5 ms·

> it's still entirely dependent on trust; if that trust collapses (and it will), its real money value will tank. Just like any fiat currency?

by jmstfv 5y ago

arcticbull 5y ago
This represents a serious misunderstanding of fiat currencies. Fiat currencies are fully backed when issued. When you take out a loan, the bank creates money, hands it to you, and creates a negative entry on their balance sheet. Once you repay your loan, that money evaporates. However, that money when in circulation is backed by the demand for repayment of the loan itself. A fiat currency will only collapse if you lose faith in the state, your fellow humans and the ability of the judicial system to enforce repayment. Once that happens you have much bigger problems. Like Mad Max style problems.
- gruez 5y ago
  >A fiat currency will only collapse if you lose faith in the state and the ability of the judicial system to enforce repayment. It will also collapse if people fear that the government will print too much money.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    People have been afraid of that forever, and yet here we are. It's an issue in poorly managed economies, but of course even in poorly managed economies, you can buy things with it to persist value.
    - randomhodler84 5y ago
      Yeah like Bitcoin. :-)
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        You can substantially only buy drugs directly for Bitcoin - still, to this day. Otherwise you have to exchange it for dollars, the things humans use for payments. This can be done via transparent gateway like Bitpay, but directly exchanging Bitcoin for legal goods and services is still not something you can do. Not least because 4tx/sec wouldn't even service a mid-sized Costco.
        randomhodler84 5y ago
        My goodness Arctic, I don’t think those 2015 era talking points apply anymore. DNMs take monero. Bitcoin, you can buy many many things. And you mention the 4tx/sec thing, you know that payment channels were invented many years ago and are used by WHOLE COUNTRIES today right? We can argue over and over again. The world is changing, moving. We have lost faith in the system. We made our own system.
        aspenmayer 5y ago
        You can buy goods from Amazon with crypto without even having an Amazon account.[0] You are coming off as a motivated detractor, but I don’t find your points timely. They are like 10 years out of date. Crypto works for many real world use cases. You may not know this or agree, but it’s the lived reality of others in this thread. [0] https://purse.io https://purse.io
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        > And you mention the 4tx/sec thing, you know that payment channels were invented many years ago and are used by WHOLE COUNTRIES today right? Really? Name a single one lol. Chivo is a MySQL store. And a garbage one at that. They only use Lightning to transfer value internationally between their own two accounts that they could do instead with an addition and a paired subtraction. Nobody uses Lightning. Nobody's ever used Lightning. Not to mention all the liquidity is provided by 3 centralized entities. [1] I don't think Monero actually offers the level of security that most folks think it does, and Hydra still uses BTC no? I did forget to mention ransomware payments, so thank you. [1] https://bitcoinvisuals.com/lightning https://bitcoinvisuals.com/lightning
        randomhodler84 5y ago
        Again, you are misinformed. Chivo is one wallet. Agree it’s not great but El Salvador vendors hav implemented Point of Sale Lightning Network. It is an open system and you can use one of many mobile LN wallets. Chivo is probably the weakest. You will find that McDonalds, Starbucks, the local fruit vendor on the street can process an open LN tx. No sweat. “Nobody uses it”. Yeah ok. Those graphs indicate non zero channel balances and nodes. Monero still has the 650k bounty on tx de anonymization. If you have a way, feel free to claim it. RW. Sigh.
        arcticbull 5y ago
        Nothing you've said really counters anything I've said lol. > “Nobody uses it”. Yeah ok. Those graphs indicate non zero channel balances and nodes. I didn't see a country come on line in the charts. I see twice as many people using it as 3 years ago and virtually zero increase in usage post-El Salvador. At the end of the day it's boat anchored to a worthless L1 which would require 75 years and ~1/3 of a trillion dollars to open a channel for everyone on earth.
        randomhodler84 5y ago
        You see channels, not users. You see locked funds, not txs. I don’t think you know how this works at all. I think you are being willfully ignorant about this. You said no country uses it: and I said yes they do. You said chivo sucks, I said yeah, but you can use any LN wallet. I don’t know what more I can say. You are living in the past man, making excuses for the Fed and the State. Things have moved on, and I feel like you will be screaming as more nations adopt this. El Salvador is mining BTC from geothermal power from Volcanos.
- jmstfv 5y ago
  > A fiat currency will only collapse if you lose faith in the state and the ability of the judicial system to enforce repayment. My point was that fiat currencies live and die by the trust in governments that issue them. "Full faith and credit".
- bitcoin_anon 5y ago
  > A fiat currency will only collapse if you lose faith in the state, your fellow humans and the ability of the judicial system to enforce repayment. Luckily that never happens. https://morninginvest.com/venezuelas-currency-collapse/ https://morninginvest.com/venezuelas-currency-collapse/
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Wow I had no idea America was in Venezuela. You know they use the USD now right? [1] [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-13/venezuela-plans-to-expand-use-of-foreign-currency-bank-accounts https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-13/venezuela...
    - cfcosta 5y ago
      Not too long ago, Venezuela wasn't Venezuela, and Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world. It can happen, it has happened, and will happen again.
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        Ok, but so what? Why do you think Bitcoin would protect you? Why wouldn't you purchase assets of any sort with money as you receive it? That's the whole point of inflation - to incentivize the purchase of productive assets. Anything could happen at any time. But I don't live my life with a pile of weapons, canned peaches and ammo. That's prepper talk. We have no idea what a hypothetical apocalyptic failed state America looks like. There's no guarantees that there won't be a single entity with more than 50% of the hash power. There's no guarantee that the internet will be up. There's so many things that have to go exactly right to think we'll be trading spreadsheet cells in the apocalypse.
        cfcosta 5y ago
        I don't think anything lel. Not sure why you are so up in arms about this, but that's why you diversify. Also, it's completely opt-in, you don't ever need to buy any Bitcoin if you don't want to. It's going to crash and burn, or prosper on its own merits.
malermeister 5y ago
Did you even read the rest of that post?
- jmstfv 5y ago
  Yes.
katbyte 5y ago
most fiats currencies have a Goverment/military behind them
- jmstfv 5y ago
  How it's going for Venezuelan Bolivar? Zimbabwean Dollar? Argentine Peso?
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Bad governments do bad job, news at 11. The Venezuelans, anyways, have switched to the US dollar. [1] Consider that Iceland has a wonderfully stable currency and no standing army. It's got nothing to do with the army. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-13/venezuela-plans-to-expand-use-of-foreign-currency-bank-accounts https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-13/venezuela...

> it's still entirely dependent on trust; if that trust collapses (and it will), its real money value will tank. Just like any fiat currency?

by jmstfv 5y ago

> it's still entirely dependent on trust; if that trust collapses (and it will), its real money value will tank. Just like any fiat currency?

arcticbull 5y ago

This represents a serious misunderstanding of fiat currencies. Fiat currencies are fully backed when issued. When you take out a loan, the bank creates money, hands it to you, and creates a negative entry on their balance sheet. Once you repay your loan, that money evaporates. However, that money when in circulation is backed by the demand for repayment of the loan itself. A fiat currency will only collapse if you lose faith in the state, your fellow humans and the ability of the judicial system to enforce repayment. Once that happens you have much bigger problems. Like Mad Max style problems.

gruez 5y ago
>A fiat currency will only collapse if you lose faith in the state and the ability of the judicial system to enforce repayment. It will also collapse if people fear that the government will print too much money.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  People have been afraid of that forever, and yet here we are. It's an issue in poorly managed economies, but of course even in poorly managed economies, you can buy things with it to persist value.
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    Yeah like Bitcoin. :-)
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      You can substantially only buy drugs directly for Bitcoin - still, to this day. Otherwise you have to exchange it for dollars, the things humans use for payments. This can be done via transparent gateway like Bitpay, but directly exchanging Bitcoin for legal goods and services is still not something you can do. Not least because 4tx/sec wouldn't even service a mid-sized Costco.
      - randomhodler84 5y ago
        My goodness Arctic, I don’t think those 2015 era talking points apply anymore. DNMs take monero. Bitcoin, you can buy many many things. And you mention the 4tx/sec thing, you know that payment channels were invented many years ago and are used by WHOLE COUNTRIES today right? We can argue over and over again. The world is changing, moving. We have lost faith in the system. We made our own system.
      - aspenmayer 5y ago
        You can buy goods from Amazon with crypto without even having an Amazon account.[0] You are coming off as a motivated detractor, but I don’t find your points timely. They are like 10 years out of date. Crypto works for many real world use cases. You may not know this or agree, but it’s the lived reality of others in this thread. [0] https://purse.io https://purse.io
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      > And you mention the 4tx/sec thing, you know that payment channels were invented many years ago and are used by WHOLE COUNTRIES today right? Really? Name a single one lol. Chivo is a MySQL store. And a garbage one at that. They only use Lightning to transfer value internationally between their own two accounts that they could do instead with an addition and a paired subtraction. Nobody uses Lightning. Nobody's ever used Lightning. Not to mention all the liquidity is provided by 3 centralized entities. [1] I don't think Monero actually offers the level of security that most folks think it does, and Hydra still uses BTC no? I did forget to mention ransomware payments, so thank you. [1] https://bitcoinvisuals.com/lightning https://bitcoinvisuals.com/lightning
      - randomhodler84 5y ago
        Again, you are misinformed. Chivo is one wallet. Agree it’s not great but El Salvador vendors hav implemented Point of Sale Lightning Network. It is an open system and you can use one of many mobile LN wallets. Chivo is probably the weakest. You will find that McDonalds, Starbucks, the local fruit vendor on the street can process an open LN tx. No sweat. “Nobody uses it”. Yeah ok. Those graphs indicate non zero channel balances and nodes. Monero still has the 650k bounty on tx de anonymization. If you have a way, feel free to claim it. RW. Sigh.
        arcticbull 5y ago
        Nothing you've said really counters anything I've said lol. > “Nobody uses it”. Yeah ok. Those graphs indicate non zero channel balances and nodes. I didn't see a country come on line in the charts. I see twice as many people using it as 3 years ago and virtually zero increase in usage post-El Salvador. At the end of the day it's boat anchored to a worthless L1 which would require 75 years and ~1/3 of a trillion dollars to open a channel for everyone on earth.
        randomhodler84 5y ago
        You see channels, not users. You see locked funds, not txs. I don’t think you know how this works at all. I think you are being willfully ignorant about this. You said no country uses it: and I said yes they do. You said chivo sucks, I said yeah, but you can use any LN wallet. I don’t know what more I can say. You are living in the past man, making excuses for the Fed and the State. Things have moved on, and I feel like you will be screaming as more nations adopt this. El Salvador is mining BTC from geothermal power from Volcanos.
jmstfv 5y ago
> A fiat currency will only collapse if you lose faith in the state and the ability of the judicial system to enforce repayment. My point was that fiat currencies live and die by the trust in governments that issue them. "Full faith and credit".
bitcoin_anon 5y ago
> A fiat currency will only collapse if you lose faith in the state, your fellow humans and the ability of the judicial system to enforce repayment. Luckily that never happens. https://morninginvest.com/venezuelas-currency-collapse/ https://morninginvest.com/venezuelas-currency-collapse/
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Wow I had no idea America was in Venezuela. You know they use the USD now right? [1] [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-13/venezuela-plans-to-expand-use-of-foreign-currency-bank-accounts https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-13/venezuela...
  - cfcosta 5y ago
    Not too long ago, Venezuela wasn't Venezuela, and Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world. It can happen, it has happened, and will happen again.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      Ok, but so what? Why do you think Bitcoin would protect you? Why wouldn't you purchase assets of any sort with money as you receive it? That's the whole point of inflation - to incentivize the purchase of productive assets. Anything could happen at any time. But I don't live my life with a pile of weapons, canned peaches and ammo. That's prepper talk. We have no idea what a hypothetical apocalyptic failed state America looks like. There's no guarantees that there won't be a single entity with more than 50% of the hash power. There's no guarantee that the internet will be up. There's so many things that have to go exactly right to think we'll be trading spreadsheet cells in the apocalypse.
      - cfcosta 5y ago
        I don't think anything lel. Not sure why you are so up in arms about this, but that's why you diversify. Also, it's completely opt-in, you don't ever need to buy any Bitcoin if you don't want to. It's going to crash and burn, or prosper on its own merits.

malermeister 5y ago

Did you even read the rest of that post?

jmstfv 5y ago
Yes.

katbyte 5y ago

most fiats currencies have a Goverment/military behind them

jmstfv 5y ago
How it's going for Venezuelan Bolivar? Zimbabwean Dollar? Argentine Peso?
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Bad governments do bad job, news at 11. The Venezuelans, anyways, have switched to the US dollar. [1] Consider that Iceland has a wonderfully stable currency and no standing army. It's got nothing to do with the army. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-13/venezuela-plans-to-expand-use-of-foreign-currency-bank-accounts https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-13/venezuela...