121–130 of 211 posts
> "Cryptocurrencies are essentially neither money nor a financial product, but an example of what Nobel laureate Robert Shiller calls a 'contagious narrative': a contagious story in which people believe because other people believe in it." Which is exactly what money is, to begin with.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, but someone from the police will show up if you don't pay your taxes in USD.
Great, so there’s guaranteed to be enough demand for USD to pay tax obligations, which probably represents like 3% of its other sources of demand.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, but someone from the police will show up if you don't pay your taxes in USD.
Great, so there’s guaranteed to be enough demand for USD to pay tax obligations, which probably represents like 3% of its other sources of demand.
If the USD is attacked (through a weak point such as counterfeiting) the largest military power in the world will make that stop.
If a cryptocurrency currency us attacked (through a weak point such as a 50% attack), what do you really have that can put a stop to that? All you can do is fork the chain and hope it doesn't happen again.
Could a powerful country just take over Bitcoin as an extension of its fiat? What would happen if tomorrow the federal reserve announced it will exchange 1 BTC for 50000 USD? Obviously there would be an immediate price spike... but then what?
cybercrime would skyrocket
There's plenty of valid criticisms against crypto, I feel like they've picked some of the weakest ones. > cryptocurrencies are used because people think they will one day replace traditional money Maybe a tiny minority, sounds like a strawman. > a contagious story in which people believe because other people believe in it Isn't fiat the same? Money only has value because people believe it has value / will have value…
Fiat is backed by weapons. The same weapons that defend your house from other countries and force you to give up half your salary. My main criticism to cryptocurrencies is that they're mostly unbacked. The ones that are backed by Fiat have similar problems to Fiat currency (why would I need that?), the ones that are backed by physical assets are much more interesting - but they don't seem to be the mainstream ones, p…
This is a very American view of fiat (and governmental role in general). It's a logic that only works if you're talking about the strongest military and associated country out of all alternatives, and at this point it falls apart. How do weapons protect the value of the Angolan kwanza or the Singaporean dollar? Neither of these countries could do anything militarily if a sizeable number of countries did not support their value.
How? 100% tax on crypto-to-fiat transactions? National firewall inspecting traffic for numerically-low hashes? Police kicking down doors of suspected miners, looking for GPUs? Something else? I'm sympathetic to some of the reasons, but isn't the devil sort of in the details here?
If anything banning all of crypto is easier than banning a specific crypto and payment operators are pretty friendly to LE.
How? 100% tax on crypto-to-fiat transactions? National firewall inspecting traffic for numerically-low hashes? Police kicking down doors of suspected miners, looking for GPUs? Something else? I'm sympathetic to some of the reasons, but isn't the devil sort of in the details here?
I think it would weaponize blockchain: the fact you can be lifted from your bed in 20 years for an illegal transaction because it is on the chain would be enough for most to never touch it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When normal money has failed good luck finding a wall charger to get into your Bitcoin wallet. Or more precisely the thing that makes electricity and computer hardware cheap and which is a prerequisite for crypto is a functional economic system. It is unlikely that a functional economic system will stay a whilst there is at the same time a collapse in fiat and a subsequent rise in crypto. It feels like wishful thinki…
Currency collapses happen all the time without bringing down the electrical grid/internet.
How would he know and who is he to tell me what to do with my money? His other reasons are sound but that is just stupid. Don't patronize me by deciding what risks I'm allowed to take or act like you know something the rest of us don't.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fiat is backed by weapons. The same weapons that defend your house from other countries and force you to give up half your salary. My main criticism to cryptocurrencies is that they're mostly unbacked. The ones that are backed by Fiat have similar problems to Fiat currency (why would I need that?), the ones that are backed by physical assets are much more interesting - but they don't seem to be the mainstream ones, p…
> Fiat is backed by weapons. What does this mean? It's the currency of a country that has weapons. If someone steals my USD, will US use their weapons to get it back for me? If the value of their currency drops substantially, will they go to war with some unknown power that's causing this drop and reverse the change? Countries also change currencies, often during times of inflation. This is an effectively meaningless…
I have found that viewing money as a regular good eases the thought process.
The price of money is regulated by demand and supply. Most of the demand comes because government requires taxes to be paid in the fiat money. Also because businesses are required to accept fiat as payment.