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> 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

by 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.
  - danShumway 5y ago
    > All currencies are dependent on being spendable. Right, and the issue here is that Bitcoin is not spendable without first being converted to a better currency that normal merchants like your grocer will accept. That's Bitcoin's weak point, you clamp down on exchanges and suddenly it can't be used with most merchants. > Involuntary adaptation historically leads to drastic inflation with the trust in the purchasing power degrading. I don't mean to jump between threads here, but didn't you just finish telling me elsewhere that Bitcoin would be accepted once people had no better choice of other currencies to use, and that's why it didn't matter whether or not it was a currently attractive currency for my local grocer? That sounds a lot like involuntary adoption to me.
    - cf141q5325 5y ago
      I can buy drugs and apparently some food deliveries. I get your point but thats just a question of adaptation. To the other point, i described the mechanism of adaptation. If the current mechanism of transfer stops working people historically fall back to anything else that works. They have to use something, trade must go on so they choose the next best thing till something better emerges. The involuntary pressure on the value then starts over when that emerging currency is blocked by force again. Its all just the description of peoples behavior. People dont like loosing money and will act to prevent it.
      - danShumway 5y ago
        > I can buy drugs and apparently some food deliveries. It's not completely clear to me that Bitcoin would even work for drugs or ransomware if those people weren't then converting Bitcoin into local currencies. This argument really undervalues the role that exchanges play in this process. I can earn a dollar, spend it on something, and the person I give it to as payment can spend that same dollar somewhere else. It never really needs to be converted. Sure I can convert that to other currencies if I want or if I'm trying to bridge the gap between economies in different countries, but importantly there's a rather large section of the economy that works just with dollars. That's not really what's happening with Bitcoin even on the drug market. People pay Bitcoin for drugs, that gets mixed up to try and preserve anonymity, and then it gets cashed out into other currencies. > To the other point, i described the mechanism of adaptation. If the current mechanism of transfer stops working people historically fall back to anything else that works. It seems odd to simultaneously say that Bitcoin will be adopted because people won't have any other options (not because they like how it works), and also that people needing to use currencies that they don't trust leads to inflation and economic harm. Do you expect drastic inflation to happen if Bitcoin becomes the only viable currency for people to use?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

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.
- danShumway 5y ago
  > All currencies are dependent on being spendable. Right, and the issue here is that Bitcoin is not spendable without first being converted to a better currency that normal merchants like your grocer will accept. That's Bitcoin's weak point, you clamp down on exchanges and suddenly it can't be used with most merchants. > Involuntary adaptation historically leads to drastic inflation with the trust in the purchasing power degrading. I don't mean to jump between threads here, but didn't you just finish telling me elsewhere that Bitcoin would be accepted once people had no better choice of other currencies to use, and that's why it didn't matter whether or not it was a currently attractive currency for my local grocer? That sounds a lot like involuntary adoption to me.
  - cf141q5325 5y ago
    I can buy drugs and apparently some food deliveries. I get your point but thats just a question of adaptation. To the other point, i described the mechanism of adaptation. If the current mechanism of transfer stops working people historically fall back to anything else that works. They have to use something, trade must go on so they choose the next best thing till something better emerges. The involuntary pressure on the value then starts over when that emerging currency is blocked by force again. Its all just the description of peoples behavior. People dont like loosing money and will act to prevent it.
    - danShumway 5y ago
      > I can buy drugs and apparently some food deliveries. It's not completely clear to me that Bitcoin would even work for drugs or ransomware if those people weren't then converting Bitcoin into local currencies. This argument really undervalues the role that exchanges play in this process. I can earn a dollar, spend it on something, and the person I give it to as payment can spend that same dollar somewhere else. It never really needs to be converted. Sure I can convert that to other currencies if I want or if I'm trying to bridge the gap between economies in different countries, but importantly there's a rather large section of the economy that works just with dollars. That's not really what's happening with Bitcoin even on the drug market. People pay Bitcoin for drugs, that gets mixed up to try and preserve anonymity, and then it gets cashed out into other currencies. > To the other point, i described the mechanism of adaptation. If the current mechanism of transfer stops working people historically fall back to anything else that works. It seems odd to simultaneously say that Bitcoin will be adopted because people won't have any other options (not because they like how it works), and also that people needing to use currencies that they don't trust leads to inflation and economic harm. Do you expect drastic inflation to happen if Bitcoin becomes the only viable currency for people to use?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]