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In defense of cryptocurrency

blog.cryptographyengineering.com

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Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#571

Post by lottin »

ephbit wrote: post #563
lottin wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Central banks are public institutions in charge of conducting monetary policy, they have a public mandate and are accountable to the legislative branch. They're therefore part of the government, even if they have some degree of independence. Bitcoin undermines governments. For example, bitcoin adoption would seriously limit the government's ability to manage the economy via monetary policy. It would also affect its a…

> Bitcoin undermines governments. Bitcoin undermines certain possibilities of governments, yes. As most western governments have been successfully hijacked by big corporations so that politics are skewed heavily in favor of the corporations' interests, it has become a tough decision IMO between: - A: letting governments continue to be the executive branch of the Exxons, Apples, Googles, Facebooks, Amazons, ... and le…

You seem confused about a couple of points. Monetary policy is not a tool to finance government spending. Sure, it might be used for this purpose, but this is not the point of it, and in fact, debt monetisation is illegal in most countries, afaik. Second, the underground economy has nothing to do with ecological sustainability or economic degrowth. It's simply a part of the economy that is hidden from the state, for the purposes of circumventing laws and regulations.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#572

Post by samhw »

randomhodler84 wrote: post #472
samhw wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harms like: the aforementioned energy usage equivalent to Eastern Europe, scams wiping out billions on the regular (e.g. the absurd Luna pyramid scheme which collapsed the other week), facilitating vast drug dealing and consumption at huge detriment to poor countries and many users, etc.

none of those are harm, you just want to control others. Esp drugs, I will not stand by and let you attack the good name of drugs.

I was addicted to heroin, I’m intimately acquainted with the harms of drugs. Whether I or anyone else wants to control others is entirely separate from the question of whether it does harm. And, incidentally, however inarticulably agonising is heroin withdrawal, I suffered far less than those at - or near - the other end of the production chain. Don’t give me this shit about how drug production harms no one just because you like taking them. Tell it to the Colombian fishermen who get a bullet in the head after unwittingly ferrying a package. Tell it to the people strung up off bridges. Tell it to the countless dead.

(I don’t think drugs should be banned or controlled, for what it’s worth. I believe in pragmatic policies of harm reduction. I’m just not going to deny reality, and the harms this system causes.)

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#573

Post by ephbit »

lottin wrote: post #571
ephbit wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin undermines governments. Bitcoin undermines certain possibilities of governments, yes. As most western governments have been successfully hijacked by big corporations so that politics are skewed heavily in favor of the corporations' interests, it has become a tough decision IMO between: - A: letting governments continue to be the executive branch of the Exxons, Apples, Googles, Facebooks, Amazons, ... and le…

You seem confused about a couple of points. Monetary policy is not a tool to finance government spending. Sure, it might be used for this purpose, but this is not the point of it, and in fact, debt monetisation is illegal in most countries, afaik. Second, the underground economy has nothing to do with ecological sustainability or economic degrowth. It's simply a part of the economy that is hidden from the state, for…

> You seem confused about a couple of points.

Well, I think I misunderstood what you meant by "underground", confused, I wouldn't say I am.

> Monetary policy is not a tool to finance government spending.

Ok, it is not officially intended to be, sure.

> Sure, it might be used for this purpose, but this is not the point of it, ...

Here's the problem. In reality, monetary policy is indeed doing exactly that. ECB is currently planning to stop buying up government bonds. Whatever technical term you use for this buying of bonds is irrelevant. Effectively this ECB policy has been supporting the growing national debt of Euro zone states.

IMO the actual situation matters more than the theoretical/proclaimed purposes/goals of policies. Yes, the ECB can state "our goal is 2 % inflation". But that statement ought to be a lot less relevant to someone who wants to judge the current state of affairs and make decisions for the future than for example the actual number (inflation).

> Second, the underground economy has nothing to do with ecological sustainability or economic degrowth.

I read "underground" here as "shrinkage" of the economy. That was a misunderstanding on my part then.

To get to your take on this. The claim that Bitcoin would make the "inofficial" sector of the economy grow bigger/worse than it is under the current monetary system is IMO only that, a claim.

Sure, some cryptocurrencies provide working privacy. Bitcoin isn't really one of those.

I'd be confident that - were Bitcoin to become relevant as some kind of reserve currency - there would be effective measures taken, to make anonymous transactions really difficult if not impossible.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#574

Post by lottin »

ephbit wrote: post #573
lottin wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem confused about a couple of points. Monetary policy is not a tool to finance government spending. Sure, it might be used for this purpose, but this is not the point of it, and in fact, debt monetisation is illegal in most countries, afaik. Second, the underground economy has nothing to do with ecological sustainability or economic degrowth. It's simply a part of the economy that is hidden from the state, for…

> You seem confused about a couple of points. Well, I think I misunderstood what you meant by "underground", confused, I wouldn't say I am. > Monetary policy is not a tool to finance government spending. Ok, it is not officially intended to be, sure. > Sure, it might be used for this purpose, but this is not the point of it, ... Here's the problem. In reality, monetary policy is indeed doing exactly that. ECB is curr…

Buying bonds in the open market is not debt monetisation. Anyway, public debt is a political problem, and the idea that adopting some sort of a commodity standard will prevent sovereign debt crises is unconvincing, to say the least, considering that such crises were common under the gold standard. You can't be seriously suggesting that the world economy should switch to a whole new monetary system based on these half-baked arguments. Are you kidding me?

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#575

Post by kareemsabri »

olalonde wrote: post #486
kareemsabri wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is bitcoin deflationary when the price has fallen 50% or so in the past year, and appears to be highly correlated with tech growth stocks?

Bitcoin critics: A deflationary money is bad because people will not spend it. Also Bitcoin critics: Bitcoin is not deflationary.

This is a strawman. I would certainly see the value in a deflationary asset.

Is your claim Bitcoin is deflationary, and if so how do you define deflationary?

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#576

Post by TapWaterBandit »

lottin wrote: post #217
TapWaterBandit wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, if you have complete faith and trust in conventional FIAT currencies and the systems they use to transact the use cases for crypto also seem far less compelling. As an example, the appeal of deflationary Bitcoin is much more salient to a citizen of Argentina than to a citizen of the USA (although recent inflation might make the appeal more obvious). Or on the even more extreme end, the citizen of Zimbabwe wo…

No one has complete faith in anything. The institutional system in liberal democracies is such that no single institution has all the power, precisely because we don't completely trust the government. The answer to dysfunctional governments is not get rid of the government. This is just dumb. We need well-functioning governments to enforce human rights, and law and order.

Who said anything about getting rid of governments? I certainly am not interested in this. I don't even think it would be a good idea to get rid of fiat (or at least state-backed currencies). At the same time having the option of holding currency that is not directly accountable to one of the 200ish current sovereign states in the world is deeply appealing to me (and many others) for a number of reasons.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#577

Post by alxndr »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #300
e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me you’ve never bought a house without telling me you’ve never bought a house. Buying houses are expensive because: - Realtors are a state-sanctioned monopoly for real estate transactions and suck up a % of the costs. They also provide the necessary service of aggregating information about the market and negotiating on your behalf - Due diligence on the state of the property. This means inspecting that there’s n…

> Realtors are a state-sanctioned monopoly for real estate transactions This doesn't even make sense. 'Realtors" is plural, and there are many, which is incompatible with monopolies. Realtors have a monopoly on their trade only because anyone competing with them becomes a realtor, by definition. It's like complaining about the airlines' monopoly in air passenger transport.

"Realtor" is a trademarked term which indicates that a person is a member of the National Association of Realtors. This is the org which the parent commenter is calling a monopoly.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/realtor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_of_Realto...

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#578

Post by birracerveza »

strofcon wrote: post #481
birracerveza wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that if someone were to gift you one Bitcoin you would not refuse it on the basis that it's just an ID number pointing to pretend money with zero intrinsic value, would you?

Sure - today, as the situation stands, I'd sell it in a heartbeat, because there is still a vast supply of greater fools. That doesn't mean it has intrinsic value, nor that it would be an ethical / moral choice. Just means that I have loose enough morals to be happy to take an idiot's money. When suddenly it loses its popularity and/or supply of greater fools, it'll fall apart, and I'll have taken some poor sap's act…

And what is the intrinsic value of actual money again?
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