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Is everyone that uses USD complicit in the actions the US uses to ensure it’s the global default currency? I don’t really think so, so I’m not sure how Bitcoin

Is everyone that uses USD complicit in the actions the US uses to ensure it’s the global default currency? I don’t really think so, so I’m not sure how Bitcoin is functionally any different.

tboyd47 6y ago
Exactly. How many wars started, how many countries destroyed, and how many livelihoods and families ruined for the USD? No one wants to talk about that, yet we are supposed to wring our hands in grief over some extra computers left running. Give me a break.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  > How many wars started, how many countries destroyed, and how many livelihoods and families ruined for the USD? Hmm, let me think. The number of countries that were invaded to prop up the USD was... uh... zero. The US has certainly waged imperialistic wars almost purely for the benefit of its corporations (see, e.g., the Banana Wars), but that has nothing to do with maintaining the power of US currency.
  - leesalminen 6y ago
    The “petro-dollar” concept begs to differ. It postulates that the USD is propped up by continuing the trade of oil for USD. The US ha certainly invaded multiple countries ostensibly for control of their oil.
    - jcranmer 6y ago
      > The US ha certainly invaded multiple countries ostensibly for control of their oil. No it has not. The "multiple countries" of which you likely refer to is in fact two: Iraq and Libya, and the declared reason in neither case involved oil. The US went to war against Iraq ostensibly because of Saddam's WMD programs (which were only later conclusively found not to exist), and the intervention in Libya was at the bequest of the United Nations following the popular revolt and civil war against Muammar Qaddafi, itself largely deriving from similar uprests started after a Tunisian set himself on fire and improbably drove the Tunisian dictator on the exile. In neither case was control of oil a declared reason. And in neither case has control of oil ever been clearly demonstrated to be an actual reason for going to war.
      - lucian1900 6y ago
        Both countries were moving away from trading oil in USD. So is Iran and it’s under constant threat too. Just because the US manufactures some other excuse doesn’t mean it’s true. Why would you believe the invader?
        leesalminen 6y ago
        More recently we’ve seen this behavior with US intervention in Syria. A Biden administration official all but conceded that the US presence in Syria is to control their oil production. https://mobile.twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1191808201177604096 https://mobile.twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/11918082011...
      - leesalminen 6y ago
        > The US went to war against Iraq ostensibly because of Saddam's WMD programs (which were only later conclusively found not to exist) This position assumes the US is completely incompetent and invaded a country for a fake reason. I’d argue that’s nonsense- they knew exactly what they were doing but the reason wasn’t palatable to the American people so they had to fabricate a “better” reason.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - stickfigure 6y ago
    The US military is absolutely required to maintain the value of the USD. If not for the threat of violence, any nation state in the world could print as much USD as they cared. This cost must be taken into account.
    - jcranmer 6y ago
      The problem with the simplistic analysis of "fiat currency maintains its value by the threat of military force" is that actual evidence rather undercuts the theory. The Somali shilling broadly maintained its value for 15 years despite the complete collapse of any effective government, which is precisely the opposite of what Economics 101 would suggest.
      - stickfigure 6y ago
        Even if that was true, do you think it would scale? Let's say that in a sudden fit of consensus, tomorrow, everyone worldwide decided to replace the USD with Somali shillings. How long do you think it would take North Korea to start mass-printing shillings? At any rate, the narrative that the Somali shilling maintained its value is directly contradicted by Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_shilling#Modern_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_shilling#Modern_history It starts with "Following the breakdown in central authority that accompanied the civil war, which began in the early 1990s, the value of the Somali shilling was disrupted" and gets worse from there. The currency became worthless and they dollarized. The only reason the shilling is - very recently! - recovering is because they once again have a central government and a central bank.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dpatru 6y ago
    The US has not fought wars to prop up the dollar. Instead, the strong dollar has enabled the US has been able to pay for its wars by inflation. Had the government been forced to directly tax its citizens to pay for the wars, the wars would not have appeared "cost-free" to the citizens and would have been opposed more. As bitcoin becomes more popular and stable, it's "appreciation" relative the fiat currencies will reveal how much value governments are secretly stealing through inflation.
    - tboyd47 6y ago
      The state protects their printing press. Their printing press funds their wars. The winners and losers both, their children, and grandchildren all pay on the back end, and millions are slaughtered. And I'm supposed to be mad at Bitcoin for some extra computers running. No chance.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > As bitcoin becomes more popular and stable, it's "appreciation" relative the fiat currencies will reveal how much value governments are secretly stealing through inflation. Exactly what goldbugs have always claimed about gold, since fiat currencies displaced commodity representational currencies (particularly gold-denominated) currencies. The thing is, insofar as inflation can be said to “steal” from anything, it's idle holders of dollar-denominated assets. But it's pretty easy to mitigate by moving holdings other than for short-term liquidity into productive assets (which itself promotes real, not merely nominal, economic growth) rather than (or by borrowing against) dollar denominated assets. Meanwhile, it benefits those with dollar denominated liabilities. Mild, slowly changing inflation (volatility in either price or inflation rate is a problem) isn't much of a problem for anyone in practice, and there's a pretty small audience that is receptive to the scare tactic (and Bitcoin fever has already fully reached that audience.)
- Weebs 6y ago
  > How many wars started, how many countries destroyed, and how many livelihoods and families ruined for the USD? No one wants to talk about that That is a huge issue, and I'd love to talk about that. The more people see the world for what it is the better. I don't see how this redirects criticism away from BTC, or how BTC would be immune to the same kind of incentives. The horrendous things that have been done to prop up the USD aren't an inherent property of fiat currency, if an entire nation state had a large stake in BTC would it really be any different? > yet we are supposed to wring our hands in grief over some extra computers left running So the fact that we're using as much energy as an entire developed nation to produce <10 transactions per second isn't concerning?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - tboyd47 6y ago
    Bitcoin is not controlled by any nation state. In fact, it’s decentralized nature makes it useless to them. The reason why the US government is willing to take drastic measures to protect the dollar is not because they own lots of dollars, but because they can exert geopolitical influence and control the international redistribution of wealth through the dollar and its associated payment networks. In fact, the USG does own a nice stack of Bitcoin from the Silk Road seizure, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the intelligence agencies have a secret stash, too. But just owning the asset doesn’t mean they can use it to boss people around. Bitcoin’s payment network is open and free, and its inflation schedule is fixed. The only way the USG could stop it is by making it illegal, and no one knows what the opportunity cost of such a move would be. Transactions per second isn’t a great measuring stick for Bitcoin. I would look at it in terms of savings protected from reckless inflation. If I just throw a number out and say that 50% of Bitcoins have been lost or destroyed, that leaves about $300 billion in value that has been rescued. Is that worth the electricity of a medium sized nation? I don’t know. What if that grows to $3 trillion? Or $300 trillion? How much wealth preserved for future generations is enough to justify the cost?
solosoyokaze 6y ago
Bitcoin is leading a bloodless revolution against the financial and state oligarchs. War is devastating to the environment, we should be thankful that Bitcoin is making the world a more equitable place in a relatively eco friendly way (and definitely more humanitarian). The alternative to Bitcoin isn't Visa, it's bombs and guillotines. We all have a vested interest in seeing Bitcoin succeed.
- new_realist 6y ago
  This is perhaps the dumbest thing I’ve read on the Internet… this week.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  Until you can get the IRS to accept Bitcoin, your plan is dead in the water. I also would like to know what specifically makes Bitcoin the answer, and not some other cryptocurrency.
  - solosoyokaze 6y ago
    The IRS not collecting Bitcoin is a feature, not a bug. The IRS/USD/US military are all one and the same. Bitcoin is politically and socially "cleaner" than USD and other state backed currency because it's not dependent on military oppression. Bitcoin is definitely not the only important crypto. Ethereum, Doge, zCash... all have different roles to play in the ecosystem.
    - rootusrootus 6y ago
      You seem to be under the impression that you can work around the IRS. This may be true to a limited extent if you live outside the U.S.
      - solosoyokaze 6y ago
        That's why I mentioned zCash. It's a better choice for this. That being said, Bitcoin can exist without the IRS. USD cannot.
titzer 6y ago
The link between Bitcoin and carbon emissions is absolutely crystal clear. The USD and American hegemony has a massive tangle of indirect dependencies through governments and bureaucracies, spy agencies, militaries, etc, none of which you can disavow yourself from. Yet you can divest from Bitcoin by simply not buying it. It's the absolute perfect expression of our greed as a species. Ruining the planet for ephemeral bits. Bitcoin might as well be rebranded the "anti carbon offset". You're literally doing nothing but buying into a speculation market that is backed by only bits, and those bits are obtained at the cost of a supremely inefficient cryptographic process which has attracted massive electricity investment simply to make money. It has zero indirect benefit to society.
- fastball 6y ago
  Having a trustless global currency directly benefits society imo. The link between BTC and carbon emissions is absolutely not crystal clear. A significant amount of BTC is mined with renewables. The problem is a dirty grid, not Bitcoin. Green up the grid and how exactly will BTC contribute to CO2 emissions?
  - titzer 6y ago
    > A significant amount of BTC is mined with renewables. Which could be used to replace non-renewable energy usage elsewhere.
    - fastball 6y ago
      This anti-growth mindset is poison. The solution is to add more and more renewables (and nuclear), not to ration electricity.
      - titzer 6y ago
        > This anti-growth mindset is poison. And endless growth is suicide. We could trade absurdist oversimplifications, but the reality is that we live on a finite planet and we are currently in vast ecological overshoot. We need to live within the carrying capacity of the actual world instead of an economics textbook and the stock market that's programmed us to think in quarters and single-year increments. It sounds a lot like we don't share the same urgency about climate change. I won't accuse you of being a denialist but I would encourage you to look at just how deep and fast we need to cut carbon emissions before we just splurge energy on speculation markets like Bitcoin.
Mc_Big_G 6y ago
It's shocking how many people don't even both to consider this when attacking Bitcoin. They will eventually capitulate but the FOMO regret of not having bought in really has people campaigning against Bitcoin.
eeZah7Ux 6y ago
That's quite a big strawman. Not everyone that buys a stolen phone is complicit of theft... but many are. Responsibility comes with deliberate, informed choices.

Is everyone that uses USD complicit in the actions the US uses to ensure it’s the global default currency? I don’t really think so, so I’m not sure how Bitcoin is functionally any different.

tboyd47 6y ago

Exactly. How many wars started, how many countries destroyed, and how many livelihoods and families ruined for the USD? No one wants to talk about that, yet we are supposed to wring our hands in grief over some extra computers left running. Give me a break.

jcranmer 6y ago
> How many wars started, how many countries destroyed, and how many livelihoods and families ruined for the USD? Hmm, let me think. The number of countries that were invaded to prop up the USD was... uh... zero. The US has certainly waged imperialistic wars almost purely for the benefit of its corporations (see, e.g., the Banana Wars), but that has nothing to do with maintaining the power of US currency.
- leesalminen 6y ago
  The “petro-dollar” concept begs to differ. It postulates that the USD is propped up by continuing the trade of oil for USD. The US ha certainly invaded multiple countries ostensibly for control of their oil.
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    > The US ha certainly invaded multiple countries ostensibly for control of their oil. No it has not. The "multiple countries" of which you likely refer to is in fact two: Iraq and Libya, and the declared reason in neither case involved oil. The US went to war against Iraq ostensibly because of Saddam's WMD programs (which were only later conclusively found not to exist), and the intervention in Libya was at the bequest of the United Nations following the popular revolt and civil war against Muammar Qaddafi, itself largely deriving from similar uprests started after a Tunisian set himself on fire and improbably drove the Tunisian dictator on the exile. In neither case was control of oil a declared reason. And in neither case has control of oil ever been clearly demonstrated to be an actual reason for going to war.
    - lucian1900 6y ago
      Both countries were moving away from trading oil in USD. So is Iran and it’s under constant threat too. Just because the US manufactures some other excuse doesn’t mean it’s true. Why would you believe the invader?
      - leesalminen 6y ago
        More recently we’ve seen this behavior with US intervention in Syria. A Biden administration official all but conceded that the US presence in Syria is to control their oil production. https://mobile.twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1191808201177604096 https://mobile.twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/11918082011...
    - leesalminen 6y ago
      > The US went to war against Iraq ostensibly because of Saddam's WMD programs (which were only later conclusively found not to exist) This position assumes the US is completely incompetent and invaded a country for a fake reason. I’d argue that’s nonsense- they knew exactly what they were doing but the reason wasn’t palatable to the American people so they had to fabricate a “better” reason.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- stickfigure 6y ago
  The US military is absolutely required to maintain the value of the USD. If not for the threat of violence, any nation state in the world could print as much USD as they cared. This cost must be taken into account.
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    The problem with the simplistic analysis of "fiat currency maintains its value by the threat of military force" is that actual evidence rather undercuts the theory. The Somali shilling broadly maintained its value for 15 years despite the complete collapse of any effective government, which is precisely the opposite of what Economics 101 would suggest.
    - stickfigure 6y ago
      Even if that was true, do you think it would scale? Let's say that in a sudden fit of consensus, tomorrow, everyone worldwide decided to replace the USD with Somali shillings. How long do you think it would take North Korea to start mass-printing shillings? At any rate, the narrative that the Somali shilling maintained its value is directly contradicted by Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_shilling#Modern_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_shilling#Modern_history It starts with "Following the breakdown in central authority that accompanied the civil war, which began in the early 1990s, the value of the Somali shilling was disrupted" and gets worse from there. The currency became worthless and they dollarized. The only reason the shilling is - very recently! - recovering is because they once again have a central government and a central bank.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dpatru 6y ago
  The US has not fought wars to prop up the dollar. Instead, the strong dollar has enabled the US has been able to pay for its wars by inflation. Had the government been forced to directly tax its citizens to pay for the wars, the wars would not have appeared "cost-free" to the citizens and would have been opposed more. As bitcoin becomes more popular and stable, it's "appreciation" relative the fiat currencies will reveal how much value governments are secretly stealing through inflation.
  - tboyd47 6y ago
    The state protects their printing press. Their printing press funds their wars. The winners and losers both, their children, and grandchildren all pay on the back end, and millions are slaughtered. And I'm supposed to be mad at Bitcoin for some extra computers running. No chance.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > As bitcoin becomes more popular and stable, it's "appreciation" relative the fiat currencies will reveal how much value governments are secretly stealing through inflation. Exactly what goldbugs have always claimed about gold, since fiat currencies displaced commodity representational currencies (particularly gold-denominated) currencies. The thing is, insofar as inflation can be said to “steal” from anything, it's idle holders of dollar-denominated assets. But it's pretty easy to mitigate by moving holdings other than for short-term liquidity into productive assets (which itself promotes real, not merely nominal, economic growth) rather than (or by borrowing against) dollar denominated assets. Meanwhile, it benefits those with dollar denominated liabilities. Mild, slowly changing inflation (volatility in either price or inflation rate is a problem) isn't much of a problem for anyone in practice, and there's a pretty small audience that is receptive to the scare tactic (and Bitcoin fever has already fully reached that audience.)
Weebs 6y ago
> How many wars started, how many countries destroyed, and how many livelihoods and families ruined for the USD? No one wants to talk about that That is a huge issue, and I'd love to talk about that. The more people see the world for what it is the better. I don't see how this redirects criticism away from BTC, or how BTC would be immune to the same kind of incentives. The horrendous things that have been done to prop up the USD aren't an inherent property of fiat currency, if an entire nation state had a large stake in BTC would it really be any different? > yet we are supposed to wring our hands in grief over some extra computers left running So the fact that we're using as much energy as an entire developed nation to produce <10 transactions per second isn't concerning?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tboyd47 6y ago
  Bitcoin is not controlled by any nation state. In fact, it’s decentralized nature makes it useless to them. The reason why the US government is willing to take drastic measures to protect the dollar is not because they own lots of dollars, but because they can exert geopolitical influence and control the international redistribution of wealth through the dollar and its associated payment networks. In fact, the USG does own a nice stack of Bitcoin from the Silk Road seizure, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the intelligence agencies have a secret stash, too. But just owning the asset doesn’t mean they can use it to boss people around. Bitcoin’s payment network is open and free, and its inflation schedule is fixed. The only way the USG could stop it is by making it illegal, and no one knows what the opportunity cost of such a move would be. Transactions per second isn’t a great measuring stick for Bitcoin. I would look at it in terms of savings protected from reckless inflation. If I just throw a number out and say that 50% of Bitcoins have been lost or destroyed, that leaves about $300 billion in value that has been rescued. Is that worth the electricity of a medium sized nation? I don’t know. What if that grows to $3 trillion? Or $300 trillion? How much wealth preserved for future generations is enough to justify the cost?

solosoyokaze 6y ago

Bitcoin is leading a bloodless revolution against the financial and state oligarchs. War is devastating to the environment, we should be thankful that Bitcoin is making the world a more equitable place in a relatively eco friendly way (and definitely more humanitarian). The alternative to Bitcoin isn't Visa, it's bombs and guillotines. We all have a vested interest in seeing Bitcoin succeed.

new_realist 6y ago
This is perhaps the dumbest thing I’ve read on the Internet… this week.
rootusrootus 6y ago
Until you can get the IRS to accept Bitcoin, your plan is dead in the water. I also would like to know what specifically makes Bitcoin the answer, and not some other cryptocurrency.
- solosoyokaze 6y ago
  The IRS not collecting Bitcoin is a feature, not a bug. The IRS/USD/US military are all one and the same. Bitcoin is politically and socially "cleaner" than USD and other state backed currency because it's not dependent on military oppression. Bitcoin is definitely not the only important crypto. Ethereum, Doge, zCash... all have different roles to play in the ecosystem.
  - rootusrootus 6y ago
    You seem to be under the impression that you can work around the IRS. This may be true to a limited extent if you live outside the U.S.
    - solosoyokaze 6y ago
      That's why I mentioned zCash. It's a better choice for this. That being said, Bitcoin can exist without the IRS. USD cannot.

titzer 6y ago

The link between Bitcoin and carbon emissions is absolutely crystal clear. The USD and American hegemony has a massive tangle of indirect dependencies through governments and bureaucracies, spy agencies, militaries, etc, none of which you can disavow yourself from. Yet you can divest from Bitcoin by simply not buying it. It's the absolute perfect expression of our greed as a species. Ruining the planet for ephemeral bits. Bitcoin might as well be rebranded the "anti carbon offset". You're literally doing nothing but buying into a speculation market that is backed by only bits, and those bits are obtained at the cost of a supremely inefficient cryptographic process which has attracted massive electricity investment simply to make money. It has zero indirect benefit to society.

fastball 6y ago
Having a trustless global currency directly benefits society imo. The link between BTC and carbon emissions is absolutely not crystal clear. A significant amount of BTC is mined with renewables. The problem is a dirty grid, not Bitcoin. Green up the grid and how exactly will BTC contribute to CO2 emissions?
- titzer 6y ago
  > A significant amount of BTC is mined with renewables. Which could be used to replace non-renewable energy usage elsewhere.
  - fastball 6y ago
    This anti-growth mindset is poison. The solution is to add more and more renewables (and nuclear), not to ration electricity.
    - titzer 6y ago
      > This anti-growth mindset is poison. And endless growth is suicide. We could trade absurdist oversimplifications, but the reality is that we live on a finite planet and we are currently in vast ecological overshoot. We need to live within the carrying capacity of the actual world instead of an economics textbook and the stock market that's programmed us to think in quarters and single-year increments. It sounds a lot like we don't share the same urgency about climate change. I won't accuse you of being a denialist but I would encourage you to look at just how deep and fast we need to cut carbon emissions before we just splurge energy on speculation markets like Bitcoin.

Mc_Big_G 6y ago

It's shocking how many people don't even both to consider this when attacking Bitcoin. They will eventually capitulate but the FOMO regret of not having bought in really has people campaigning against Bitcoin.

eeZah7Ux 6y ago

That's quite a big strawman. Not everyone that buys a stolen phone is complicit of theft... but many are. Responsibility comes with deliberate, informed choices.