8 ms·

Where's the news?! Why do people continue to bang heads against the wall with this madness? Unless you're a thief, how is the craptocurrency thing better than m

Where's the news?! Why do people continue to bang heads against the wall with this madness? Unless you're a thief, how is the craptocurrency thing better than my credit card that's insured from unauthorized use and gives me a cash back?! Yeah, you can't speculate with credit cards, and get rich quick, because $1 = $1 like forever, but isn't that what the real investment tools are for?

btown 9y ago
Everyone in cryptocurrency seems to have forgotten that the adage "the devil you know vs. the devil you don't" was a recommendation to prefer the former.
- easytiger 9y ago
  Everyone in Crypto Currencies are besotted by the "we are in at ground level of a tech revolution" idea... namely they think they saw the kids of the 80s/90s get easy low qualification required tech jobs and one man shops making 100s/millions/dollars. They are the modern prospectors. Free gold on unclaimed land. Like any decent business thinker you don't see the rough edges of your focus. Sometimes when you do it can cripple you. But then again most business fail.
  - canistr 9y ago
    It's a cute analogy perpetuated by GenX VCs and crypto-wonks who don't see a down-side in making bold, wild claims. It's one of the many problems today in which there is no down-side risk on making extremely early predictions. No one will call you out on being wrong. I view it similar to people who have been calling for another tech bubble and the subsequent market crash even though we're still very much in the midst of consistent All-Time Highs.
mhluongo 9y ago
What are you talking about? The dollar loses to inflation every year. A 1990 dollar is $1.87 in 2017 dollars.
- sleepychu 9y ago
  I think GP means that if you have $100 in your bank it'll still be there tomorrow, not randomly erradicated by volatile swings in the market or stolen with no way to get it back. That said this is only true if you have faith in your government.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dullgiulio 9y ago
    But when has government betrayed that faith (in recent times, say after WWII)?
    - unknown_apostle 9y ago
      Like, whenever things get serious? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock to give just 1 example.
  - mhluongo 9y ago
    Right, but it can also be frozen due to the whims of the bank, garnished by the IRS, taken by wire fraud... Obviously cryptocurrencies are sharp tools, but they're stronger financial primitives than what we have. We just need to use them to rebuild the consumer-facing components.
    - matt_wulfeck 9y ago
      You don't think the IRS can't seize your coins? They just have to demand your wallet or put you in jail. The fact that they can't drain your account isn't some magical cloak that keeps them locking you up. Or you could try and lie about the value of your wallet and perjure yourself.
    - easytiger 9y ago
      By which you mean, take everything provided by current currencies and monetary regulation and financial institutions assuming risk... then put a pretty fascia of your kinda UX on it, called crypto currencies. It is a 3000 year old problem. Trust. In short, is big business.
matt_wulfeck 9y ago
Greed.
- nikolay 9y ago
  Greedocurrency is a much better name, right!
rglover 9y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_3T-Af57Pg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_3T-Af57Pg
davnicwil 9y ago
Just to pick up on this one small point: as I understand it, the cashback you get with a credit card is more or less taken straight from the card processing fee charged to the vendor, which of course, raises prices overall and is therefore not really cashback at all. Without the fee, you would likely have just paid a lower price in the first place. The only party benefitting from the cashback scheme is, of course, the middleman. By offering it, they give you an incentive to use the card more, which in turn gives the vendors more incentive to accept it. More card use equates directly to more money for them. One of the hugely compelling benefits of cryptocurrencies is they entirely eliminate the necessity for such middlemen taking a cut and driving up costs for the parties actually partaking in the transaction.
- seanalltogether 9y ago
  > One of the hugely compelling benefits of cryptocurrencies is they entirely eliminate the necessity for such middlemen taking a cut and driving up costs for the parties actually partaking in the transaction. Don't all bitcoin transactions require a transaction fee in order to get processed these days?
  - davnicwil 9y ago
    Yes. There is no such thing as a free transaction, because payment methods and networks take work to administrate. I mean, take cash. It's expensive to make, to process, to transport, to safely store. These costs are, obviously, passed on to the users of cash in the aggregate. Cryptocurrency transaction fees are just very direct, but it's the same deal. The difference is that clearly inefficient transaction costs, like centralised middlemen with limited competition skimming a cut from all transactions, can be eliminated. Remember that bitcoin transaction fees are a completely open market.
    - resf 9y ago
      Centralized payment networks will always be cheaper to administer than blockchains. The only reason that Visa and Mastercard have such high fees is because it's a duopoly.
conceptme 9y ago
Unless you live in Venezuela http://www.businessinsider.com/venezuela-hyperinflation-chart-2017-4?international=true&r=US&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/venezuela-hyperinflation-char...
- matt_wulfeck 9y ago
  Hyper deflation and hyper inflation are both extremely destructive to a functional economy.
- easytiger 9y ago
  Another glorious win for the socialist revolution.
- root_axis 9y ago
  Cryptocurrency is not a solution for a fundamentally broken central government and this is especially true for countries like Venezuela where access to computers and reliable internet is not a given.
- joosters 9y ago
  Where are the hordes of people wanting to sell their bitcoins and turn them into Venezuelan bolivars? Without these people, how have Venezuelans got any chance of getting bitcoins in the first place?
  - mbrock 9y ago
    https://localbitcoins.com/country/VE https://localbitcoins.com/country/VE http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/04/venezuelans-turned-bitcoin-mining-170415124105593.html http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/04/venezuelan...
simias 9y ago
I'm not as negative as you are, I think this is all very interesting, from the outside looking in. It really helps understanding the pros and cons of our monetary system, the good and the bad. It's pretty educational I think. Of course it's sad for people who invest money they can't afford to lose, but really "investing" in cryptocurrencies is more like playing roulette than anything else and they should've known better. I really wonder what cryptocurrencies will look like 10 years from now. Will they still exist? Will they have taken over the world as some predict? Given how easy it is to irrevocably lose your coins I really have a hard time imagining how this could become mainstream. At best I could imagine using bitcoin through some third party that would take care of your wallet for you. We'd call it a bank or something.
- albertgoeswoof 9y ago
  I don't really know why this is being downvoted, BTC and cryptocurrencies are really interesting economically. Even if they have no direct impact on society as a whole it's valuable to see proposed alternatives to our banking and financial systems put forward and discussed in detail (e.g. it really exposes what a bank / government actually provides)
  - simias 9y ago
    I'm guessing that my snide remark about reinventing the banking system didn't really help my case but I couldn't resist. But yeah, technically and economically it's pretty fascinating I think. The only downside is that the very high valuation makes it hard to have a reasonable discussion with people on either side of the fence. It's not longer a fun classroom experiment when billion of dollars are involved.
xyzzy4 9y ago
Why is gold worth $5 trillion market cap? If someone steals your gold, you can't even get it back easily.
- easytiger 9y ago
  In computing there were relatively few mitigation against breach of physical security. Almost no one uses encrypted volumes, though that is growing rapidly. Even then it says nothing of on line connected access to the medium whilst the volume is mounted. If someone steals your gold the logistical complexities are much more onerous to being caught. Again, a 3000 year problem almost entirely solved. The risk of the medium of value is priced into the medium itself.
RegulatoryRoger 9y ago
It's better if you're buying heroin online
discombobulate 9y ago
Good question! Why are some of the most sophisticated investors in the world investing in crypto? If you took some time to figure out the answer, it may be valuable. Or not. You could be right. > because $1 = $1 like forever Correct. What about compared to a basket of good?
usaphp 9y ago
From my understanding a lot of people use it to transfer money between countries, you buy some bitcoins, then transfer them to your bank account in a different country, and you won't have to explain to the bank where you got the money and where you are transferring them because you could just say that you mined those coins and now cashing out. Correct me if there is a flaw in my logic
- jdmichal 9y ago
  AKA money laundering? I mean, I guess if you're into wildly illegal actions, sure.
- dboreham 9y ago
  Flaw will be realized when you arrive for first day in prison.
methodin 9y ago
Well I imagine there's no interest fees in crypto?
QML 9y ago
Well how did you get a credit card? Wasn't it by going to a financial institution and submitting some type of identification? You understand not everyone has that privilege right? Not everybody has access, the capital, or the identification to a first-world bank.
- urethrafranklin 9y ago
  Show me one instance of an underbanked person who achieved a line of credit thanks to cryptocurrency. Just one, please. That's right, they don't exist, and this argument is bullshit.
  - ryanlol 9y ago
    I don't really have any bank accounts right now and pay my credit card bills with bitcoin. I guess I might be that person then? Although, I've pretty much always been paid in cryptocurrencies so my situation is rather unique.
    - urethrafranklin 9y ago
      You have access to banks, you just choose not to use them. And you have a government identity and a credit history that you used to obtain your credit card. You aren't remotely close to the hypothetical character the OP described.
  - kbhn 9y ago
    > Just one, I fucking dare you. This comment doesn't seem to jive the spirit of Hacker News. If the poster you're replying to has a valid counter-argument you can expect him to provide it; there's no need to...threaten them to reply? Machismo is one of the least beneficial things you could contribute to this site.
  - QML 9y ago
    I never said line of credit. I was making the point that cryptocurrencies offer another means of payment and medium of exchange that is not as restrictive as a credit card. Here’s two articles that show they actually help the underbanked: [1] http://www.coindesk.com/united-nations-sends-aid-to-10000-syrian-refugees-using-ethereum-blockchain/ http://www.coindesk.com/united-nations-sends-aid-to-10000-sy... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-13/pot-entrepreneurs-look-to-bitcoin-as-big-banks-stay-on-sidelines https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-13/pot-entre...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pedja 9y ago
My view here is that crypto-currency doesn't have to be better, but it has to exist so that fiat currencies have something to compete against, and then the users have a choice. It should be guided by normal market laws as any two financial products, e.g. if your view of insurance proves a valuable market insight, I am sure that insurers will consider doing it for crypto. News like this are common for any emerging markets and technologies. Same amount of volatility was probably present in the first years of dollar, and same amount of insecurity was present while banks and credit cards were still being established. I wonder how much different the crypto-currency conversation would have been if they appeared around the time when dollar lost its gold convertibility.
problems 9y ago
It almost certainly never will replace your credit card. But there are other things it can replace or create. Like paying in cash for less-than-legal products or confirming, beyond a shadow of a doubt that you're not using a stolen card as a transaction can't be revoked or even as something comparable to gold as a store of value (which seems like a terrible idea as of now, but is a possible future use case). It may also provide a distributed, trustless or near-trustless way to control equity in some things, but that's yet to be proven in my opinion. For just about everything else, cryptocurrencies are crap, just a worse version of something that already exists. They're not a panacea, you can't throw a blockchain at everything and make it better.
free_everybody 9y ago
>because $1 = $1 like forever Take a look at the purchasing power of the US dollar over the last century. http://bit.ly/2ushyfu http://bit.ly/2ushyfu I'm not suggesting crypto is a better store of value, but there are surely better alternatives than the U.S. dollar for long term investments. Even for short term holdings intended to transact with, wouldn't it be nice to not rely on a bloated, corrupt, violent corporation (AKA the US Gov)?
ojr 9y ago
You can't issue more dollars, but you can issue more of your token, It would be better for an app to have hacked token addresses than hacked credit card information, these tokens are usually cheap initially and its a free market, investment are always a risk. Why start a restaurant isn't that what all the other restaurants are for?
randomThoughts9 9y ago
1. I see the the current batch of crypto-currencies as an experiment and their valuation more like a bet on which currency will manage to adapt to the future. 2. Not all properties are relevant or even desirable: For example, I could live without POW or a fixed cap. 3. That being said, let me give you an example of a currency that could realistically be adopted by a government: a centrally controlled currency (the central bank is the only miner) but the blocks are validated by the citizens. Here you could have the inflation rate specified through a smart contract (e.g. 3%). The only way to print more money would be to to ask the nodes to vote on an amount that will be included in the next block.
thephyber 9y ago
> because $1 = $1 like forever No. $1 during the gold standard was different than $1 after we left it. Now, our central bank (the "Federal Reserve") aims to inflate our currency at +2%, every year. After 80 years (roughly a US lifetime), $1 at birth is worth $0.20 at death. And central banks can't always keep monetary policy under control.[1] We just hit $20 trillion in US federal debt. It's set to continue to grow as baby boomers continue retiring. Congress has no spine to make large cuts in spending (for defense, discretionary, or entitlement programs). There are a handful of very large states in the same condition. The debt will continue to grow reasonably fast while the GDP of our economy has lagged. $1 USD may say "$1" on the front forever, but the purchasing power of a dollar isn't likely to stay as strong as some other currencies. It's worth even less if large, important international transactions (like for oil/gas/weapons) are done less and less with the US dollar (@see "Bretton Woods" and "petrodollar"). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation
aqsheehy 9y ago
Try buying contraband with your credit card

btown 9y ago

Everyone in cryptocurrency seems to have forgotten that the adage "the devil you know vs. the devil you don't" was a recommendation to prefer the former.

easytiger 9y ago
Everyone in Crypto Currencies are besotted by the "we are in at ground level of a tech revolution" idea... namely they think they saw the kids of the 80s/90s get easy low qualification required tech jobs and one man shops making 100s/millions/dollars. They are the modern prospectors. Free gold on unclaimed land. Like any decent business thinker you don't see the rough edges of your focus. Sometimes when you do it can cripple you. But then again most business fail.
- canistr 9y ago
  It's a cute analogy perpetuated by GenX VCs and crypto-wonks who don't see a down-side in making bold, wild claims. It's one of the many problems today in which there is no down-side risk on making extremely early predictions. No one will call you out on being wrong. I view it similar to people who have been calling for another tech bubble and the subsequent market crash even though we're still very much in the midst of consistent All-Time Highs.

mhluongo 9y ago

What are you talking about? The dollar loses to inflation every year. A 1990 dollar is $1.87 in 2017 dollars.

sleepychu 9y ago
I think GP means that if you have $100 in your bank it'll still be there tomorrow, not randomly erradicated by volatile swings in the market or stolen with no way to get it back. That said this is only true if you have faith in your government.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dullgiulio 9y ago
  But when has government betrayed that faith (in recent times, say after WWII)?
  - unknown_apostle 9y ago
    Like, whenever things get serious? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock to give just 1 example.
- mhluongo 9y ago
  Right, but it can also be frozen due to the whims of the bank, garnished by the IRS, taken by wire fraud... Obviously cryptocurrencies are sharp tools, but they're stronger financial primitives than what we have. We just need to use them to rebuild the consumer-facing components.
  - matt_wulfeck 9y ago
    You don't think the IRS can't seize your coins? They just have to demand your wallet or put you in jail. The fact that they can't drain your account isn't some magical cloak that keeps them locking you up. Or you could try and lie about the value of your wallet and perjure yourself.
  - easytiger 9y ago
    By which you mean, take everything provided by current currencies and monetary regulation and financial institutions assuming risk... then put a pretty fascia of your kinda UX on it, called crypto currencies. It is a 3000 year old problem. Trust. In short, is big business.

matt_wulfeck 9y ago

Greed.

nikolay 9y ago
Greedocurrency is a much better name, right!

rglover 9y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_3T-Af57Pg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_3T-Af57Pg

davnicwil 9y ago

Just to pick up on this one small point: as I understand it, the cashback you get with a credit card is more or less taken straight from the card processing fee charged to the vendor, which of course, raises prices overall and is therefore not really cashback at all. Without the fee, you would likely have just paid a lower price in the first place. The only party benefitting from the cashback scheme is, of course, the middleman. By offering it, they give you an incentive to use the card more, which in turn gives the vendors more incentive to accept it. More card use equates directly to more money for them. One of the hugely compelling benefits of cryptocurrencies is they entirely eliminate the necessity for such middlemen taking a cut and driving up costs for the parties actually partaking in the transaction.

seanalltogether 9y ago
> One of the hugely compelling benefits of cryptocurrencies is they entirely eliminate the necessity for such middlemen taking a cut and driving up costs for the parties actually partaking in the transaction. Don't all bitcoin transactions require a transaction fee in order to get processed these days?
- davnicwil 9y ago
  Yes. There is no such thing as a free transaction, because payment methods and networks take work to administrate. I mean, take cash. It's expensive to make, to process, to transport, to safely store. These costs are, obviously, passed on to the users of cash in the aggregate. Cryptocurrency transaction fees are just very direct, but it's the same deal. The difference is that clearly inefficient transaction costs, like centralised middlemen with limited competition skimming a cut from all transactions, can be eliminated. Remember that bitcoin transaction fees are a completely open market.
  - resf 9y ago
    Centralized payment networks will always be cheaper to administer than blockchains. The only reason that Visa and Mastercard have such high fees is because it's a duopoly.

conceptme 9y ago

Unless you live in Venezuela http://www.businessinsider.com/venezuela-hyperinflation-chart-2017-4?international=true&r=US&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/venezuela-hyperinflation-char...

matt_wulfeck 9y ago
Hyper deflation and hyper inflation are both extremely destructive to a functional economy.
easytiger 9y ago
Another glorious win for the socialist revolution.
root_axis 9y ago
Cryptocurrency is not a solution for a fundamentally broken central government and this is especially true for countries like Venezuela where access to computers and reliable internet is not a given.
joosters 9y ago
Where are the hordes of people wanting to sell their bitcoins and turn them into Venezuelan bolivars? Without these people, how have Venezuelans got any chance of getting bitcoins in the first place?
- mbrock 9y ago
  https://localbitcoins.com/country/VE https://localbitcoins.com/country/VE http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/04/venezuelans-turned-bitcoin-mining-170415124105593.html http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/04/venezuelan...

simias 9y ago

I'm not as negative as you are, I think this is all very interesting, from the outside looking in. It really helps understanding the pros and cons of our monetary system, the good and the bad. It's pretty educational I think. Of course it's sad for people who invest money they can't afford to lose, but really "investing" in cryptocurrencies is more like playing roulette than anything else and they should've known better. I really wonder what cryptocurrencies will look like 10 years from now. Will they still exist? Will they have taken over the world as some predict? Given how easy it is to irrevocably lose your coins I really have a hard time imagining how this could become mainstream. At best I could imagine using bitcoin through some third party that would take care of your wallet for you. We'd call it a bank or something.

albertgoeswoof 9y ago
I don't really know why this is being downvoted, BTC and cryptocurrencies are really interesting economically. Even if they have no direct impact on society as a whole it's valuable to see proposed alternatives to our banking and financial systems put forward and discussed in detail (e.g. it really exposes what a bank / government actually provides)
- simias 9y ago
  I'm guessing that my snide remark about reinventing the banking system didn't really help my case but I couldn't resist. But yeah, technically and economically it's pretty fascinating I think. The only downside is that the very high valuation makes it hard to have a reasonable discussion with people on either side of the fence. It's not longer a fun classroom experiment when billion of dollars are involved.

xyzzy4 9y ago

Why is gold worth $5 trillion market cap? If someone steals your gold, you can't even get it back easily.

easytiger 9y ago
In computing there were relatively few mitigation against breach of physical security. Almost no one uses encrypted volumes, though that is growing rapidly. Even then it says nothing of on line connected access to the medium whilst the volume is mounted. If someone steals your gold the logistical complexities are much more onerous to being caught. Again, a 3000 year problem almost entirely solved. The risk of the medium of value is priced into the medium itself.

RegulatoryRoger 9y ago

It's better if you're buying heroin online

discombobulate 9y ago

Good question! Why are some of the most sophisticated investors in the world investing in crypto? If you took some time to figure out the answer, it may be valuable. Or not. You could be right. > because $1 = $1 like forever Correct. What about compared to a basket of good?

usaphp 9y ago

From my understanding a lot of people use it to transfer money between countries, you buy some bitcoins, then transfer them to your bank account in a different country, and you won't have to explain to the bank where you got the money and where you are transferring them because you could just say that you mined those coins and now cashing out. Correct me if there is a flaw in my logic

jdmichal 9y ago
AKA money laundering? I mean, I guess if you're into wildly illegal actions, sure.
dboreham 9y ago
Flaw will be realized when you arrive for first day in prison.

methodin 9y ago

Well I imagine there's no interest fees in crypto?

QML 9y ago

Well how did you get a credit card? Wasn't it by going to a financial institution and submitting some type of identification? You understand not everyone has that privilege right? Not everybody has access, the capital, or the identification to a first-world bank.

urethrafranklin 9y ago
Show me one instance of an underbanked person who achieved a line of credit thanks to cryptocurrency. Just one, please. That's right, they don't exist, and this argument is bullshit.
- ryanlol 9y ago
  I don't really have any bank accounts right now and pay my credit card bills with bitcoin. I guess I might be that person then? Although, I've pretty much always been paid in cryptocurrencies so my situation is rather unique.
  - urethrafranklin 9y ago
    You have access to banks, you just choose not to use them. And you have a government identity and a credit history that you used to obtain your credit card. You aren't remotely close to the hypothetical character the OP described.
- kbhn 9y ago
  > Just one, I fucking dare you. This comment doesn't seem to jive the spirit of Hacker News. If the poster you're replying to has a valid counter-argument you can expect him to provide it; there's no need to...threaten them to reply? Machismo is one of the least beneficial things you could contribute to this site.
- QML 9y ago
  I never said line of credit. I was making the point that cryptocurrencies offer another means of payment and medium of exchange that is not as restrictive as a credit card. Here’s two articles that show they actually help the underbanked: [1] http://www.coindesk.com/united-nations-sends-aid-to-10000-syrian-refugees-using-ethereum-blockchain/ http://www.coindesk.com/united-nations-sends-aid-to-10000-sy... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-13/pot-entrepreneurs-look-to-bitcoin-as-big-banks-stay-on-sidelines https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-13/pot-entre...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

pedja 9y ago

My view here is that crypto-currency doesn't have to be better, but it has to exist so that fiat currencies have something to compete against, and then the users have a choice. It should be guided by normal market laws as any two financial products, e.g. if your view of insurance proves a valuable market insight, I am sure that insurers will consider doing it for crypto. News like this are common for any emerging markets and technologies. Same amount of volatility was probably present in the first years of dollar, and same amount of insecurity was present while banks and credit cards were still being established. I wonder how much different the crypto-currency conversation would have been if they appeared around the time when dollar lost its gold convertibility.

problems 9y ago

It almost certainly never will replace your credit card. But there are other things it can replace or create. Like paying in cash for less-than-legal products or confirming, beyond a shadow of a doubt that you're not using a stolen card as a transaction can't be revoked or even as something comparable to gold as a store of value (which seems like a terrible idea as of now, but is a possible future use case). It may also provide a distributed, trustless or near-trustless way to control equity in some things, but that's yet to be proven in my opinion. For just about everything else, cryptocurrencies are crap, just a worse version of something that already exists. They're not a panacea, you can't throw a blockchain at everything and make it better.

free_everybody 9y ago

>because $1 = $1 like forever Take a look at the purchasing power of the US dollar over the last century. http://bit.ly/2ushyfu http://bit.ly/2ushyfu I'm not suggesting crypto is a better store of value, but there are surely better alternatives than the U.S. dollar for long term investments. Even for short term holdings intended to transact with, wouldn't it be nice to not rely on a bloated, corrupt, violent corporation (AKA the US Gov)?

ojr 9y ago

You can't issue more dollars, but you can issue more of your token, It would be better for an app to have hacked token addresses than hacked credit card information, these tokens are usually cheap initially and its a free market, investment are always a risk. Why start a restaurant isn't that what all the other restaurants are for?

randomThoughts9 9y ago

1. I see the the current batch of crypto-currencies as an experiment and their valuation more like a bet on which currency will manage to adapt to the future. 2. Not all properties are relevant or even desirable: For example, I could live without POW or a fixed cap. 3. That being said, let me give you an example of a currency that could realistically be adopted by a government: a centrally controlled currency (the central bank is the only miner) but the blocks are validated by the citizens. Here you could have the inflation rate specified through a smart contract (e.g. 3%). The only way to print more money would be to to ask the nodes to vote on an amount that will be included in the next block.

thephyber 9y ago

> because $1 = $1 like forever No. $1 during the gold standard was different than $1 after we left it. Now, our central bank (the "Federal Reserve") aims to inflate our currency at +2%, every year. After 80 years (roughly a US lifetime), $1 at birth is worth $0.20 at death. And central banks can't always keep monetary policy under control.[1] We just hit $20 trillion in US federal debt. It's set to continue to grow as baby boomers continue retiring. Congress has no spine to make large cuts in spending (for defense, discretionary, or entitlement programs). There are a handful of very large states in the same condition. The debt will continue to grow reasonably fast while the GDP of our economy has lagged. $1 USD may say "$1" on the front forever, but the purchasing power of a dollar isn't likely to stay as strong as some other currencies. It's worth even less if large, important international transactions (like for oil/gas/weapons) are done less and less with the US dollar (@see "Bretton Woods" and "petrodollar"). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation

aqsheehy 9y ago

Try buying contraband with your credit card