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> allowing private entities to issue their own currencies. It is much better than the single monopoly of the government-issued money. Please elaborate on this.

by foepys 9y ago

> allowing private entities to issue their own currencies. It is much better than the single monopoly of the government-issued money. Please elaborate on this. Why is it better for the people to have dozens of currencies that they can only use for a very limited selection of stores and have to trade for other uses? The only incentive for "private currencies", that I heard of, is to confuse customers and make them forget that they are, in fact, using real money and not only digital tokens.

atemerev 9y ago
There is an entire classical book on it, available for free: https://mises.org/library/denationalisation-money-argument-refined https://mises.org/library/denationalisation-money-argument-r...
- mintplant 9y ago
  I downvoted this comment because I don't think telling someone to go read an entire book effectively contributes to the discussion. Could you summarize the main points/arguments?
  - andai 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denationalization_of_Money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denationalization_of_Money > According to Hayek, instead of a national government issuing a specific currency, use of which is imposed on all members of its economy by force in the form of legal tender laws, private businesses should be allowed to issue their own forms of money, deciding how to do so on their own. > In 1978 Hayek published a revised and enlarged edition entitled Denationalization of Money: The Argument Refined, where he speculated that rather than entertaining an unmanageable number of currencies, markets would converge on one or only a limited number of monetary standards, on which institutions would base the issue of their notes.[2]
splintercell 9y ago
> Why is it better for the people to have dozens of currencies that they can only use for a very limited selection of stores and have to trade for other uses? It isn't necessarily better to have dozens of different currencies, but it is better to have the ability to issue your own currencies rather than be dependent upon a single monopoly which may (and does) abuse its power. Second thing is, there is no real way to determine how many currencies/tokens are consumers ok with, other than to really try it out in the market. Let me use an example. Today if you have Amazon prime TV, then they have a whole section subscriptions for channels where you can subscribe to Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, CBS, Showtime, Scifi, History Channel etc, services. Initially it started out with just Prime, Netflix, and Hulu, but now there are so many options, you can't just watch Homeland if you have these three subscriptions. The problem isn't just that you need to pay more, but rather that you have to subscribe to so many services. This is too confusing, but this also means that this is a problem to be solved. In future (and I think some company has already started) to build a package subscription. Maybe another solution would be to have every show a pay-per-view basis (which Amazon already does). The idea is, that the reason why different subscription services exists because of some other, unavoidable business reason. But this can be solved from the user experience point of view differently without resorting to a govt monopoly on entertainment. Same thing goes with these cryptocurrencies. They exist for different, unavoidable business reason, but it is also annoying to have to deal with different currencies, so I believe in future there will be more basket of currencies solution (like ICONOMI) which allows people to hold 2-3 cryptos at max, and from their POV, the conversion and payment to the native currency happens seamlessly.
- sharemywin 9y ago
  The problem is volatility. If the amount of people that are speculating >>>> than people willing to sell other things to buy "your coin" in a bad market. You could collapse the currency.
  - splintercell 9y ago
    But that's the whole point. We have solved this problem for over 2000 years now using financial derivatives. A farmer in ancient Rome did not want to undertake the volatility of grain prices when his crop eventually comes to the market, so what he did is sells his future crop to a fixed current price to someone who wants to undertake the risk of price fluctuations, and this way a speculator got the profit which came out of correctly predicting the future grain prices and farmer got a fixed predictable price. Same goes with these currencies. A speculator might provide enough liquidity to your crypto, in return he gets a better deal for your coins.
andirk 9y ago
"You obviously don't know enough about Bitcoin to argue the way you did." -- foepys
- foepys 9y ago
  Bitcoin has nothing to do with this. This is solely about national economy. But I'm not surprised that a cryptocurrency account doesn't understand that. The cryptosphere is so deep in their "crypto is the future" mindset that they lash out on everything they deem negative towards cryptocurrencies. Even if this had something to do with Bitcoin, I'm not surprised that you don't try to bring any arguments. Every time someone says something critical about the fundamentals, you guys stick your finger into your ears and sing "lalalala I can't hear you".
  - andirk 9y ago
    Listen to yourself dude. Troll. Go to reddit

by foepys 9y ago

atemerev 9y ago

There is an entire classical book on it, available for free: https://mises.org/library/denationalisation-money-argument-refined https://mises.org/library/denationalisation-money-argument-r...

mintplant 9y ago
I downvoted this comment because I don't think telling someone to go read an entire book effectively contributes to the discussion. Could you summarize the main points/arguments?
- andai 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denationalization_of_Money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denationalization_of_Money > According to Hayek, instead of a national government issuing a specific currency, use of which is imposed on all members of its economy by force in the form of legal tender laws, private businesses should be allowed to issue their own forms of money, deciding how to do so on their own. > In 1978 Hayek published a revised and enlarged edition entitled Denationalization of Money: The Argument Refined, where he speculated that rather than entertaining an unmanageable number of currencies, markets would converge on one or only a limited number of monetary standards, on which institutions would base the issue of their notes.[2]

splintercell 9y ago

> Why is it better for the people to have dozens of currencies that they can only use for a very limited selection of stores and have to trade for other uses? It isn't necessarily better to have dozens of different currencies, but it is better to have the ability to issue your own currencies rather than be dependent upon a single monopoly which may (and does) abuse its power. Second thing is, there is no real way to determine how many currencies/tokens are consumers ok with, other than to really try it out in the market. Let me use an example. Today if you have Amazon prime TV, then they have a whole section subscriptions for channels where you can subscribe to Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, CBS, Showtime, Scifi, History Channel etc, services. Initially it started out with just Prime, Netflix, and Hulu, but now there are so many options, you can't just watch Homeland if you have these three subscriptions. The problem isn't just that you need to pay more, but rather that you have to subscribe to so many services. This is too confusing, but this also means that this is a problem to be solved. In future (and I think some company has already started) to build a package subscription. Maybe another solution would be to have every show a pay-per-view basis (which Amazon already does). The idea is, that the reason why different subscription services exists because of some other, unavoidable business reason. But this can be solved from the user experience point of view differently without resorting to a govt monopoly on entertainment. Same thing goes with these cryptocurrencies. They exist for different, unavoidable business reason, but it is also annoying to have to deal with different currencies, so I believe in future there will be more basket of currencies solution (like ICONOMI) which allows people to hold 2-3 cryptos at max, and from their POV, the conversion and payment to the native currency happens seamlessly.

sharemywin 9y ago
The problem is volatility. If the amount of people that are speculating >>>> than people willing to sell other things to buy "your coin" in a bad market. You could collapse the currency.
- splintercell 9y ago
  But that's the whole point. We have solved this problem for over 2000 years now using financial derivatives. A farmer in ancient Rome did not want to undertake the volatility of grain prices when his crop eventually comes to the market, so what he did is sells his future crop to a fixed current price to someone who wants to undertake the risk of price fluctuations, and this way a speculator got the profit which came out of correctly predicting the future grain prices and farmer got a fixed predictable price. Same goes with these currencies. A speculator might provide enough liquidity to your crypto, in return he gets a better deal for your coins.

andirk 9y ago

"You obviously don't know enough about Bitcoin to argue the way you did." -- foepys

foepys 9y ago
Bitcoin has nothing to do with this. This is solely about national economy. But I'm not surprised that a cryptocurrency account doesn't understand that. The cryptosphere is so deep in their "crypto is the future" mindset that they lash out on everything they deem negative towards cryptocurrencies. Even if this had something to do with Bitcoin, I'm not surprised that you don't try to bring any arguments. Every time someone says something critical about the fundamentals, you guys stick your finger into your ears and sing "lalalala I can't hear you".
- andirk 9y ago
  Listen to yourself dude. Troll. Go to reddit