8 ms·

Ultrasound money cannot be money with a monetary policy on moving sands that can change because Vitalik and his buddies decided it was a fun experiment. Ethere

Ultrasound money cannot be money with a monetary policy on moving sands that can change because Vitalik and his buddies decided it was a fun experiment. Ethereum has demonstrated that its monetary policy wasn't "sound" and that it could be changed way too easily with EIP-1559, and will change again. This meme went so far that people now think it's more than just a stupid meme.

RestlessMind 4y ago
> could be changed way too easily with EIP-1559 Lol you are aware of EIP-1559 and still claim that it happened "too easily".
TimJRobinson 4y ago
All those changes took years to make happen and hundreds of people debated them. All of them have made Ethereum more secure, easier to use, and deflationary.
- lmm 4y ago
  > All those changes took years to make happen and hundreds of people debated them. Sure. But if you want a money system whose policy is based on, well, politics, we already have plenty of very good implementations of those. > All of them have made Ethereum more secure, easier to use, and deflationary. It's too young to say if it's actually deflationary or not. I'm betting on not, because once there is more value leaving the crypto ecosystem than entering it, no force on Earth can stop that from lowering crypto values.
  - TimJRobinson 4y ago
    It's deflationary not in a USD sense but that over time there is less and less ETH because it's being burnt. While almost every other token is printing more. It's not politics, it's discussing technical and economic tradeoffs to make the most secure credible neutral decentralized ledger possible. There are some Bitcoin maximalists that think Satoshi was a god who figured everything out perfectly from inception. To me their insistance on never changing seems more religious than technical. Arguing that an inflationary money is actually a better store of value than a deflationary one is not possible from an economic standpoint so they have to switch to other arguments like "well yea the devs continually made the economics better... But what if they make them worse!" Which isn't based in reality, it's all FUD. There are no further plans to change the economics beyond this point and attempting to change them requires convincing thousands of people that it's a good idea, and it's not a 50% quorum, it's 90%+ because there are many clients written by many different teams that would all have to implement the change.
    - amarant 4y ago
      Inflationary money IS better than deflationary money though. Deflationary money encourages hoarding, and discourages investment in value-producing ventures. Inflationary money does the opposite. If society ran on deflationary money, that would act as a massive brake on the economy, and financial institutions would become risk-averse to the point where loaning money would be nigh on impossible. Deflationary money is only better from a hoarding perspective, and I'd argue that perspective is counter productive for society as a whole.
      - sph 4y ago
        Inflationary currency benefits the wealthy though. If you are rich, you can get loans easily, and it's better to invest your liquid cash and get cheap money on loan, while everybody else has a constantly deflating account. So you get even wealthier. A loan can be seen as a short on the currency. When you take out a loan, you bet that the currency tomorrow will be worth less than today. Which is what happens in an inflationary world. It would not be a problem if everybody could get a loan, but usually loans are directly proportional to wealth. tl;dr: inflationary = good for wealthy people, accumulates money in the hands of the few. Spending is encouraged. Deflationary = good for regular people, companies are loath to invest. Saving is encouraged. There is no free lunch.
        nradov 4y ago
        That is an ahistorical take. Deflationary periods have not generally been good for regular people.
        survirtual 4y ago
        Historically, we have not had worldwide light speed communication available to all, and deflationary currency transmissible at lightspeed absent any central authorities. I think we can take history with a grain of salt here.
        4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- raverbashing 4y ago
  I agree And this is quite the opposite of other maincoins, which don't change while grinding its gears But hey isn't it fun to have a system that gets slower the more people are using it?
- cflynnus 4y ago
  It's not good money if it's properties can be changed, especially it's supply.
  - kaashif 4y ago
    In that case, literally nothing is good money. I'm not sure that's a good definition of good money.
delaaxe 4y ago
A completely unchanging monetary policy is a stupid monetary policy
- rahen 4y ago
  Except monetary policies _are_ the problem. Bitcoin has a simple policy: no one, not even Satoshi, can change the rules.
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    But the rules can be dumb. The exponential decay of rewards is, in my opinion, wildly unethical and leads to great harm. It permanently creates a system of haves and have-nots. That a system that cannot be changed is not in any way evidence that the system is good. We could imagine an alternative system that Satoshi programmed that, once per year, chose 5% of wallets at random and marked those coins as invalid, permanently destroying them. That would be an unchangeable system but it would also be idiotic. Just because there isn't a bureaucrat does not mean that there is no policy.
  - tempestn 4y ago
    Can you expand on that first line? What is the problem that's inherent in monetary policies?
    - rahen 4y ago
      This could be a nice introduction to the topic: https://mises.org/library/what-has-government-done-our-money https://mises.org/library/what-has-government-done-our-money
      - tempestn 4y ago
        Could you summarize? I read the introduction there, but am not planning to buy the book. The intro there hints toward a theory with this: > The book also made huge theoretical advances. Rothbard was the first to prove that the government, and only the government, can destroy money on a mass scale, and he showed exactly how they go about this dirty deed. But just as importantly, it is beautifully written. He tells a thrilling story because he loves the subject so much. > The passion that Murray feels for the topic comes through in the prose and transfers to the reader. Readers become excited about the subject, and tell others. Students tell professors. Some, like the great Ron Paul of Texas, have even run for political office after having read it. It seems obvious to me that only the government can destroy (and indeed create) money, but I'm not sure how someone could claim to be the first to have proven that. From that last line I can infer that the general thrust is libertarian?
nootropicat 4y ago
Eip 1559 saved eth holders billions of dollars. It's not possible to perfectly design a system from the start, and in fact ethereum was explicitly started as a work in progress. Bitcoin would need massive changes to even have a potential to become money. Currently it's the antithesis of money - not backed by anything, in fact the opposite - requires billions per just to function.
dmos62 4y ago
A meme is a unit of cultural information or a unit of imitation. When you call something more than a meme, as weird as it is, you're pretty much saying that it's not a cultural, but a hereditery piece of information (a gene). Calling Ethereum a meme is fine, it is something people do. But, calling it a gene is something else. I don't know that you know what you're saying. To be honest, some of us would prefer if you kept your low effort comments (posted through throw away accounts) to yourself.
mateuszf 4y ago
Very well said.
fallingknife 4y ago
Ultra sound money cannot be money with a monetary policy on moving sands that can change because Jerome Powell and his buddies decided it was a fun experiment... It's true for other reasons, but this ain't it.

RestlessMind 4y ago

> could be changed way too easily with EIP-1559 Lol you are aware of EIP-1559 and still claim that it happened "too easily".

TimJRobinson 4y ago

All those changes took years to make happen and hundreds of people debated them. All of them have made Ethereum more secure, easier to use, and deflationary.

lmm 4y ago
> All those changes took years to make happen and hundreds of people debated them. Sure. But if you want a money system whose policy is based on, well, politics, we already have plenty of very good implementations of those. > All of them have made Ethereum more secure, easier to use, and deflationary. It's too young to say if it's actually deflationary or not. I'm betting on not, because once there is more value leaving the crypto ecosystem than entering it, no force on Earth can stop that from lowering crypto values.
- TimJRobinson 4y ago
  It's deflationary not in a USD sense but that over time there is less and less ETH because it's being burnt. While almost every other token is printing more. It's not politics, it's discussing technical and economic tradeoffs to make the most secure credible neutral decentralized ledger possible. There are some Bitcoin maximalists that think Satoshi was a god who figured everything out perfectly from inception. To me their insistance on never changing seems more religious than technical. Arguing that an inflationary money is actually a better store of value than a deflationary one is not possible from an economic standpoint so they have to switch to other arguments like "well yea the devs continually made the economics better... But what if they make them worse!" Which isn't based in reality, it's all FUD. There are no further plans to change the economics beyond this point and attempting to change them requires convincing thousands of people that it's a good idea, and it's not a 50% quorum, it's 90%+ because there are many clients written by many different teams that would all have to implement the change.
  - amarant 4y ago
    Inflationary money IS better than deflationary money though. Deflationary money encourages hoarding, and discourages investment in value-producing ventures. Inflationary money does the opposite. If society ran on deflationary money, that would act as a massive brake on the economy, and financial institutions would become risk-averse to the point where loaning money would be nigh on impossible. Deflationary money is only better from a hoarding perspective, and I'd argue that perspective is counter productive for society as a whole.
    - sph 4y ago
      Inflationary currency benefits the wealthy though. If you are rich, you can get loans easily, and it's better to invest your liquid cash and get cheap money on loan, while everybody else has a constantly deflating account. So you get even wealthier. A loan can be seen as a short on the currency. When you take out a loan, you bet that the currency tomorrow will be worth less than today. Which is what happens in an inflationary world. It would not be a problem if everybody could get a loan, but usually loans are directly proportional to wealth. tl;dr: inflationary = good for wealthy people, accumulates money in the hands of the few. Spending is encouraged. Deflationary = good for regular people, companies are loath to invest. Saving is encouraged. There is no free lunch.
      - nradov 4y ago
        That is an ahistorical take. Deflationary periods have not generally been good for regular people.
        survirtual 4y ago
        Historically, we have not had worldwide light speed communication available to all, and deflationary currency transmissible at lightspeed absent any central authorities. I think we can take history with a grain of salt here.
        4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
raverbashing 4y ago
I agree And this is quite the opposite of other maincoins, which don't change while grinding its gears But hey isn't it fun to have a system that gets slower the more people are using it?
cflynnus 4y ago
It's not good money if it's properties can be changed, especially it's supply.
- kaashif 4y ago
  In that case, literally nothing is good money. I'm not sure that's a good definition of good money.

delaaxe 4y ago

A completely unchanging monetary policy is a stupid monetary policy

rahen 4y ago
Except monetary policies _are_ the problem. Bitcoin has a simple policy: no one, not even Satoshi, can change the rules.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  But the rules can be dumb. The exponential decay of rewards is, in my opinion, wildly unethical and leads to great harm. It permanently creates a system of haves and have-nots. That a system that cannot be changed is not in any way evidence that the system is good. We could imagine an alternative system that Satoshi programmed that, once per year, chose 5% of wallets at random and marked those coins as invalid, permanently destroying them. That would be an unchangeable system but it would also be idiotic. Just because there isn't a bureaucrat does not mean that there is no policy.
- tempestn 4y ago
  Can you expand on that first line? What is the problem that's inherent in monetary policies?
  - rahen 4y ago
    This could be a nice introduction to the topic: https://mises.org/library/what-has-government-done-our-money https://mises.org/library/what-has-government-done-our-money
    - tempestn 4y ago
      Could you summarize? I read the introduction there, but am not planning to buy the book. The intro there hints toward a theory with this: > The book also made huge theoretical advances. Rothbard was the first to prove that the government, and only the government, can destroy money on a mass scale, and he showed exactly how they go about this dirty deed. But just as importantly, it is beautifully written. He tells a thrilling story because he loves the subject so much. > The passion that Murray feels for the topic comes through in the prose and transfers to the reader. Readers become excited about the subject, and tell others. Students tell professors. Some, like the great Ron Paul of Texas, have even run for political office after having read it. It seems obvious to me that only the government can destroy (and indeed create) money, but I'm not sure how someone could claim to be the first to have proven that. From that last line I can infer that the general thrust is libertarian?

nootropicat 4y ago

Eip 1559 saved eth holders billions of dollars. It's not possible to perfectly design a system from the start, and in fact ethereum was explicitly started as a work in progress. Bitcoin would need massive changes to even have a potential to become money. Currently it's the antithesis of money - not backed by anything, in fact the opposite - requires billions per just to function.

dmos62 4y ago

A meme is a unit of cultural information or a unit of imitation. When you call something more than a meme, as weird as it is, you're pretty much saying that it's not a cultural, but a hereditery piece of information (a gene). Calling Ethereum a meme is fine, it is something people do. But, calling it a gene is something else. I don't know that you know what you're saying. To be honest, some of us would prefer if you kept your low effort comments (posted through throw away accounts) to yourself.

mateuszf 4y ago

Very well said.

fallingknife 4y ago

Ultra sound money cannot be money with a monetary policy on moving sands that can change because Jerome Powell and his buddies decided it was a fun experiment... It's true for other reasons, but this ain't it.