> You seem confused about a couple of points. Well, I think I misunderstood what you meant by "underground", confused, I wouldn't say I am. > Monetary policy

> You seem confused about a couple of points. Well, I think I misunderstood what you meant by "underground", confused, I wouldn't say I am. > Monetary policy is not a tool to finance government spending. Ok, it is not officially intended to be, sure. > Sure, it might be used for this purpose, but this is not the point of it, ... Here's the problem. In reality, monetary policy is indeed doing exactly that. ECB is currently planning to stop buying up government bonds. Whatever technical term you use for this buying of bonds is irrelevant. Effectively this ECB policy has been supporting the growing national debt of Euro zone states. IMO the actual situation matters more than the theoretical/proclaimed purposes/goals of policies. Yes, the ECB can state "our goal is 2 % inflation". But that statement ought to be a lot less relevant to someone who wants to judge the current state of affairs and make decisions for the future than for example the actual number (inflation). > Second, the underground economy has nothing to do with ecological sustainability or economic degrowth. I read "underground" here as "shrinkage" of the economy. That was a misunderstanding on my part then. To get to your take on this. The claim that Bitcoin would make the "inofficial" sector of the economy grow bigger/worse than it is under the current monetary system is IMO only that, a claim. Sure, some cryptocurrencies provide working privacy. Bitcoin isn't really one of those. I'd be confident that - were Bitcoin to become relevant as some kind of reserve currency - there would be effective measures taken, to make anonymous transactions really difficult if not impossible.