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"Currencies have legal support. It will blow up." Diamond reminds me of a bartender warning his patrons not to smoke pot. (Because alcohol is mostly legal, whi

"Currencies have legal support. It will blow up." Diamond reminds me of a bartender warning his patrons not to smoke pot. (Because alcohol is mostly legal, while pot is mostly illegal.) Also, fiat currencies need to maintain public confidence, part of which comes from a legal code. The remainder comes from management of the currency and its underlying domestic economy. I suspect a great deal of the value of Bitcoin may come from an eroding confidence of the U.S. dollar; especially after the events of '08 and the ongoing weak economy.

cm2187 9y ago
No I think it means you can force someone to take the currency for payment. If I don't want to take bitcoins for payment, no one is going to force me.
- weirdstuff 9y ago
  Is it illegal for a seller to price something in the U.S. in bitcoin (or a some other form of exchange) and not dollars? If cigarettes became a more attractive medium of exchange, is it illegal to use that medium between two private, consenting parties?
  - bmelton 9y ago
    If you'd said toilet paper (or most other things) instead of cigarettes, I think you'd have a different conversation, but as cigarettes are a restricted and specially taxed thing, I suspect that using individual cigarettes as bartering implements is almost certainly taboo.
  - cm2187 9y ago
    I believe that's the very definition of legal tender: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender It doesn't prevent you from accepting other means of exchange (though in some countries it does), but it does force you to accept it, even if you don't like it.
    - namelost 9y ago
      Not quite, legal tender means if someone owes you money, you have to accept it.
      - nobodyorother 9y ago
        Not if you're the US government, apparently? Tim DeChristopher spent 21 months in prison despite how he "had raised sufficient funds for an initial payment to the BLM (which the BLM refused to accept)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_DeChristopher#Trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_DeChristopher#Trial (I bring this up because I'd always wondered about how why that case fell out that way, and apparently it can't, per the common meaning of the terms, so my understanding of legal tender seems correct?)
  - smsm42 9y ago
    You can price anything in anything, nobody prohibits you for exchanging a dining table for a sonnet or a Python script for a set of numbers. Legal tender means if you wanted money, and somebody pays you in US currency, you can not force them to pay in something else. Moreover, if you did agree to write a sonnet as payment, and did not do, and you get sued, and assigned damages - you can pay these damages in US currency and it would be deemed settled. I.e. any debt that is paid in US currency would be considered settled. You can still pay in whatever you like, as long as both parties agree.
- oelmekki 9y ago
  Fiat, while in a way better shape on that part, is not perfect either. I don't know for other countries, but here in france we have three means of payment : payment cards, paychecks and cash. Cash is annoying to manage because of its fixed values, always having to deal with rest and counting. Paychecks, you never know if a merchant will accept them (it's more and more rare). payment cards have weekly rate limits, and we have no mean to know before paying for something how close you are from it, except if you track every single payment you make. Last year, I tried a bitcoin payment card. It was not practical because of bitcoin volatility, but there was something super cool about it : it was a prepaid rechargeable card that I could recharge in the hour, by sending bitcoins to it. I always knew how much I could use on the card and could basically use everything that was on it, without fearing to hit some obscure limit. This was the perfect payment method for me. I hope we'll have something similar to this but with non volatile currency soon (I know this exists for fiat, but I have to wait like 2 days for a wire transfer to happen, this is not practical).
  - owlninja 9y ago
    Like a prepaid Visa or Mastercard?
    - oelmekki 9y ago
      Yep, it was a prepaid visa, the "feature" of it was that I could recharge it in an hour or less (the time a bitcoin transaction was confirmed).
  - cm2187 9y ago
    The problems you are describing have nothing to do with Fiat currency but with the quality of the service offered by your bank. My bank shows me all pending payments live.
    - oelmekki 9y ago
      Certainly, it's a banking problem. My problem was not to list pending transactions, though, it was not knowing how much I could use at any given moment with my card (because it's unrelated to my balance). The cryptocurrency part was to allow for fast reload (due to fast transfers), but anything that allows this (without hitting an other card rate limit, obviously) would do.
smsm42 9y ago
There is a measure of self-serving here, to be sure. But there's also a major point often ignored by people who emphasize technology over sociology - money, and economics in general, is a social thing. It's not the technology, the technology is a tool, the society, the decisions taken by people and their interaction is what makes economy. And laws is the distillation of what society thinks about it. Surely, new technologies influence decisions, and enable new ways of interaction, and laws can be outdated. But ignoring that sphere altogether and claiming since we've got new technology old laws of how money works does not apply anymore is dangerous. A lot of it still does apply. If we ignore that, we get what happened at dotcom boom and then crash - people claimed old rules of economics, supply and demand, scarcity, etc. do not apply anymore - turns out they largely still do. Yes, we've got some new ways to do things, but fundamentally it's still the same story. And it seems to be, the same story with Bitcoin - money do need legal support. Some people - mostly those who live outside the mainstream community - can be ok without it, but vast majority would not be.
prostoalex 9y ago
SEC treats Bitcoin as a commodity, and cryptocurrencies as an asset class. Major banks, investment houses and hedge funds regularly publish [sometimes strongly-worded] opinions on their vision of the specific asset or asset class. If Jamie Dimon made a statement that oil will remain stable, or that aluminum is overpriced and no JP Morgan trader should touch it, would it be viewed through the same lens of grand conspiracy?

cm2187 9y ago

No I think it means you can force someone to take the currency for payment. If I don't want to take bitcoins for payment, no one is going to force me.

weirdstuff 9y ago
Is it illegal for a seller to price something in the U.S. in bitcoin (or a some other form of exchange) and not dollars? If cigarettes became a more attractive medium of exchange, is it illegal to use that medium between two private, consenting parties?
- bmelton 9y ago
  If you'd said toilet paper (or most other things) instead of cigarettes, I think you'd have a different conversation, but as cigarettes are a restricted and specially taxed thing, I suspect that using individual cigarettes as bartering implements is almost certainly taboo.
- cm2187 9y ago
  I believe that's the very definition of legal tender: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender It doesn't prevent you from accepting other means of exchange (though in some countries it does), but it does force you to accept it, even if you don't like it.
  - namelost 9y ago
    Not quite, legal tender means if someone owes you money, you have to accept it.
    - nobodyorother 9y ago
      Not if you're the US government, apparently? Tim DeChristopher spent 21 months in prison despite how he "had raised sufficient funds for an initial payment to the BLM (which the BLM refused to accept)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_DeChristopher#Trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_DeChristopher#Trial (I bring this up because I'd always wondered about how why that case fell out that way, and apparently it can't, per the common meaning of the terms, so my understanding of legal tender seems correct?)
- smsm42 9y ago
  You can price anything in anything, nobody prohibits you for exchanging a dining table for a sonnet or a Python script for a set of numbers. Legal tender means if you wanted money, and somebody pays you in US currency, you can not force them to pay in something else. Moreover, if you did agree to write a sonnet as payment, and did not do, and you get sued, and assigned damages - you can pay these damages in US currency and it would be deemed settled. I.e. any debt that is paid in US currency would be considered settled. You can still pay in whatever you like, as long as both parties agree.
oelmekki 9y ago
Fiat, while in a way better shape on that part, is not perfect either. I don't know for other countries, but here in france we have three means of payment : payment cards, paychecks and cash. Cash is annoying to manage because of its fixed values, always having to deal with rest and counting. Paychecks, you never know if a merchant will accept them (it's more and more rare). payment cards have weekly rate limits, and we have no mean to know before paying for something how close you are from it, except if you track every single payment you make. Last year, I tried a bitcoin payment card. It was not practical because of bitcoin volatility, but there was something super cool about it : it was a prepaid rechargeable card that I could recharge in the hour, by sending bitcoins to it. I always knew how much I could use on the card and could basically use everything that was on it, without fearing to hit some obscure limit. This was the perfect payment method for me. I hope we'll have something similar to this but with non volatile currency soon (I know this exists for fiat, but I have to wait like 2 days for a wire transfer to happen, this is not practical).
- owlninja 9y ago
  Like a prepaid Visa or Mastercard?
  - oelmekki 9y ago
    Yep, it was a prepaid visa, the "feature" of it was that I could recharge it in an hour or less (the time a bitcoin transaction was confirmed).
- cm2187 9y ago
  The problems you are describing have nothing to do with Fiat currency but with the quality of the service offered by your bank. My bank shows me all pending payments live.
  - oelmekki 9y ago
    Certainly, it's a banking problem. My problem was not to list pending transactions, though, it was not knowing how much I could use at any given moment with my card (because it's unrelated to my balance). The cryptocurrency part was to allow for fast reload (due to fast transfers), but anything that allows this (without hitting an other card rate limit, obviously) would do.

smsm42 9y ago

There is a measure of self-serving here, to be sure. But there's also a major point often ignored by people who emphasize technology over sociology - money, and economics in general, is a social thing. It's not the technology, the technology is a tool, the society, the decisions taken by people and their interaction is what makes economy. And laws is the distillation of what society thinks about it. Surely, new technologies influence decisions, and enable new ways of interaction, and laws can be outdated. But ignoring that sphere altogether and claiming since we've got new technology old laws of how money works does not apply anymore is dangerous. A lot of it still does apply. If we ignore that, we get what happened at dotcom boom and then crash - people claimed old rules of economics, supply and demand, scarcity, etc. do not apply anymore - turns out they largely still do. Yes, we've got some new ways to do things, but fundamentally it's still the same story. And it seems to be, the same story with Bitcoin - money do need legal support. Some people - mostly those who live outside the mainstream community - can be ok without it, but vast majority would not be.

prostoalex 9y ago

SEC treats Bitcoin as a commodity, and cryptocurrencies as an asset class. Major banks, investment houses and hedge funds regularly publish [sometimes strongly-worded] opinions on their vision of the specific asset or asset class. If Jamie Dimon made a statement that oil will remain stable, or that aluminum is overpriced and no JP Morgan trader should touch it, would it be viewed through the same lens of grand conspiracy?