How? Bitcoin is a commodity, how can you deny that?
Bitcoin is fiat money, too
91–100 of 355 posts
Re: Bitcoin is fiat money, too
#92> The currency survived a crisis of credibility after a bug was discovered in 2016 This is my primary worry with cryptocurrency, what if there is a bug in the code which do unexpected things and destroy the value completely.
This actually happened to Ethereum. They ended up forking the blockchain to Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.
its worth noting that the fork wasn't actually because of a bug in Ethereum, but because of a bug in a smart contract (the DAO). Ethereum itself worked perfectly. Bugs do exist in Ethereum and Bitcoin all the time, but they can almost always be fixed without changing the underlying protocol, so the clients just need updated.
The fork happened because the community decided the smart contract in question was important enough to the survival of Ethereum that it'd be worth essentially backing out the contract (in a roundabout way)
Re: Bitcoin is fiat money, too
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Code is governance" -- the article does support the idea of cryptocurrency as fiat money because the laws, in this case, are the code. The developers and miners, no matter their good intentions, do hold power over the currency that everyday investors do not have. No matter how egalitarian the distributed ledger set up looks on paper, we'd be remiss to think the power structures behind cryptocurrencies are so radical…
This is a big misunderstanding of bitcoin, and if you believe it I can understand why you might think bitcoin is not special. The truth is that the everyday user gets full control over the law of their currency simply by running a full node. Your node will reject any transactions that do not comply with the rules of your node. The soveirgnty of bitcoin comes from knowing that the devs can't force an update upon you o…
Without massive investments in ASIC's you have effectively zero influence. Until you have 51% of the hash power you can't make any changes as you simply get ignored unless you follow the exact same rules as the majority.
Re: Bitcoin is fiat money, too
#94> The currency survived a crisis of credibility after a bug was discovered in 2016 This is my primary worry with cryptocurrency, what if there is a bug in the code which do unexpected things and destroy the value completely.
Same can be said of every technology. Besides, what's interesting is that it has survived major bugs, again and again. Doesn't that say something? Seems quite resilient to me.
> Same can be said of every technology.
Can that technology double number of dollars in the world right now?
Re: Bitcoin is fiat money, too
#95What is fiat?
Re: Bitcoin is fiat money, too
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
You must live in: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire or Oregon. (Or be oblivious) States where the sale of a cup of coffee doesn't involve a tax.
must? there's more to the world than the United States I live in the UK, there's no sales tax and the sole trader selling coffee at my local railway station is almost certainly below the VAT registration threshold, so there's no tax on the purchase at all regardless, paying a tax embedded in the price of a good is not the same thing as consulting the government on the purchase
I am impressed how you mentioned UK, and parent mentioned a cup of cofee, but both of you failed to recognize, that I was talking about billions of people, who actually live under totalitarian governments. Where illegal stuff mentioned in some other comments might be buying certain books under threat of death penalty in some extreme, but still dangerously common cases.
First world people still can only see first world problems.
Re: Bitcoin is fiat money, too
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interestingly not all places with high tax rates actually have good schools, safe roads, etc. Rather, there are countries to invade, bankers to bail out, old-school industries to sustain.
Sales tax isn't going to any of those.
The point is much more abstract. The point is it’s not an obviously non-controversial point of view that being 12 magically solves, as the post pertains it to be.
While we are at it, yes, disenfranchisement of young voters who are mostly single definitely makes tax dollars more favorable to married folks and people with children. It’s not like most societies need to subsidize overpopulation, yet they do. Some food for thought.
Re: Bitcoin is fiat money, too
#98What is fiat?
A fiat is an arbitrary order.
> Fiat money is a currency without intrinsic value established as money by government regulation or law.[0]
Re: Bitcoin is fiat money, too
#99"Bankers talk about “governance”, ways to ensure private banks and central bankers make sound decisions—so they create just enough money make commerce easier, but not so much that the system collapses through inflation or panics." Many people don't know that central bankers literally, not figuratively, mean CREATE money out of nothing.
Someone has always been able to "create money out of nothing." At some point there was no money; some time later there was. Someone or some group of people had to create the first money. People have actually "initialized" money many times throughout history e.g. when starting a country.
As long as you can separate "money" from its representation, there is nothing particularly problematic about some people being able to create money, at least some of the time. In fact it is necessary to provide money with liquidity as the economy grows and money is needed for more and more things (liquidity problems have triggered or worsened economic crises several times in history, especially when countries were trying to base their money on weights of metals).
Re: Bitcoin is fiat money, too
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is Bitcoin actually a medium of exchange? It seems to be functioning more as an investment to be hoarded rather than spent.
Sure, some people treat it as an investment that can be hoarded, but that doesn't change the fact that it can be exchanged. Your narrow definition of medium of exchange sort of excludes any deflationary currency that someone may hold on to as an investment. It could even be expanded to include inflationary currency in a country where hyperinflation is occurring. People will hold on to USD or some other currency as an…
By that logic any tradable thing can be a 'medium of exchange'. Sure, people will hold a stable currency when their own is sinking, but deliberately designing a currency for deflation is stupid.