6 ms·

Wait until you hear about fiat currencies.

l-lousy 5y ago
I think that’s the argument, why move to a whole new currency if it’s more of the same problems with fewer safeguards for the non technical and no way to get lost items back?
- aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
  Why would the poor have wanted to switch to the Internet? After all, it required expensive custom hardware, and know-how. What changed? Have you considered it's just really early days?
  - floodyberry- 5y ago
    "really early days" is an argument that a lot more work is needed, not that everyone should go all in knowing there is going to be a lot of collateral damage along the way even _if_ it works out.
  - Hoasi 5y ago
    > Have you considered it's just really early days? How many years do early days last?
    - aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
      Well, once again, using the Internet as a very easy to reach example....decades?
  - acdha 5y ago
    > Why would the poor have wanted to switch to the Internet? Look at the history and this is easily answered: it let them do things better/easier/cheaper. That could be shopping, accessing government services, dealing with companies, finding a job, seeking educational material, entertainment, dating, connecting with friends and family (email was a pretty sweet alternative to long distance phone calls), etc. The internet picked up sharply as computers came down in price and people tried even cheaper options like WebTV because there was so much demand, and that started happening very quickly. In contrast, cryptocurrency had much lower barriers to entry but despite having at least twice as many years by that point it has very little non-speculative usage because it doesn’t do anything most people care about. Even being a cheaper PayPal/Venmo would be an improvement.
lr4444lr 5y ago
You can pay your taxes, fines, and court ordered debts with fiat currency. It's arguably THE MOST stable thing in a functioning society above pure barter.
- danuker 5y ago
  Try saving for retirement. At 2% inflation (the target rate), after 20 years you'd lose 1 - (.98 ^ 20) = 33.2% of the purchasing power of your savings. But right now, inflation is 7.5% year-over-year. And that's the official measure, which uses "owners' equivalent rent" based on a survey, instead of actual rent prices. In the past 20 years (Jan 2002 - Jan 2022), the CPI went from 177.7 to 281.933, or a 58.6% increase. This means a 2.3% average inflation rate. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/owners-equivalent-rent.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/owners-equivalent-rent....
  - Spoom 5y ago
    This implies that your retirement savings are in cash, which is inaccurate for most folks. And certainly, I'd rather have it invested in the stock market than the wild fluctuations of the crypto market, especially with its uncertain withdrawal ability and complete inability to recover if someone steals it (which is, again, typically much easier with crypto than a brokerage).
    - danuker 5y ago
      The previous comment said cash is stable. I was illustrating that it is stably losing value.
      - kravens_last 5y ago
        Would you rather stably losing purchase power at a predictable pace over time (fiat) or exponentially unstable purchase power in perpetuity (bitcoin)?
  - 5y ago
UncleMeat 5y ago
New things aren't always better. Yes, existing financial systems are terrible. They are rampant with abuse, manipulation, and people converting human behavior into abstract objects that they can gamble on so that they can extract wealth without providing value and they do this to the point that they introduce systemic risk to our entire society. Cryptocurrency is this times 1000. It is the financialization of everything. Instead of mortgages being packaged up into bonds and then derivatives of those bonds, everything gets packaged up into financial instruments and then derivatives of those instruments. Something like ETH makes it very easy to write programs that move tokens that are worth dollars based on inputs taken from the ledger itself. That inevitably encourages a sort of hyper-financial system. That's worse.

I think that’s the argument, why move to a whole new currency if it’s more of the same problems with fewer safeguards for the non technical and no way to get lost items back?

aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
Why would the poor have wanted to switch to the Internet? After all, it required expensive custom hardware, and know-how. What changed? Have you considered it's just really early days?
- floodyberry- 5y ago
  "really early days" is an argument that a lot more work is needed, not that everyone should go all in knowing there is going to be a lot of collateral damage along the way even _if_ it works out.
- Hoasi 5y ago
  > Have you considered it's just really early days? How many years do early days last?
  - aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
    Well, once again, using the Internet as a very easy to reach example....decades?
- acdha 5y ago
  > Why would the poor have wanted to switch to the Internet? Look at the history and this is easily answered: it let them do things better/easier/cheaper. That could be shopping, accessing government services, dealing with companies, finding a job, seeking educational material, entertainment, dating, connecting with friends and family (email was a pretty sweet alternative to long distance phone calls), etc. The internet picked up sharply as computers came down in price and people tried even cheaper options like WebTV because there was so much demand, and that started happening very quickly. In contrast, cryptocurrency had much lower barriers to entry but despite having at least twice as many years by that point it has very little non-speculative usage because it doesn’t do anything most people care about. Even being a cheaper PayPal/Venmo would be an improvement.

lr4444lr 5y ago

You can pay your taxes, fines, and court ordered debts with fiat currency. It's arguably THE MOST stable thing in a functioning society above pure barter.

danuker 5y ago
Try saving for retirement. At 2% inflation (the target rate), after 20 years you'd lose 1 - (.98 ^ 20) = 33.2% of the purchasing power of your savings. But right now, inflation is 7.5% year-over-year. And that's the official measure, which uses "owners' equivalent rent" based on a survey, instead of actual rent prices. In the past 20 years (Jan 2002 - Jan 2022), the CPI went from 177.7 to 281.933, or a 58.6% increase. This means a 2.3% average inflation rate. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/owners-equivalent-rent.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/owners-equivalent-rent....
- Spoom 5y ago
  This implies that your retirement savings are in cash, which is inaccurate for most folks. And certainly, I'd rather have it invested in the stock market than the wild fluctuations of the crypto market, especially with its uncertain withdrawal ability and complete inability to recover if someone steals it (which is, again, typically much easier with crypto than a brokerage).
  - danuker 5y ago
    The previous comment said cash is stable. I was illustrating that it is stably losing value.
    - kravens_last 5y ago
      Would you rather stably losing purchase power at a predictable pace over time (fiat) or exponentially unstable purchase power in perpetuity (bitcoin)?
- 5y ago

UncleMeat 5y ago

New things aren't always better. Yes, existing financial systems are terrible. They are rampant with abuse, manipulation, and people converting human behavior into abstract objects that they can gamble on so that they can extract wealth without providing value and they do this to the point that they introduce systemic risk to our entire society. Cryptocurrency is this times 1000. It is the financialization of everything. Instead of mortgages being packaged up into bonds and then derivatives of those bonds, everything gets packaged up into financial instruments and then derivatives of those instruments. Something like ETH makes it very easy to write programs that move tokens that are worth dollars based on inputs taken from the ledger itself. That inevitably encourages a sort of hyper-financial system. That's worse.