3 ms·
This reminds me of the irony of people who discredit bitcoin because "it's digital fairy money" when only 8% of the world's currency is physical. The entire co
by myowncrapulence 10y ago
This reminds me of the irony of people who discredit bitcoin because "it's digital fairy money" when only 8% of the world's currency is physical.
The entire concept of fiat currency is abstraction. It requires layers of illusion to maintain its integrity. At it's core, those in charge of the ledger can change where money goes and who has it.
- pastProlog 10y ago> The entire concept of fiat currency is abstraction Then why does the US still maintain over 8000 tons of gold at Fort Knox and elsewhere, 45 years after closing the gold window? Of course even before 1971 paper currency was an abstraction as well - it was a piece of paper to get a commodity, not the commodity itself.
- myowncrapulence 10y agoAs of April 2016 , Fort Knox holdings are worth about $180 billion. There was approximately $1.48 trillion USD in circulation as of October 20, 2016. There is about $8.22 in digital assets for every $1 we have in physical gold.
- notahacker 10y agoAn important part of the abstraction in any fiat currency with a modern central banking system is that the quantity of future financial obligations in that currency exceeds the broad quantity of money (because the greater part of the money supply created on banks' balance sheets literally is debt, and the government insists your future taxes are paid in that currency too) Bitcoin isn't dismissed as "fairy money" because it's digital but because it doesn't have a similar rather large built-in reason to assume there will be a non-trivial demand for it at a particular point in future. However [purposely] opaque certain other classes of financial asset are, they tend share the general property - which BTC doesn't have - of representing one entity having a future claim on another's resources.