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Jeezus people have short memories. Bitcoin solved a flotilla of problems that were blockers for an all-digital currency in 2008. The most severe and proven prob
by saul_goodman 6y ago
Jeezus people have short memories. Bitcoin solved a flotilla of problems that were blockers for an all-digital currency in 2008. The most severe and proven problem was the threat of government shutdown by a police raid of your servers, this is what killed E-gold and other predecessors. The blockchain solved the problem of having your central ledger being shutdown by the cops/IRS/etc. by decentralizing it and of course Bitcoin also solved a ton of other problems as well to make it an actual viable electronic cash transaction system. This is why it took off, not just because "it was the first to market". It wasn't, but it solved all of the real-world blockers that had killed all other attempts before it. Don't forget that we don't know for certain who "Satoshi" was and for good reason, he knew he'd have a target painted on his back by the government. He was incredibly smart to conceal his identity.
As a side-bar, a major role of money is to allow the government to easily collect taxes from their citizens and so governments have to be careful here as they must ensure that there are no challengers to their primary form of taxation payment. Bitcoin was very carefully crafted to survive government attack and finally the government accepted it by considering it a taxable commodity. While the early crypto-is-cash people are annoyed by this, it was the only possible outcome in a match between the government and crypto currency that doesn't end in outright warfare on crypto.
Now that digital currencies have moved from theoretical to a proven model people can move on to solving newer problems rather than just getting it off the ground. Now we have privacy coins which attempt to solve the problems of getting anonymous transactions among other desirable features. But wait there's more, now that we don't have to prove that electronic cash is a workable system we have decentralized finance coins now. If people thought the government hated bitcoin, just wait until the banking system realizes defi is coming.
- choward 6y ago> governments have to be careful here as they must ensure that there are no challengers to their primary form of taxation payment Why do they have to be careful? Are they going to magically going to have to start accepting Bitcoin instead of dollars? > Bitcoin was very carefully crafted to survive government attack and finally the government accepted it by considering it a taxable commodity. They still doesn't mean you can pay taxes with it.
- dmingod666 6y agoThey have to be careful because they won't be able to collect taxes. There are 2 types of taxes. Direct and Inflationary. The second one is gone because control of money supply is gone and as far as the first one the govt can trace funds in your bank accounts but it's going to have a really hard time if someone holds crypto currency and is intent on not disclosing their real wealth.
- HeadsUpHigh 6y ago>Why do they have to be careful? Are they going to magically going to have to start accepting Bitcoin instead of dollars? There is zero chance bitcoin with it's current network is every going to be used as money. What might happen however is that more and more transactions could move towards other networks like nano or various stablecoins that are built on top of smart contract platforms. If governments end up issuing a currency that is only useful for tax payments then they have effectively lost control of the monetary policy. And in any case banning crypto will only help towards redirecting monetary flow towards other countries. So in many ways governments' hands are tied in this.