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Bitcoin Is Time

dergigi.com

961–970 of 1001 posts

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#961

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will Bitcoin lead to the defunding of the US military? Can I get a specific, plausible answer that isn't some vague utopian libertarian handwave?

If Bitcoin becomes the reserve currency, the theory goes that the US would not need to involve itself in as many petrodollar wars as it does today, thus resulting in a smaller military. I don't think anyone seriously thinks Bitcoin will replace militaries completely.

The petrodollar is basically a conspiracy theory - you can use dollars to buy oil priced in Euros the same way you can use Bitcoin to buy drugs priced in dollars. Iraq pricing oil in Euros would just mean they sold most of it to countries using the Euro.

The importance of the role of the dollar as a reserve currency is also just an urban myth:

https://www.ussc.edu.au/analysis/the-reserve-currency-myth-t...

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#962

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Bitcoin becomes the reserve currency, the theory goes that the US would not need to involve itself in as many petrodollar wars as it does today, thus resulting in a smaller military. I don't think anyone seriously thinks Bitcoin will replace militaries completely.

The petrodollar is basically a conspiracy theory - you can use dollars to buy oil priced in Euros the same way you can use Bitcoin to buy drugs priced in dollars. Iraq pricing oil in Euros would just mean they sold most of it to countries using the Euro. The importance of the role of the dollar as a reserve currency is also just an urban myth: https://www.ussc.edu.au/analysis/the-reserve-currency-myth-t...

Seems to be a fairly accepted phenomena?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrodollar_recycling#Petrodol...

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#964
post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What fundamentally prevents us from creating a digital analog of gold? You can infinitely copy information. It's in the article.

Yeah, I read the article. My question was what really prevents the existence of some cryptographic operation that would allow us to "port" the laws of physics to the digital space, so that when information moves we could enforce that the sender no longer has it and the receiver does.

That primitive has not been invented (maybe yet). Till then, we have Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#965
While I find decentralized digital ledgers interesting and potentially useful, I am always surprised how people think that they need to jump on bitcoin as it somehow must be the best choice for the future of money. At least to me it seems unlikely that the first feasible solution to a difficult problem is already the best. Several problems with bitcoin provide evidence for this idea.

Thus, it seems like the mechanism which keeps bitcoin running is something similar to the sunk cost fallacy or framed differently attachment to a state of the ledger that is perceived as favorable by the invested community. I hope that people will realize soon enough that bitcoin should probably more be treated like a nice art project - not more, not less.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#966

A few questions I need help with - If bitcoin becomes a store of value / digital gold and people increasingly hold their wealth in Bitcoin countries will lose the ability control and regulate their own economy. 1) Why would any country hand over the reins of its economy to others ? India is already thinking of banning cryptocurrencies, China has similar thoughts too, if many large countries ban it how would Bitcoin s…

> US has fought wars to retain dollar as the global reserve currency. Why would the US give up this advantage ?

Not true, the US has been trying to reduce the usage of the USD as a reserve currency (it's the largest such currency but not the only one) due to it not having any real benefit to the US while exposing its economy to the effects of financial crises around the world.

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Ben Bernanke (ex-FED Chairman) - The dollar’s international role: An “exorbitant privilege”?

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/ben-bernanke/2016/01/07/the-d...

> A great deal of U.S. currency is held abroad, which amounts to an interest-free loan to the United States. However, the interest savings are probably on the order of $20 billion a year, a small fraction of a percent of U.S. GDP, and that “seigniorage,” as it is called, would probably still exist even if the dollar lost ground to other currencies...

> The safe haven aspect of the dollar is actually a negative for U.S. firms, since it implies that they become less competitive (the dollar is stronger) at precisely the times that global economic conditions are most difficult.

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The ‘reserve currency’ myth: The US dollar’s current and future role in the world economy

https://www.ussc.edu.au/analysis/the-reserve-currency-myth-t...

> This safe-haven bid for US dollar assets means that the US dollar often behaves in ways that seem counter-intuitive relative to US economic fundamentals. As Figure 2 shows, the US dollar appreciates in response to economic policy uncertainty. A 1 per cent increase in the Global Economic Policy Uncertainty Index raises the real value of the US dollar by 0.2 per cent, controlling for relative interest rate, inflation and economic growth differentials with the rest of the world.

> The appreciation exacerbates trade tensions between the United States and the rest of the world by weighing on US export competitiveness, setting in train a protectionist spiral.

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That the USD's role as a reserve currency isn't really very important doesn't change the fact that Bitcoin is a moderately interesting solution to a niche CS problem, and not the solution to financial problems nobody actually has, either because they were solved decades or centuries ago, or because they're not and never were real problems in the first place.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#967
post #950

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Being driven down to zero I think means people would lend at 0% interest " Banks can't get rid of reserves at the central bank in aggregate. They can only get rid of them to other banks. So there is no need for the central bank to pay them. You can't hold reserves so the bank can charge you for borrowing money. Since there are more reserves than required, and no alternative source of interest, the inter bank rate wo…

You went way over my head I'm afraid. I don't know how banks/reserves/etc work.

I keep these bookmarked as they're about the simplest and clearest introductions to how economies work that I've found - and the Bank of England should know what they're talking about :)

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-...

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-...

Bank reserves aren't an important factor in the financial systems, they're there to ensure customers have access to money if they want to withdraw it and to allow banks to move money between each other. More importantly banks don't lend money out of their reserves (so-called "fractional reserve banking"), they simply add the loan amount to the customer's account and also to their own liabilities i.e. they "create" money.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#968

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything Bitcoin can do, we can do now with proof-of-stake currencies at a tiny fraction of the energy consumption.

That is true only to the extent that proof of work has already been performed. You have to stake something of value or POS doesn’t work. Staking a POW coin to “mine” a new POS coin works. So does burning a POW coin to convert it to a new POS coin that can be staked for more. But, you can’t bootstrap a POS coin without leveraging proven investment from previously burned work. At this point Bitcoin and Eth have about a…

Does this mean that Cardano (ADA) shouldn't work, because it's Proof of Stake from the beginning?

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#969
post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is technologically obsolete but that doesn't matter. Which just underlines how much of this whole phenomenon is brand and hype.

Says someone who is using 1970s technology called ACH and SWIFT to send money over. At least be aware of what is happening around you before attacking other technologies.

> Says someone who is using 1970s technology called ACH and SWIFT to send money over.

In Europe SEPA Instant requires transfers take less than 10 seconds in anything other than exceptional circumstances, and costs the same to transfer between any of the 36 member countries.

> At least be aware of what is happening around you before attacking other technologies.

Ironic. So many discussions of Bitcoin's utility implicitly assume that the rest of the world also has the same sort of antiquated banking and payment systems used in the US.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#970
post #210

I'm ready to be downvoted to oblivion, especially by all the Bitcoin purists, but I hope my message sparks at least some curiosity. Bitcoin is getting "weaker" every year for several reasons: - emerging centralization due to economies of scale. If this trend continues the mining power will be so consolidated that a 51% attack will be likely. The Nakamoto coefficient is already at 4, and tending towards 3. - energy us…

From the article: > they [the central banks] can expand the money supply to keep the system propped up. They have to expand money supply to keep the value of the currencies stable as long as most money is not spent. The economy depends not on the supply of money but on the stability of the money. By which force do central banks have to keep increasing the money supply once people start spending? There is no reason to…

> The economy depends not on the supply of money but on the stability of the money.

The supply of money is adjusted to match how much is needed, it's the entire reason why countries switched to fiat currencies. Everything else being equal, if the GDP is growing 5% each year you need 5% more money each year to keep the same velocity of money i.e. how much is being used in the economy.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/velocity.asp

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