7 ms·

This article is knocking down a squadron of strawmen. First off, bitcoins key attribute is not “privacy” but censorship resistance. It’s why wikileaks has been

This article is knocking down a squadron of strawmen. First off, bitcoins key attribute is not “privacy” but censorship resistance. It’s why wikileaks has been able to keep operating all these years after being cancelled by the mainstream payments industry. Not to mention many smaller, politically oppressed activist organizations, and much of the marijuana industry. Secondly, the attributes of money are, according to Rothbard from memory: - hard to counterfeit: bitcoin has this better than anything else. - a store of value (not price stability.): It’s doing this great, just don’t buy late in the post halvining revaluation period. (Bitcoin haters don't seem to know the halvening exists. Bitcoiners are not worried about “price stability”.) - divisible: down to 1/100,000,000 of a bitcoin, further possible with lightning. This rnables micro transactions. - immune to spoilage: bitcoin can’t dissolve in water like salt (a previous form of money) and is quite robust, and can be backed up! - easy to transport: bitcoin can be stored in any number of ways, more portable than paper money even. - fungible: bitcoin is pretty fungible, but anti-freedom forces are trying to change that. - liquid: bitcoin is extremely liquid with a global exchange network and ATMs all over and multiple p2p exchange services like localbitcoins.com to serve even places like the Sudan. Is paypal easy to use in the Sudan? Bitcoin is a more liquid form if money than anything other than the US Dollar and is competitive even there. What bitcoin IS NOT, is a collectible like baseball cards. Baseball cards are absolutely not fungible— that is what makes them collectible! A babe ruth rookie card in mint is worth a lot more than last years random rookie card. The author of this piece doesn’t understand what money is, or why bitcoin is the way it is, which means they haven’t done basic research. I understand, certain people really hate bitcoin— and for good reason. Bitcoin will eventually obsolete the fiat inflation system which has created the wealth inequality in much of the world. The system that lets politicians buy power and escape responsibility for violating rights. Bitcoin destroys the number one tool of human oppression. A tool which, by the way, paid money to indoctrinate people into beliefs that result in them hating bitcoin. But bitcoin isn’t alive. The hate doesn't affect it. Bitcoin is a well constructed set of incentives. Embrace or ignore, your choice.

novok 5y ago
Inequality comes from power, and fiat inflation where power determines who gets the newly printed money is just one form of that. Inequality existed back when money was hard, and it will continue to exist even if another form of digital hard money replaces it. Money is a form of social organization of humans and an information system, and you always have to remember the humans is what keeps the entire thing running.
mrpopo 5y ago
> I understand, certain people really hate bitcoin— and fir good reason. Bitcoin will eventually obsolete the fiat inflation system which has created all the wealth inequality in much of the world. The system that lets politicians buy power and escape responsibility for violating rights. What part of Bitcoin abolishes corruption, power-grabbing and bribes? How would it fix anything you accuse the current system of? Actually, the deflatory effect of Bitcoin is more likely to create the kind of issues you mentioned, as there are historical examples (Great Depression). I "hate" (rather, despise) Bitcoin because it's an obsolete Blockchain technology that uses absurd amounts of energy for the purpose of calculating SHA-1 hashes. There are dozens of other protocols that have taken off, that either don't use POW, or that use POW in a more useful manner.
- cyphertruck 5y ago
  When you cannot rob from the poor via inflation then it becomes harder to oppress them. The Great Depression was caused by the government making gold illegal, effectively confiscating the nations wealth and replacing it with massive fiat inflation. It was a period of monetary inflation that caused and economic contraction. One if the ways inflation is used to indoctrinate people against their best interests is demonizing “deflation” by conflating it with the contraction in the Great Depression. A grandma on fixed income shouldn’t have her prices go up %30 because politicians wanted to spend trillions to pay off bribes, as we have seen in the past year, where our monetary base was increased by $7T (or more) with only a fraction going to benefit Americans. There is nothing yet discovered that can replace proof of work. There are a lot if people selling scams who think proof if work is a weakness, but they are always centralized (ethereum, dash) or PoW masquerading as something else, or simply not a cryptocurrency (ripple).
  - mrpopo 5y ago
    > The Great Depression was caused by the government making gold illegal Look, I'm not going to try to convince you. You're trying to protect your assets by denying reality, maybe you have a family to feed, maybe you just want to go to the moon, whatever. For everyone else, I invite you to study history. The depression happened before anyone touched the gold standard. Countries that abandoned the gold standard earlier have recovered faster. Don't believe me, please read books. Other important note. You can become rich with Bitcoin, yes. Being richer doesn't make you smarter.
cyphertruck 5y ago
I cannot believe I forgot one of the requirements for money. Thst is scarcity. In this regard bitcoin beats everything else, and especially beats baseball cards. Unlimited dollars can be printed and baseball cards rven more so. Gold is genuinely scarce but there is %1 inflation and the asteroid mining risk. Meanwhile bitcoins inflation rate gets cut in half every 4 years until it becomes zero in 2140.
- qwytw 5y ago
  How is having a inherently deflationary currency a positive thing though? That's the worse attribute a currency can have unless your goal is to maximize wealth inequality...
afarrell 5y ago
> the fiat inflation system which has created all the wealth inequality in much of the world. > The system that lets politicians buy power and escape responsibility for violating rights. Wouldn’t it be more energy-efficient to just go back to golden years before William Jennings Bryan’s 1896 presidential campaign? Can you think of historical examples of dramatic wealth inequality or misuse of political power? As surely as the Dalai Llama is Catholic, history shows us that empires and robber-barons were vanishingly rare before Bretton Woods.
- cyphertruck 5y ago
  Your statement about history is probably correct, but I don't agree about energy efficiency. Bitcoin is more energy efficient than gold. Most bitcoin power use is waste power— eg power generated which exceeds instantaneous demand, and bitcoin’s entire power usage is still 1/6th of what is currently thrown away... if bitcoin ever fails to deliver utility beyond its power cost, the network will reduce mining because mining will no longer be profitable. Cheers!
  - mrpopo 5y ago
    What you're saying about bitcoin power use is just not true. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-03-04/china-s-inner-mongolia-declares-war-on-crypto-mining-video https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-03-04/china-s-inn...
rspeele 5y ago
> - immune to spoilage: bitcoin can’t dissolve in water like salt (a previous form of money) and is quite robust, and can be backed up! I presume that in societies that used salt as money, anybody who lost it to "spoilage" was considered to be responsible for their own loss and this was not considered a downside of the salt-based economy. Similar to throwing out a hard drive with your Bitcoin wallet on it, or sending coins to an address nobody has the private key to, or dying without telling anybody how to access your bitcoins.
qwytw 5y ago
- immune to spoilage: bitcoin can’t dissolve in water like salt (a previous form of money) and is quite robust, and can be backed up! This is a very silly claim considering that 20% of all bitcoin is considered to be "lost" and can't be recovered. Due to the nature of bitcoin this figure should reach 100% eventually (of course this would be a very slow process as long as it has a very high price). btw I'm not sure if you're aware but you can actually recover salt which was dissolved in water. Also historically there is no conclusive evidence that salt's use as currency was ever particularly widespread.

novok 5y ago

Inequality comes from power, and fiat inflation where power determines who gets the newly printed money is just one form of that. Inequality existed back when money was hard, and it will continue to exist even if another form of digital hard money replaces it. Money is a form of social organization of humans and an information system, and you always have to remember the humans is what keeps the entire thing running.

mrpopo 5y ago

> I understand, certain people really hate bitcoin— and fir good reason. Bitcoin will eventually obsolete the fiat inflation system which has created all the wealth inequality in much of the world. The system that lets politicians buy power and escape responsibility for violating rights. What part of Bitcoin abolishes corruption, power-grabbing and bribes? How would it fix anything you accuse the current system of? Actually, the deflatory effect of Bitcoin is more likely to create the kind of issues you mentioned, as there are historical examples (Great Depression). I "hate" (rather, despise) Bitcoin because it's an obsolete Blockchain technology that uses absurd amounts of energy for the purpose of calculating SHA-1 hashes. There are dozens of other protocols that have taken off, that either don't use POW, or that use POW in a more useful manner.

cyphertruck 5y ago
When you cannot rob from the poor via inflation then it becomes harder to oppress them. The Great Depression was caused by the government making gold illegal, effectively confiscating the nations wealth and replacing it with massive fiat inflation. It was a period of monetary inflation that caused and economic contraction. One if the ways inflation is used to indoctrinate people against their best interests is demonizing “deflation” by conflating it with the contraction in the Great Depression. A grandma on fixed income shouldn’t have her prices go up %30 because politicians wanted to spend trillions to pay off bribes, as we have seen in the past year, where our monetary base was increased by $7T (or more) with only a fraction going to benefit Americans. There is nothing yet discovered that can replace proof of work. There are a lot if people selling scams who think proof if work is a weakness, but they are always centralized (ethereum, dash) or PoW masquerading as something else, or simply not a cryptocurrency (ripple).
- mrpopo 5y ago
  > The Great Depression was caused by the government making gold illegal Look, I'm not going to try to convince you. You're trying to protect your assets by denying reality, maybe you have a family to feed, maybe you just want to go to the moon, whatever. For everyone else, I invite you to study history. The depression happened before anyone touched the gold standard. Countries that abandoned the gold standard earlier have recovered faster. Don't believe me, please read books. Other important note. You can become rich with Bitcoin, yes. Being richer doesn't make you smarter.

cyphertruck 5y ago

I cannot believe I forgot one of the requirements for money. Thst is scarcity. In this regard bitcoin beats everything else, and especially beats baseball cards. Unlimited dollars can be printed and baseball cards rven more so. Gold is genuinely scarce but there is %1 inflation and the asteroid mining risk. Meanwhile bitcoins inflation rate gets cut in half every 4 years until it becomes zero in 2140.

qwytw 5y ago
How is having a inherently deflationary currency a positive thing though? That's the worse attribute a currency can have unless your goal is to maximize wealth inequality...

afarrell 5y ago

> the fiat inflation system which has created all the wealth inequality in much of the world. > The system that lets politicians buy power and escape responsibility for violating rights. Wouldn’t it be more energy-efficient to just go back to golden years before William Jennings Bryan’s 1896 presidential campaign? Can you think of historical examples of dramatic wealth inequality or misuse of political power? As surely as the Dalai Llama is Catholic, history shows us that empires and robber-barons were vanishingly rare before Bretton Woods.

cyphertruck 5y ago
Your statement about history is probably correct, but I don't agree about energy efficiency. Bitcoin is more energy efficient than gold. Most bitcoin power use is waste power— eg power generated which exceeds instantaneous demand, and bitcoin’s entire power usage is still 1/6th of what is currently thrown away... if bitcoin ever fails to deliver utility beyond its power cost, the network will reduce mining because mining will no longer be profitable. Cheers!
- mrpopo 5y ago
  What you're saying about bitcoin power use is just not true. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-03-04/china-s-inner-mongolia-declares-war-on-crypto-mining-video https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-03-04/china-s-inn...

rspeele 5y ago

> - immune to spoilage: bitcoin can’t dissolve in water like salt (a previous form of money) and is quite robust, and can be backed up! I presume that in societies that used salt as money, anybody who lost it to "spoilage" was considered to be responsible for their own loss and this was not considered a downside of the salt-based economy. Similar to throwing out a hard drive with your Bitcoin wallet on it, or sending coins to an address nobody has the private key to, or dying without telling anybody how to access your bitcoins.

qwytw 5y ago

- immune to spoilage: bitcoin can’t dissolve in water like salt (a previous form of money) and is quite robust, and can be backed up! This is a very silly claim considering that 20% of all bitcoin is considered to be "lost" and can't be recovered. Due to the nature of bitcoin this figure should reach 100% eventually (of course this would be a very slow process as long as it has a very high price). btw I'm not sure if you're aware but you can actually recover salt which was dissolved in water. Also historically there is no conclusive evidence that salt's use as currency was ever particularly widespread.