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It's fascinating how strongly we believe that now == how things should be. Humans have been using gold as a currency for thousands of years, and yet nowadays ev

It's fascinating how strongly we believe that now == how things should be. Humans have been using gold as a currency for thousands of years, and yet nowadays everyone seems to believe that nothing but state-backed paper can work as such - and anyone who wants (as you said) an apolitical currency is just weird.

twblalock 8y ago
State-backed paper works so much better than gold-backed currency that it's difficult to find economists who advocate returning to the gold standard without being regarded by their colleagues as quacks. Gold currency can hardly be described as apolitical. It has been a major political issue in every country that adopted it. Political issues have included debasement and forgery of coins, bimetallism, deflation vs inflation, the legality of citizens owning bullion, the exchange rate between gold-backed paper money and actual gold, ships sinking while carrying loads of gold, countries stockpiling and transferring large amounts of gold back and forth under the Bretton Woods system, etc. Any "apolitical" system of currency will become political as soon as it is large enough for governments to take notice of it and start trying to regulate it. Any cryptocurrency that has disputes about governance or forking also has politics.
- hndamien 8y ago
  Everything you just listed here seems to have been solved by Bitcoin, including forking politics - which leaves the users in control (albeit with some political influence from lead devs) ultimately this appears to be a fair power distribution as it is economic nodes deciding the current consensus on the rules set - not miners. (For your list - no forgery, no metal debasement, no long term inflation and infinite divisibility, why shouldn't you be able to own real money? Why shouldn't market set exchange rates? No sinking ships, country stockpiling and transferring is all fair game but custody is easy for anybody to take an maintain.
- tboyd47 8y ago
  I think by "apolitical," they are referring to Bitcoin's property of being censorship resistant, not claiming that politics do not apply to it at all. I prefer to call it a "people's currency."
jsgo 8y ago
I personally have no issue with someone wanting "apolitical currency" but it seems silly to chastise (not saying you're doing that here, seems closer to dancing close to that line but not going over) people for preferring the status quo. Why? If someone robs the bank that holds my money, it is insured and it is recovered. If a Mt. Gox happens with crypto, anything I have in it is gone. Also, there's some comfort in a stable currency (perhaps in the long run this would be achievable by a crypto-based currency but in its current iteration, I don't feel that to be true). So grand scheme of things, yeah, there's pros and cons to both. Personally, I'd prefer the vast majority of my currency to be state-backed vs the alternative. Regardless, I think the whole mining thing is consuming resources for consumption's sake so if the various coins that must be mined falter to the point that that behavior goes away, I'd be fine with this.
- leppr 8y ago
  The problem is that people adopting Bitcoin activates at least two defensive behavior triggers in other people (1. devaluation of the fiat currencies they are holding, 2. jealousy towards early adopters getting rich for doing nothing). As such, there are few people that are really neutral on cryptocurrencies and you get the kind of scam talk we see in this thread as popular consensus.
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    In me it triggers loss aversion: I don't want to put my money in a uninsured security that could be stolen or lost at any moment with no recourse.
    - hndamien 8y ago
      Is the cash in your wallet insured? If stolen do you have recourse? Now you might tell me you have no cash for this very reason. That’s fair, but probably similar to the amount of money you should allocate.
      - hannasanarion 8y ago
AlexCoventry 8y ago
To me the key question is whether competitive organizations can form around incentive structures based on a decentralized currency. I think doubts and debate on that question are still reasonable.
- mdpopescu 8y ago
  That is indeed a great question. In general, I have found out that people are extremely inventive when there are profits to be made.
notahacker 8y ago
There's a big difference between thinking an apolitical currency might be a nice thing and thinking current crypto offerings are a viable example of one.

twblalock 8y ago

State-backed paper works so much better than gold-backed currency that it's difficult to find economists who advocate returning to the gold standard without being regarded by their colleagues as quacks. Gold currency can hardly be described as apolitical. It has been a major political issue in every country that adopted it. Political issues have included debasement and forgery of coins, bimetallism, deflation vs inflation, the legality of citizens owning bullion, the exchange rate between gold-backed paper money and actual gold, ships sinking while carrying loads of gold, countries stockpiling and transferring large amounts of gold back and forth under the Bretton Woods system, etc. Any "apolitical" system of currency will become political as soon as it is large enough for governments to take notice of it and start trying to regulate it. Any cryptocurrency that has disputes about governance or forking also has politics.

hndamien 8y ago
Everything you just listed here seems to have been solved by Bitcoin, including forking politics - which leaves the users in control (albeit with some political influence from lead devs) ultimately this appears to be a fair power distribution as it is economic nodes deciding the current consensus on the rules set - not miners. (For your list - no forgery, no metal debasement, no long term inflation and infinite divisibility, why shouldn't you be able to own real money? Why shouldn't market set exchange rates? No sinking ships, country stockpiling and transferring is all fair game but custody is easy for anybody to take an maintain.
tboyd47 8y ago
I think by "apolitical," they are referring to Bitcoin's property of being censorship resistant, not claiming that politics do not apply to it at all. I prefer to call it a "people's currency."

jsgo 8y ago

I personally have no issue with someone wanting "apolitical currency" but it seems silly to chastise (not saying you're doing that here, seems closer to dancing close to that line but not going over) people for preferring the status quo. Why? If someone robs the bank that holds my money, it is insured and it is recovered. If a Mt. Gox happens with crypto, anything I have in it is gone. Also, there's some comfort in a stable currency (perhaps in the long run this would be achievable by a crypto-based currency but in its current iteration, I don't feel that to be true). So grand scheme of things, yeah, there's pros and cons to both. Personally, I'd prefer the vast majority of my currency to be state-backed vs the alternative. Regardless, I think the whole mining thing is consuming resources for consumption's sake so if the various coins that must be mined falter to the point that that behavior goes away, I'd be fine with this.

leppr 8y ago
The problem is that people adopting Bitcoin activates at least two defensive behavior triggers in other people (1. devaluation of the fiat currencies they are holding, 2. jealousy towards early adopters getting rich for doing nothing). As such, there are few people that are really neutral on cryptocurrencies and you get the kind of scam talk we see in this thread as popular consensus.
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  In me it triggers loss aversion: I don't want to put my money in a uninsured security that could be stolen or lost at any moment with no recourse.
  - hndamien 8y ago
    Is the cash in your wallet insured? If stolen do you have recourse? Now you might tell me you have no cash for this very reason. That’s fair, but probably similar to the amount of money you should allocate.
    - hannasanarion 8y ago

AlexCoventry 8y ago

To me the key question is whether competitive organizations can form around incentive structures based on a decentralized currency. I think doubts and debate on that question are still reasonable.

mdpopescu 8y ago
That is indeed a great question. In general, I have found out that people are extremely inventive when there are profits to be made.

notahacker 8y ago

There's a big difference between thinking an apolitical currency might be a nice thing and thinking current crypto offerings are a viable example of one.