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> I've always found it ironic that the Bitcoin maximalists are themselves advocating for the freedom to print money. What are you talking about? Bitcoin Maxima

> I've always found it ironic that the Bitcoin maximalists are themselves advocating for the freedom to print money. What are you talking about? Bitcoin Maximalism is about no one having the ability to control the money supply.

blurbleblurble 4y ago
Let me articulate cause I hear you in that the most hard core Bitcoin maximalists abhor all shitcoins and would probably be okay with a kind of mandate that Bitcoin and only Bitcoin be legally considered currency. My comment is more about people who say "MMT is bad, here is a list of cryptocurrencies that I consider to be real money." My point is that advocating for the collective freedom to print/burn digital money that competes with government issued money is very similar to MMT in a key way. In my mind MMT is basically the idea that making modifications to money supplies (including both inflating and deflating them) is an appropriate way of getting beneficial civic, geopolitical and socioeconomic change. But of course most MMT assumes centralized and coordinated changes and relies on a premise that the administrators of those changes are trustworthy. By advocating for the freedom of anybody to create a new currency for freedom of choice over what currencies they use, the situation that emerges is effectively a kind of decentralized MMT, where the entirety of the money supply is being modified collectively by peoples' choices, according to their needs and values. A lot of cryptocurrency people seem to have this imaginary ideal scenario where at some point everything will "switch over" to just a handful of the thousands of existing cryptocurrency/blockchain projects and all of the others will just magically die out... but as long as people advocate for the collective freedom to be able to create and use cryptocurrencies it's gonna effectively be a situation where every single project with a token is literally printing/burning/modifying money and stuff that acts like money, based on their needs and governance structures. And that includes Bitcoin miners. If Bitcoin can be called money they're printing money.
- TimJRobinson 4y ago
  I see what you mean by it's a new money but it isn't really printing any more wealth, they're just saying "this is a better store of value because there isn't a special class of privileged people that get to print money while everyone else suffers". Bitcoin maximalists hate all other cryptos for the same reason, most are just giving money printers to a different group of people. Creating new Bitcoin is more analagous to digging gold than printing, because no one gets to decide how much gets created. The amount that will ever exist is already set and most likely will never change, you just need to invest electricity in fetching it from the ether.
  - MrMan 4y ago
    the money supply in crypto increases across all cryptocurrencies as more are created. so there is no fixed money supply. further, any cryptocurrency which at this moment is deflationary, can decide to become inflationary, and vice versa. there is no way to constrain the economy to availing itself of only the fixed supply of one cryptocurrency like BTC.
    - TimJRobinson 4y ago
      Yea that's exactly the argument behind Bitcoin as a store of wealth - any other currency can change their inflation schedule, Bitcoin will not. It is basically impossible to change bitcoins supply because to change it you have to get at least 50% of the community to agree and that's not happening any time soon, if ever. You can fork Bitcoin but that doesn't create any additional wealth, it's just making more bits that aren't Bitcoin. Some people may value them but they won't have the value of Bitcoin.
      - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
        That's also the argument for gold. It's really hard to change the chemical composition of the earth's crust.

blurbleblurble 4y ago

Let me articulate cause I hear you in that the most hard core Bitcoin maximalists abhor all shitcoins and would probably be okay with a kind of mandate that Bitcoin and only Bitcoin be legally considered currency. My comment is more about people who say "MMT is bad, here is a list of cryptocurrencies that I consider to be real money." My point is that advocating for the collective freedom to print/burn digital money that competes with government issued money is very similar to MMT in a key way. In my mind MMT is basically the idea that making modifications to money supplies (including both inflating and deflating them) is an appropriate way of getting beneficial civic, geopolitical and socioeconomic change. But of course most MMT assumes centralized and coordinated changes and relies on a premise that the administrators of those changes are trustworthy. By advocating for the freedom of anybody to create a new currency for freedom of choice over what currencies they use, the situation that emerges is effectively a kind of decentralized MMT, where the entirety of the money supply is being modified collectively by peoples' choices, according to their needs and values. A lot of cryptocurrency people seem to have this imaginary ideal scenario where at some point everything will "switch over" to just a handful of the thousands of existing cryptocurrency/blockchain projects and all of the others will just magically die out... but as long as people advocate for the collective freedom to be able to create and use cryptocurrencies it's gonna effectively be a situation where every single project with a token is literally printing/burning/modifying money and stuff that acts like money, based on their needs and governance structures. And that includes Bitcoin miners. If Bitcoin can be called money they're printing money.

TimJRobinson 4y ago
I see what you mean by it's a new money but it isn't really printing any more wealth, they're just saying "this is a better store of value because there isn't a special class of privileged people that get to print money while everyone else suffers". Bitcoin maximalists hate all other cryptos for the same reason, most are just giving money printers to a different group of people. Creating new Bitcoin is more analagous to digging gold than printing, because no one gets to decide how much gets created. The amount that will ever exist is already set and most likely will never change, you just need to invest electricity in fetching it from the ether.
- MrMan 4y ago
  the money supply in crypto increases across all cryptocurrencies as more are created. so there is no fixed money supply. further, any cryptocurrency which at this moment is deflationary, can decide to become inflationary, and vice versa. there is no way to constrain the economy to availing itself of only the fixed supply of one cryptocurrency like BTC.
  - TimJRobinson 4y ago
    Yea that's exactly the argument behind Bitcoin as a store of wealth - any other currency can change their inflation schedule, Bitcoin will not. It is basically impossible to change bitcoins supply because to change it you have to get at least 50% of the community to agree and that's not happening any time soon, if ever. You can fork Bitcoin but that doesn't create any additional wealth, it's just making more bits that aren't Bitcoin. Some people may value them but they won't have the value of Bitcoin.
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      That's also the argument for gold. It's really hard to change the chemical composition of the earth's crust.