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Everything wrong with crypto is the notion you can make a global reserve currency impervious to special interests. It’s going to be gamed by the people at the t

Everything wrong with crypto is the notion you can make a global reserve currency impervious to special interests. It’s going to be gamed by the people at the top, they will use all and any leverage to change the code to favor them more. They will extract the value from the system like they have every other system and the easiest part is that stakeholders like you and me don’t get any vote. You can’t decouple monetary policy from governance, it just isn’t sustainable. Fiat will always be better for the stability of finance and governance bc citizens (stakeholders) perceive or have a tiny lever of control. Crypto gives you no control as a citizen, and you will become discontent with the impotence of your lawmakers to pay for laws having no sway over the system preventing them from spending. Keynes hasn’t been disproven yet and so deflationary currencies are pretty much insanity, the business people will turn every deflationary coin into their own inflationary piggy bank. History proves me right. National governments the world over will gladly ban crypto before raising income taxes. They have backed themselves into this corner with the central banks and they won’t be able to resist its ease.

elevenoh 5y ago
>Everything wrong with crypto is the notion you can make a global reserve currency impervious to special interests This ain't binary. Ain't yes or no. Also.. why do you assume crypto is gunning for 'global reserve currency'? Crypto enables all types of experiments toward reducing the insider-asymmetry nature of central control control (e.g. political whim money printing, political whim monetary policy) >Fiat will always be better for the stability of finance and governance bc they perceive or have a tiny lever of control Political, centrally controlled money shifts economic risk from away from markets/market participants (the most efficient distributed value-computation we have) onto politically-determined populations. example: fiat policy shifted 2008 wall street bankruptcy risk away from markets onto ordinary people who're being inflated-away & exploited by the Cantillion Effect.
- birdyrooster 5y ago
  The only reason Michael Saylor is telling people to mortgage their house and sell their stonks to buy BTC is because he and a bunch of other whales are gunning to make BTC the world reserve currency. You see this mentality everywhere and it is the only way these coins are going to go to the moon. Not to mention a lot of these people are libertarians who see this as their way to “fix” the problems of central banks. Certainly our politics leads to the socialization of corporate risk, but crypto is subject to the same politics only with a much smaller pool of voters. Spending on any community at this global scale will be looked at as pork and the needs of disenfranchised will calcify further. Again, it’s code and it’s not immutable. The mechanisms of distributing crypto clients will betray the interests of the common citizen. There is no leverage for commoners, only special interests. Inflation could be used to redistribute wealth for greater equity and the worlds wealthiest see this threat which I think is the only reason crypto has their attention.
  - elevenoh 5y ago
    >but crypto is subject to the same politics only with a much smaller pool of voters Anyone can change the crypto you use if you don't like the mechanisms or decisions. Most can't change their choice of government/monetary policy. Market selection pressure works very well historically. We don't have this without crypto. >The mechanisms of distributing crypto clients will betray the interests of the common citizen. There is no leverage for commoners, only special interests. I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Unclear. >Inflation could be used to redistribute wealth for greater equity and the worlds wealthiest see this threat which I think is the only reason crypto has their attention. Are you aware of the nature of inflation? Of where new money supply 1st hits? of the set of special interests aware of & open-market-front-running impending inflation before it's unanimously decided on? Doesn't seem like it.
    - birdyrooster 5y ago
      > Most can't change their choice of government/monetary policy. > Anyone can change the crypto you use if you don't like the mechanisms or decisions. > Market selection pressure works very well historically. We don't have this without crypto. Even with Crypto you don't have this. Crypto is not legal tender, no one has to accept your dogecoin for debts and the only way you can use it is by traversing exchanges with sufficient volume. Network effect is the strongest power here and corporations will coalesce around a handful of coins and all other coins that don't benefit their political interests will be subject to exchange fees which is a non-trivial headwind. Your proclamation about market selection pressure works great in a vacuum, but ignores the reality of our laws and how cartels work. > I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Unclear. 51% attack without any overt subterfuge. A slow boil of legally bribing and buying the means to define the policy of and to distribute client code which benefits the cartel of exchanges, brokers and miners over the retail user. Once the cartel has sufficient dominance, they can tighten the screws and extract wealth from the retail user. >Are you aware of the nature of inflation? Of where new money supply 1st hits? of the set of special interests aware of & open-market-front-running impending inflation before it's unanimously decided on? Doesn't seem like it. Yes. Yes. Can you ask that again in words I might understand?
  - 5y ago
- lottin 5y ago
  > fiat policy shifted 2008 wall street bankruptcy risk away from markets onto ordinary people who're being inflated-away Do you have any evidence at all about this or are you just parroting Austrian mantras?
sanderjd 5y ago
Nobody* is trying to make ether a global reserve currency. People are trying to do useful things with the ethereum blockchain. * Ok not nobody. But this is not the focus of the project at all.

elevenoh 5y ago

>Everything wrong with crypto is the notion you can make a global reserve currency impervious to special interests This ain't binary. Ain't yes or no. Also.. why do you assume crypto is gunning for 'global reserve currency'? Crypto enables all types of experiments toward reducing the insider-asymmetry nature of central control control (e.g. political whim money printing, political whim monetary policy) >Fiat will always be better for the stability of finance and governance bc they perceive or have a tiny lever of control Political, centrally controlled money shifts economic risk from away from markets/market participants (the most efficient distributed value-computation we have) onto politically-determined populations. example: fiat policy shifted 2008 wall street bankruptcy risk away from markets onto ordinary people who're being inflated-away & exploited by the Cantillion Effect.

birdyrooster 5y ago
The only reason Michael Saylor is telling people to mortgage their house and sell their stonks to buy BTC is because he and a bunch of other whales are gunning to make BTC the world reserve currency. You see this mentality everywhere and it is the only way these coins are going to go to the moon. Not to mention a lot of these people are libertarians who see this as their way to “fix” the problems of central banks. Certainly our politics leads to the socialization of corporate risk, but crypto is subject to the same politics only with a much smaller pool of voters. Spending on any community at this global scale will be looked at as pork and the needs of disenfranchised will calcify further. Again, it’s code and it’s not immutable. The mechanisms of distributing crypto clients will betray the interests of the common citizen. There is no leverage for commoners, only special interests. Inflation could be used to redistribute wealth for greater equity and the worlds wealthiest see this threat which I think is the only reason crypto has their attention.
- elevenoh 5y ago
  >but crypto is subject to the same politics only with a much smaller pool of voters Anyone can change the crypto you use if you don't like the mechanisms or decisions. Most can't change their choice of government/monetary policy. Market selection pressure works very well historically. We don't have this without crypto. >The mechanisms of distributing crypto clients will betray the interests of the common citizen. There is no leverage for commoners, only special interests. I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Unclear. >Inflation could be used to redistribute wealth for greater equity and the worlds wealthiest see this threat which I think is the only reason crypto has their attention. Are you aware of the nature of inflation? Of where new money supply 1st hits? of the set of special interests aware of & open-market-front-running impending inflation before it's unanimously decided on? Doesn't seem like it.
  - birdyrooster 5y ago
    > Most can't change their choice of government/monetary policy. > Anyone can change the crypto you use if you don't like the mechanisms or decisions. > Market selection pressure works very well historically. We don't have this without crypto. Even with Crypto you don't have this. Crypto is not legal tender, no one has to accept your dogecoin for debts and the only way you can use it is by traversing exchanges with sufficient volume. Network effect is the strongest power here and corporations will coalesce around a handful of coins and all other coins that don't benefit their political interests will be subject to exchange fees which is a non-trivial headwind. Your proclamation about market selection pressure works great in a vacuum, but ignores the reality of our laws and how cartels work. > I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Unclear. 51% attack without any overt subterfuge. A slow boil of legally bribing and buying the means to define the policy of and to distribute client code which benefits the cartel of exchanges, brokers and miners over the retail user. Once the cartel has sufficient dominance, they can tighten the screws and extract wealth from the retail user. >Are you aware of the nature of inflation? Of where new money supply 1st hits? of the set of special interests aware of & open-market-front-running impending inflation before it's unanimously decided on? Doesn't seem like it. Yes. Yes. Can you ask that again in words I might understand?
- 5y ago
lottin 5y ago
> fiat policy shifted 2008 wall street bankruptcy risk away from markets onto ordinary people who're being inflated-away Do you have any evidence at all about this or are you just parroting Austrian mantras?

sanderjd 5y ago

Nobody* is trying to make ether a global reserve currency. People are trying to do useful things with the ethereum blockchain. * Ok not nobody. But this is not the focus of the project at all.