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Its not any more ephemeral than the money that our government prints. In steemits case, they are the government and can arbitrarily "print" money. If the govern

Its not any more ephemeral than the money that our government prints. In steemits case, they are the government and can arbitrarily "print" money. If the government of steemit crumbles, so will its currency. Just like any other government. Every single currency is ephemeral to some variable degree...

deleted 9y ago
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tdb7893 9y ago
I think the difference is that people don't see USD as ephemeral because the chance of the US government collapsing is about 0 while the chance of a cryptocurrency startup collapsing is definitely much greater than 0
Kelab 9y ago
no they are more decentralized than other cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum
deevolution 9y ago
Holy crap thats alot of downvotes... I mean i was talking ephemeral on a pretty large time scale here, just to clear things up for all the people who apparently believe that USD is an absolute.
neilwilson 9y ago
Nobody is taxing you in Steem. Governments create money so you have the means to pay your tax bill. And by doing that they get you to create and give up real goods and services for the common good. A money system that works to enable transactions is one where hoarding it doesn't really get you anything. In fact it should cost you to hold a rainy day fund - as any insurance should. Cryptocurrencies try and pretend they are electronic gold bars. But they are not. They are ideas with a label on it. Some smart salesman has convinced people that there are only so many ideas with a Bitcoin label and that finite supply will make the price go up. So then people start hoarding them, and transactions for real things start to go down because nobody can get hold of the currency. So then somebody creates the same idea with a different label, which also has a finite supply... Classic fallacy of composition. Finite within the scope of the label, but not between labels. The world's fiat currencies are relative finite between labels - because there are only so many governments - but have a fully dynamic supply within the label. That focusses the currency on transactions, not hoards.

deleted 9y ago

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tdb7893 9y ago

I think the difference is that people don't see USD as ephemeral because the chance of the US government collapsing is about 0 while the chance of a cryptocurrency startup collapsing is definitely much greater than 0

Kelab 9y ago

no they are more decentralized than other cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum

deevolution 9y ago

Holy crap thats alot of downvotes... I mean i was talking ephemeral on a pretty large time scale here, just to clear things up for all the people who apparently believe that USD is an absolute.

neilwilson 9y ago

Nobody is taxing you in Steem. Governments create money so you have the means to pay your tax bill. And by doing that they get you to create and give up real goods and services for the common good. A money system that works to enable transactions is one where hoarding it doesn't really get you anything. In fact it should cost you to hold a rainy day fund - as any insurance should. Cryptocurrencies try and pretend they are electronic gold bars. But they are not. They are ideas with a label on it. Some smart salesman has convinced people that there are only so many ideas with a Bitcoin label and that finite supply will make the price go up. So then people start hoarding them, and transactions for real things start to go down because nobody can get hold of the currency. So then somebody creates the same idea with a different label, which also has a finite supply... Classic fallacy of composition. Finite within the scope of the label, but not between labels. The world's fiat currencies are relative finite between labels - because there are only so many governments - but have a fully dynamic supply within the label. That focusses the currency on transactions, not hoards.