5 ms·

Then you are not the target audience. You want additional safety at the cost of giving up your autonomy. Good luck with that

floodyberry- 5y ago
Exactly! Imagine not wanting to be your own bank or lose your life savings to a buggy contract... pathetic
danShumway 5y ago
If you're trying to build a functional currency, you can't really afford to say that the majority of people earning and spending money are "not the target audience." That's not how currency works, people have to want your coins for you to spend them. At best, having this perspective relegates Bitcoin to be nothing more than a speculative asset/investment. But if you want it to be more than that and you're just scoffing at normal people who point out why they don't want to transact with you, well then... surprise, they won't want to accept your currency for transactions. Popularity actually matters for a currency.
- cf141q5325 5y ago
  Currencies dont really work at the "may the best one win" level, especially with so much political power behind it. You have a dominant one which stays dominant till it implodes. Then people fall back to the next best thing. You dont need to be attractive, it just has to work.
  - danShumway 5y ago
    If your strategy is "we will be the only currency remaining after every other fiat is gone, and then people will use our currency even though they hate it because they have no other option", then I have bad news for you about the future of Bitcoin. If your perspective is that Bitcoin isn't going to be a ubiquitous alternative to the USD for general purchases until after the government collapses and no longer has the political power to prop up the dollar, then I have bad news for you about your currency's usefulness as an anti-authoritarian weapon/tool.
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    How global currencies work past, present, and future by Eichengreen has a good history of currencies (from a European perspective). There were a few times when there were multiple currencies being used, and the ones used were the ones related to the countries who had the largest trade networks / 'colonies'. Of course credit was used a lot as well over long distances so folks didn't have to lug things around (Debt: the first 5,000 years by Graeber). Various cities vied between each other for the most transactions and business; Capitals of capital by Cassis has a modern era history. Before that, gold and silver were often used as lowest common denominators internationally. See The power of gold: the history of an obsession by Bernstein for that. However metals weren't used everywhere: e.g., China used paper currencies for many years, and giant rocks where used in Micronesia: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones Money: the true story of a made-up thing by Goldstein has a good pop-history overview. Power often didn't come into play for currency choice, and neither did things "implode" as opposed to a gradual shifting in preference amongst currency users.
    - cf141q5325 5y ago
      You start with an actual store of value that gets degraded over time through the people holding power over it (think mints). The coin starts with a high silver or gold content and with ever economic woe the ruler finds themselves in a new coin gets minted with some copper and tin added. Or just prints more. Power comes into play as to dictating what currency people are forced to use. That the old coins had to be handed back in or dictating the adaptation. They implode when there is nothing backing it what so ever. At its core its Greshams law at work, with currencies or with other store of values. If i am not mistaken Graeber has quite a few examples of this mechanism.
- stale2002 5y ago
  > That's not how currency works, people have to want your coins for you to spend them. The year is 2011. Visa and Mastercard have denied everyone the ability to donate money to wikileaks, despite the fact that they were not charged with any crimes. And yet, back then, I could still send them bitcoin. So yes, actually, even though only a small subset of people actually used bitcoin (especially back then!), it provided a very real and immediate usecase, for people who wanted to achieve that usecase of sending money to a charity that broke no laws, that the credit card companies were block payments so. Everything that you are saying, is immediately counteracted and proven wrong by actual real world examples of people using crypto currencies.
  - danShumway 5y ago
    People could send Bitcoin to Wikileaks in 2011 because there were mechanisms to turn that Bitcoin back into real money. A point that's been raised multiple times elsewhere on this page is that Bitcoin has no backup strategy for when exchanges start getting targeted. It's not a good anti-authoritarian tool because the ability for it to be converted into a usable form exists at the pleasure of governments, who are increasingly looking at regulating exchanges. Sure, you can send Bitcoin to people who want Bitcoin. Great. The question is, who is going to want Bitcoin under an authoritarian regime if it can't be easily converted into a spendable currency for real goods and services? Does Bitcoin survive when it has to be spendable on its own? Because at that point it's not just Wikileaks that has to accept it, the people/businesses that Wikileaks is buying from and transacting with have to accept it as well. There's a difference between a currency and transfer mechanism. Bitcoin right now works (somewhat, kinda) as a transfer mechanism because exchanges exist and because people trust it as a transfer mechanism for other currencies.
    - cf141q5325 5y ago
      Transfer mechanism are all that any currencies are. All currencies are dependent on being spendable. Thats just a question of adaptation, as in somebody else accepting it in the expectation that it will hold value and be spendable in the future. Involuntary adaptation historically leads to drastic inflation with the trust in the purchasing power degrading. If you are forced to accept it despite low trust, you are motivated to exchange it for any other store of value. And are reluctant to produce stuff for which you have to accept a degrading currency. Both of which harms the actual economy.
mdoms 5y ago
If "most sane people" are not the target audience it makes you wonder who is.

floodyberry- 5y ago

Exactly! Imagine not wanting to be your own bank or lose your life savings to a buggy contract... pathetic

danShumway 5y ago

If you're trying to build a functional currency, you can't really afford to say that the majority of people earning and spending money are "not the target audience." That's not how currency works, people have to want your coins for you to spend them. At best, having this perspective relegates Bitcoin to be nothing more than a speculative asset/investment. But if you want it to be more than that and you're just scoffing at normal people who point out why they don't want to transact with you, well then... surprise, they won't want to accept your currency for transactions. Popularity actually matters for a currency.

cf141q5325 5y ago
Currencies dont really work at the "may the best one win" level, especially with so much political power behind it. You have a dominant one which stays dominant till it implodes. Then people fall back to the next best thing. You dont need to be attractive, it just has to work.
- danShumway 5y ago
  If your strategy is "we will be the only currency remaining after every other fiat is gone, and then people will use our currency even though they hate it because they have no other option", then I have bad news for you about the future of Bitcoin. If your perspective is that Bitcoin isn't going to be a ubiquitous alternative to the USD for general purchases until after the government collapses and no longer has the political power to prop up the dollar, then I have bad news for you about your currency's usefulness as an anti-authoritarian weapon/tool.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  How global currencies work past, present, and future by Eichengreen has a good history of currencies (from a European perspective). There were a few times when there were multiple currencies being used, and the ones used were the ones related to the countries who had the largest trade networks / 'colonies'. Of course credit was used a lot as well over long distances so folks didn't have to lug things around (Debt: the first 5,000 years by Graeber). Various cities vied between each other for the most transactions and business; Capitals of capital by Cassis has a modern era history. Before that, gold and silver were often used as lowest common denominators internationally. See The power of gold: the history of an obsession by Bernstein for that. However metals weren't used everywhere: e.g., China used paper currencies for many years, and giant rocks where used in Micronesia: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones Money: the true story of a made-up thing by Goldstein has a good pop-history overview. Power often didn't come into play for currency choice, and neither did things "implode" as opposed to a gradual shifting in preference amongst currency users.
  - cf141q5325 5y ago
    You start with an actual store of value that gets degraded over time through the people holding power over it (think mints). The coin starts with a high silver or gold content and with ever economic woe the ruler finds themselves in a new coin gets minted with some copper and tin added. Or just prints more. Power comes into play as to dictating what currency people are forced to use. That the old coins had to be handed back in or dictating the adaptation. They implode when there is nothing backing it what so ever. At its core its Greshams law at work, with currencies or with other store of values. If i am not mistaken Graeber has quite a few examples of this mechanism.
stale2002 5y ago
> That's not how currency works, people have to want your coins for you to spend them. The year is 2011. Visa and Mastercard have denied everyone the ability to donate money to wikileaks, despite the fact that they were not charged with any crimes. And yet, back then, I could still send them bitcoin. So yes, actually, even though only a small subset of people actually used bitcoin (especially back then!), it provided a very real and immediate usecase, for people who wanted to achieve that usecase of sending money to a charity that broke no laws, that the credit card companies were block payments so. Everything that you are saying, is immediately counteracted and proven wrong by actual real world examples of people using crypto currencies.
- danShumway 5y ago
  People could send Bitcoin to Wikileaks in 2011 because there were mechanisms to turn that Bitcoin back into real money. A point that's been raised multiple times elsewhere on this page is that Bitcoin has no backup strategy for when exchanges start getting targeted. It's not a good anti-authoritarian tool because the ability for it to be converted into a usable form exists at the pleasure of governments, who are increasingly looking at regulating exchanges. Sure, you can send Bitcoin to people who want Bitcoin. Great. The question is, who is going to want Bitcoin under an authoritarian regime if it can't be easily converted into a spendable currency for real goods and services? Does Bitcoin survive when it has to be spendable on its own? Because at that point it's not just Wikileaks that has to accept it, the people/businesses that Wikileaks is buying from and transacting with have to accept it as well. There's a difference between a currency and transfer mechanism. Bitcoin right now works (somewhat, kinda) as a transfer mechanism because exchanges exist and because people trust it as a transfer mechanism for other currencies.
  - cf141q5325 5y ago
    Transfer mechanism are all that any currencies are. All currencies are dependent on being spendable. Thats just a question of adaptation, as in somebody else accepting it in the expectation that it will hold value and be spendable in the future. Involuntary adaptation historically leads to drastic inflation with the trust in the purchasing power degrading. If you are forced to accept it despite low trust, you are motivated to exchange it for any other store of value. And are reluctant to produce stuff for which you have to accept a degrading currency. Both of which harms the actual economy.

mdoms 5y ago

If "most sane people" are not the target audience it makes you wonder who is.