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This is another one of my pet peeves. So, you think a dollar bill is printed and that's it, there's no ecosystem around it to secure and manage the logistics ar

This is another one of my pet peeves. So, you think a dollar bill is printed and that's it, there's no ecosystem around it to secure and manage the logistics around our current banking system. Sit down and think for a bit before typing out shallow comments like that.

perl4ever 7y ago
One of my pet peeves is when people point out something is not particularly precise and then wave their hands and declare that makes up for three orders of magnitude difference. Of course there is an ecosystem around regular money. There's no way it costs 1,000 times as much per dollar as printing the money, and, the major, universal complaint about bitcoin has been that it doesn't provide an alternative to all of the additional functions of the conventional banking system, so your point seems doubly void to me.
- fredfoobar 7y ago
  what "additional functions" are you referring to? I haven't set foot in a bank in a decade, I need someone to refresh my memory. How can you consider my point "void" if it does provide some of the functions? I can't understand how you can acknowledge the "ecosystem around regular money" and ignore it in the very next sentence and resort to your narrative of "1000 times the cost of printing a dollar", lol! And you complain about hand-waving? italicizing "doesn't" isn't really a way to convince someone about what's missing.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    If a pair of roller skates provides some of the functions of a car, is that a justification for it costing 1,000 times as much as a car? I'm not saying "oh, this is idiotic" because when something seems extremely dumb, often it's just because of some missing context. But you'll have to explain more if I'm going to understand. And I don't understand what you don't understand about the factor of a thousand difference. Do you think that less than $100 in energy is dissipated in order to produce $100 worth of bitcoin, or do you think that the regular financial system costs more than a few pennies to produce and maintain $100? It's true that the cost of printing a $100 bill does not cover all of the functions of the banking system, but it's also true that dollars don't even have to be printed to be used, and those which exist only as ledger entries are far cheaper. So I think 0.1% is more like an upper bound than a lower one.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - fredfoobar 7y ago
      Look, if you really wanted to understand this, you'd be honest in your arguments and present a better understanding than just repeating that it costs pennies to print 100$ (and therefore USD is superior) If it was so easy and cheap to print a 100$, why isn't everyone doing it? Obviously, it's not easy or cheap to do, and it's also illegal. The US govt enforces the legality. So, you should factor in the cost of running the US govt and the cost of enforcing the law through the judicial system. Suppose the US military disappeared overnight, what do you think will happen to the value of the dollar? you most certainly should factor in the cost of running the US army as well. And then the banking ecosystem itself in the US, which is well over 10 trillion $ as of now. The bitcoin ecosystem rolls all of these features into a single concise, self-policed network. I'd much rather have a permission-less SoV that is not controlled/backed by a nation state or a set of corporations (like Libra). 'perl4ever' should've tipped me off, I never learn :(. I don't think I have anymore time to argue with you.
      - perl4ever 7y ago
        "'perl4ever' should've tipped me off, I never learn" I don't use perl any more - I discovered the joy of Visual Basic. :) Anyway, see my other comment about the Federal Reserve. It's not that there are no other costs to maintaining dollars as a currency besides printing the paper money, it's that I think the printing costs obviously dwarf the rest.

perl4ever 7y ago

One of my pet peeves is when people point out something is not particularly precise and then wave their hands and declare that makes up for three orders of magnitude difference. Of course there is an ecosystem around regular money. There's no way it costs 1,000 times as much per dollar as printing the money, and, the major, universal complaint about bitcoin has been that it doesn't provide an alternative to all of the additional functions of the conventional banking system, so your point seems doubly void to me.

fredfoobar 7y ago
what "additional functions" are you referring to? I haven't set foot in a bank in a decade, I need someone to refresh my memory. How can you consider my point "void" if it does provide some of the functions? I can't understand how you can acknowledge the "ecosystem around regular money" and ignore it in the very next sentence and resort to your narrative of "1000 times the cost of printing a dollar", lol! And you complain about hand-waving? italicizing "doesn't" isn't really a way to convince someone about what's missing.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  If a pair of roller skates provides some of the functions of a car, is that a justification for it costing 1,000 times as much as a car? I'm not saying "oh, this is idiotic" because when something seems extremely dumb, often it's just because of some missing context. But you'll have to explain more if I'm going to understand. And I don't understand what you don't understand about the factor of a thousand difference. Do you think that less than $100 in energy is dissipated in order to produce $100 worth of bitcoin, or do you think that the regular financial system costs more than a few pennies to produce and maintain $100? It's true that the cost of printing a $100 bill does not cover all of the functions of the banking system, but it's also true that dollars don't even have to be printed to be used, and those which exist only as ledger entries are far cheaper. So I think 0.1% is more like an upper bound than a lower one.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - fredfoobar 7y ago
    Look, if you really wanted to understand this, you'd be honest in your arguments and present a better understanding than just repeating that it costs pennies to print 100$ (and therefore USD is superior) If it was so easy and cheap to print a 100$, why isn't everyone doing it? Obviously, it's not easy or cheap to do, and it's also illegal. The US govt enforces the legality. So, you should factor in the cost of running the US govt and the cost of enforcing the law through the judicial system. Suppose the US military disappeared overnight, what do you think will happen to the value of the dollar? you most certainly should factor in the cost of running the US army as well. And then the banking ecosystem itself in the US, which is well over 10 trillion $ as of now. The bitcoin ecosystem rolls all of these features into a single concise, self-policed network. I'd much rather have a permission-less SoV that is not controlled/backed by a nation state or a set of corporations (like Libra). 'perl4ever' should've tipped me off, I never learn :(. I don't think I have anymore time to argue with you.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      "'perl4ever' should've tipped me off, I never learn" I don't use perl any more - I discovered the joy of Visual Basic. :) Anyway, see my other comment about the Federal Reserve. It's not that there are no other costs to maintaining dollars as a currency besides printing the paper money, it's that I think the printing costs obviously dwarf the rest.