity grows the economy grows. As the economy grows, demand grows.
Third, there is a subtle but important difference between currency and money. There is about 2 to 3 trillion in United State in "M1" currency. The Federal Reserve has a strong influence over this. But remember, anything that looks and acts like money is money. So the money in your checking account technically isn't currency but it does act like money. So the USD money supply is closer to 12 trillion. I point this out for 2 reasons. First, adding 10m to the money supply via cryptocurrencies does nothing – it is a rounding error. Second, cryptocurrencies are not being treated as real money. You can't readily make deposits at a bank with them, borrow them, sign long term contracts with them, etc. Until that happens cryptocurrencies will remain a curiosity and have little impact on the real economy.