Cryptonomicon: Among the Bitcoin maximalists

It's supposedly anonymous to the payer, but traceable to the payee. The idea being to provide privacy for consumers, while allowing governments traceability for tax purposes. It acts like a gift card and reminds me of the Chiemgauer[1], a very interesting regional scrip that traces back to Freigeld[2].

While GNU Taler seems to be focused on anonymous consumption, the Chiemgauer is a balanced electronic medium of exchange. It doesn't have the privacy aspect of the Taler, as far as I know.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Taler

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freigeld

No - not really. The point of them wasn't to hold them with an expectation that they would become unreasonably valuable (speculation). The point of them was to make an exchange for a good that was otherwise hard to acquire (in this case - weed, before legalization).

You'll notice that's not something most of you "crypto advocates" ever actually do. You know, the sole purpose of a currency - exchanging it for goods and services. Usually you treat it purely as a speculative asset, to be exchanged for another currency that actually can be traded for goods and services.

> Neither do gold, silver, copper, or greenbacks, and they work pretty well as currencies.

Of fucking course they do - the government taxes exchanges on them at unreasonably high rates (gold has a 28% long term capital gains tax, vs the normal 15-20%.) precisely because they understand that they're used as value stores (proxies for currency).

And that's precisely my point, really - the government WILL NOT protect you from fraud in the crypto space if it doesn't have a way to regulate and mediate the costs of doing so (such as tax derived income from the exchange). In which case - all of your above points become moot, because now you're right back to asking the government to enforce your contract or bill of sale. Remind me again how crypto is going to protect me from that government...?

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edit - if you're actually interested, you can read more of my thoughts here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29330879&p=2#29331460

I was there when MTGox blew up, I'm acutely aware of the risks of fraud in this space, outside of the current pump and dump fraud that's frankly rampant in the crypto world. Your finance 2.0 looks a whole lot like cooked books and bankers who run away with the cash once they have it, with an unhealthy dose of gambling tossed on top - it's not pretty.

Gold, silver, and copper have worked pretty well as currencies for 2700 years under a variety of taxation schemes, of which by far the most common was "no taxation", which I believe is the case here. Exchanges of greenbacks are not taxed at unreasonably high rates anywhere I know of. Moreover, it isn't clear how taxing the exchange of capital gains on certain commodities at an unreasonably high rate would help it function as a currency; perhaps you mean that it stabilizes their value? But the value of the metals we're talking about is primarily determined by the world market.

It is of course correct that some governments will refuse to referee disputes without imposing what you describe as "unreasonably high" taxes. Historically, though, many governments have successfully resolved disputes without imposing confiscatory taxes or demanding far-reaching extrajudicial powers against people outside their jurisdiction, and we have every reason to believe that such governments will continue to exist, even if you don't have the luck of having one yourself.

You can always emigrate, you know. But possibly not if you need your government's permission to take your savings with you.

I agree with you about the risks of fraud and the dismaying ubiquity of pump-and-dump scams, and I agree that if you do not hold your bitcoins yourself they are just as vulnerable as if you left them in a bank—a lesson missed by most current "crypto advocates," who keep their coins in their Binance accounts. I am sorry to hear about your loss to the MtGox theft.

If I go to Safeway and don't find something healthy, I will nevertheless buy something for the simple reason that I am hungry. Want healthier food in a society? Sell healthier food in a society.

It's not the job of consumers, nor is there any reasonable communication channel, to dictate what is put on shelves. They can only provide feedback based on what is already there. If they have a limited selection, you will receive a censored signal, and you cannot judge the outcome based on counterfactuals of what they would have bought if something else was in the pool of offered products.

Above describes the folly of "demand-based" economic thinking. If there was truly an infinite supply and infinite variety of products, it makes sense to consider demand-based perspectives as actually expressing consumer desires. But it doesn't do that -- it only expresses preferences among the finite selection available, and you can very quickly sink into a feedback loop that encourages unhealthy diets by conflating the two perspectives.