New study detects lottery-like behavior in cryptocurrency markets

I find this post very confusing.

>I've read both the Bitcoin and Ethereum whitepaper and there's nothing about grievances of traditional governments usage of printing of their currencies

and

>[The desire to be a part of a "new elite"] is why the most popular currencies have a fixed supply. That way, if they're popular earlier adopters get to be a part of the elite.

Technical papers tend to focus on their contribution to knowledge. In Bitcoin's case it's a distributed systems paper that shows a globally consistent database is possible in an adversarial network with no central coordinator, if finality properties are allowed to be probibalistic in the short term. Though an cryptography author may feel passionately about Bill of Rights, 4th Amendment protections, they needn't say it in a paper they write about a cryptographic primative.

and

If we are to assume bitcoin is a "popular currency" and want to read the opinions of early thinkers rather than straw-man them:

    I also do think that there is potential value in a form of unforgeable token whose production rate is predictable and can't be influenced by corrupt parties. This would be more analogous to gold than to fiat currencies. [1]

To me that doesn't read as advocating for the creation of a new "elite" (whatever that is)

[1] https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09...

>I do see value in a crypto that's pinned at a weighted average of every single currencies' worldwide weight. [People holding these 'weighted average' currencies a]re not getting rich

How is it that these supposed weighted average monies are superior while simultaneously no one in the market place is demanding them while simultaneously the demand for bitcoin is increasing?

The exchange ratio, what you're saying is price, cannot be arbitrarily decreed (Thou shall have X weighted exchange ratio with all government monies). Exchange ratios / prices are the result of many individual agents swaping, exchanging with eachother. All previous attempts at information/digital monies (see bmoney) failed because of this misunderstanding of how prices arise.

>My biggest concern is a fixed-supply currency gives no government the ability to provide stimulus if necessary.

How does printing/diluting money create wealth? If someone wants to work for a money that's costly for them to obtain (via work) and costless for someone else to obtain (money printing) they're free to do so -- the problem is that one will bankrupt themselves doing so relative to someone wants to work for a money that's just as costly for everyone else to obtain. Those still holding their wealth in fiat monies (euro, dollar, yuan, yen) or fiat-economy derivatives (bonds, fiat-company equities/stocks) are exposed to this bankrupcy potential -- it's the same dynamic as all currency debasements manifest.

>every government in world history that's pinned their currency to something that's relatively fixed has had a severe depression with some part of that depression being contributed to said pinning. It's just not good economics.

Governments aren't economies, Whether people can produce more than they consume (a functioning economy) is orthogonal to whether the same people who have the monopoly on violence also are trying to enforce a monetary monopoly as well. If a government fails because it consumes more than it produces, that reflects a failure in the management of said government -- not because someone, somewhere has a money in their posession. Typically, it's marginally harder for people to produce more than they consume when they're forced to be subject to a cartel/monopoly.

I think most people wouldn't be able to provide a dollar value for the upper limit, but could confidently say that $100B is over it.

Effective arbitrage is required for efficient markets. Again I'll repeat: the sheer fact that this is all decentralized/identity-less is already a novel aspect.

The specific DAO's I linked to build products that allow for shared arbitrage profits and an autonomous decentralized stablecoin respectively- the utility is found in the effective distributed markets they help optimize.

The very fact that you can trade coins or earn interest on a loan in a decentralized manner is the utility. Composable financial legos are pretty useful.

This is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone suggest this was a coincidence.

You might actually be correct — I personally doubt it, but it’s a funny thought... to think that we all just over-indexed on this trivial detail.

> such that it can be illegal for people to send money out of the country

so it would be illegal to send crypto money

if we are exploring illegal ways to do things, crypto is just one of many solutions and probably not the cheapest or easiest

> Assuming that you can trade Bitcoin on both ends, it really is often the simplest way to simply move money between people outside the formal banking system

Talking about Africa, as an Italian with African roots, it's not.

the idea that you need cutting edge technology to solve developing countries problems is a die hard one and represent a "rather privileged Western notion", developing countries have their own systems that already work.

When there is a mobile network, people are able to send money even without an internet connection using mobile phones of 4 generations ago. In Africa it is possible since middle 2000s.

For example: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa

In many African countries, where China is financing developing projects, you can use WeChat.

Anyway, you can already send money to Burundi, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe (and many others https://www.xoom.com/about) using Xoom

Yes, Iran or Venezuela or North Korea are not there, because that would be illegal for an US business, but it's illegal to send crypto as well. The hard part of sending money to such countries is not technical, it's legal, I understand if people want to send money back to their families, but it's an hard task by design when people living in those countries aren't even allowed to leave the country or own a bank account in a foreign country (because of the US)

https://www.euronews.com/2020/02/13/italian-banks-are-closin...

Crypto doesn't solve that problem, it only makes the people at both ends liable.

Do you think that the US would allow bitcoins to flow in Iran to finance what they consider an enemy regime? (rightfully or not)

Besides, if you want to send money to some controversial countries, there are other solutions, already available https://yekpay.com/en/irr-remittance/transfer-money

You don't need no crypto and developing countries need no Western saviours.