pull down to refresh

For your coffee-shop scenario:
  • You can find a capitalist partner, who will put his Bitcoin into the business for a % of the shares. It used to be a thing in the past that many new businesses would have capitalist partners (commits money/land/machinery in exchange for shares, doesn't actively work on the business) and working partners (commits expertise/effort/contacts, actively works on the business).
  • You can get in debt in something that's not Bitcoin. For instance, you could give away 1000-coffees vouchers to friends and family for investing.
  • You save the capital yourself.
Also keep in mind that which is not seen: precisely because committing capital is hard without credit, only the best endeavors find it easily. Paradoxically, that creates a positive spiral, since good endeavors find resources easily since they don't need to compete with a thousand stupid ideas that would only get funded in an environment where credit is cheap.
For example: I see people celebrating weddings which are basically a financial suicide. They get indebted up to a year of salary just to throw a big party. If getting credit was dramatically difficult, this would probably not happen. And this means that all the resources that would go into making the wedding happen (the photographers, the catering, the transportation) are out there in the market, seeking someone that puts them to use for a cheaper price.
Now imagine a new factory is opening in a rather abandoned area in your town. You come up with the idea of opening your cafe there, because currently the factory workers have nowhere to go for breakfast/lunch/dinner. You run the numbers, it looks like a great idea. In a hard-credit world, the catering personnel that is unemployed because the weddings are not happening can be employed at your cafe. Now imagine you need 50K to start the cafe. You can put 10K yourself from savings. You ring up the company that has opened the factory and offer 33% of the cafe's shares in exchange for committing the missing 40K. They check your numbers and they seem reasonable, plus the interests of your cafe and the factory are aligned. They agree to partner up with you.
The idea of that which is not seen (created by Bastiat) is very important. In economics, you generally don't have perfect decisions, but rather trade-offs. You are focusing hard on the bad things of hard money. But to have a well formulated opinion, you also have to think about the good things it brings.
I see your point. Starting a coffee by raising capital and giving some shares seems logic. The capital provider gets a share of the business. It understands your business and how good it is, so he is considering the risks of starting a coffee with you. Maybe this will derive in specialized capital providers that are experts as risk managers. They may not use others money (savers) but their own, and are constantly joining new ventures. Interesting thanks!
reply
If this world endured for some time, eventually people with a great eye for spotting great business ideas across all the options would eventually find a way to match entrepreneurs and capitalists that are looking for investment opportunities and sort of act like a bank (and take a cut for their service). They key difference is that the money is not created out of thin air, and that failed business would die, instead of getting perpetuated indefinitely through more cheap credit.
reply