I had been planning, and was working towards, saving up enough money to attain financial independence (kind of like the act of retirement, but instead it's just the state of having the wealth necessary to retire, giving you a lot more freedom to choose what you do with your life), and then living solely off of the interest once it was attained. This makes me wonder if such a system is even sustainable. If our economy really does require exponential growth to function, then what are the odds that we will continue to function? We're already consuming so much environment-polluting fuel and creating so many shoddy products that will end up in a landfill that we won't even be able to sustain our current level of consumption for very long. This makes me think that bitcoin really is a good currency to use. The problem is that it's so damn volatile that I really don't want to put any money into. If only there were an electronic currency that couldn't be easily traded or speculated with.