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The only reason anyone accepts it from you as payment is because they believe one of a million speculating gamblers (who prefer to be called day-traders) will i

The only reason anyone accepts it from you as payment is because they believe one of a million speculating gamblers (who prefer to be called day-traders) will in turn take it off their hands for liquid cash. Also we cannot deny the impact Tether has on propping up all cryptocurrencies by way of printing USD value out of thin air. Imagine using BBBY shares as a store of value and you have pretty much the same situation.

seanw444 2y ago
We haven't hit a tipping point where cryptocurrencies are actually needed for their intended purpose en masse. We live in peace and comfort, and not enough people in the first world are concerned about their digital transactions being used against them. When that changes, we will likely see shift from using bad CCs like Bitcoin for dumb pump and dumps, towards actually-useful CCs like Monero for daily transactions. However, if things change too drastically (the power grid goes down), then CCs are completely useless anyways and we'll be back to bartering. So I'll keep a good stock of Monero, and an even larger stock of things people value in a crisis. Guns, ammo, tools, food, water, medicine.
- popcalc 2y ago
  >bartering A total myth. Only occurs in places where a peg is established to currency outside the environment, e.g. prisons. The very few anthropological examples of bartering occur between travelers who do not meet each other again for mutual fear of jealousy. Debt: The First 5,000 Years is required reading: https://annas-archive.org/md5/af5cf10f842d46b32a893be4ff52ba4d https://annas-archive.org/md5/af5cf10f842d46b32a893be4ff52ba... What happens after apocalypse is people return to providing goods and services on credit. Once every month a communal reckoning brings the community together and debts are cancelled out in a circle. If you have lived in a small eastern-European village filled with hen-farming babushkas, beekeepers and craftsmen as I have in Hungary you will recognize this to an extent even today. The commoner's social life and trade is inexorably linked. Even the wholesale traders who did make use of cash only settled using it once every few weeks or so, reminiscent of the hawala, fei chien (Chinese flying money), and other ancient mirror transfer systems. While debt was nominally denominated in it among peasants, only standing armies (Rome & USA), mercenaries, criminals, and nomadic peoples/traveling merchants ever held on to cash for longer than a moment. Acceptance of money to settle debts is the legitimacy of a state's monopoly on violence expressed in units. Why would I give you a sandwich for your monero in our fallout scenario? Monero is only worth anything today because someone will buy it from you for dollars. Why are dollars worth something? Because the U.S. Gov requires you to accept it for debts and they control the printing of it. If the government loses the ability to enforce that everything reliant on it falls with it. They are able to enforce it by way of the most powerful, violent standing army the world has seen.
  - seanw444 2y ago
    Perhaps I misspoke. In a "fallout scenario", I'm not using Monero. The Monero is for when society is still intact, but no longer trusts the state-sanctioned currency. I don't really know what to say to the bartering point. People want valuable and scarce things they don't have in exchange for valuable and scarce things they do have. How that's a myth to you is beyond me.

seanw444 2y ago

We haven't hit a tipping point where cryptocurrencies are actually needed for their intended purpose en masse. We live in peace and comfort, and not enough people in the first world are concerned about their digital transactions being used against them. When that changes, we will likely see shift from using bad CCs like Bitcoin for dumb pump and dumps, towards actually-useful CCs like Monero for daily transactions. However, if things change too drastically (the power grid goes down), then CCs are completely useless anyways and we'll be back to bartering. So I'll keep a good stock of Monero, and an even larger stock of things people value in a crisis. Guns, ammo, tools, food, water, medicine.

popcalc 2y ago
>bartering A total myth. Only occurs in places where a peg is established to currency outside the environment, e.g. prisons. The very few anthropological examples of bartering occur between travelers who do not meet each other again for mutual fear of jealousy. Debt: The First 5,000 Years is required reading: https://annas-archive.org/md5/af5cf10f842d46b32a893be4ff52ba4d https://annas-archive.org/md5/af5cf10f842d46b32a893be4ff52ba... What happens after apocalypse is people return to providing goods and services on credit. Once every month a communal reckoning brings the community together and debts are cancelled out in a circle. If you have lived in a small eastern-European village filled with hen-farming babushkas, beekeepers and craftsmen as I have in Hungary you will recognize this to an extent even today. The commoner's social life and trade is inexorably linked. Even the wholesale traders who did make use of cash only settled using it once every few weeks or so, reminiscent of the hawala, fei chien (Chinese flying money), and other ancient mirror transfer systems. While debt was nominally denominated in it among peasants, only standing armies (Rome & USA), mercenaries, criminals, and nomadic peoples/traveling merchants ever held on to cash for longer than a moment. Acceptance of money to settle debts is the legitimacy of a state's monopoly on violence expressed in units. Why would I give you a sandwich for your monero in our fallout scenario? Monero is only worth anything today because someone will buy it from you for dollars. Why are dollars worth something? Because the U.S. Gov requires you to accept it for debts and they control the printing of it. If the government loses the ability to enforce that everything reliant on it falls with it. They are able to enforce it by way of the most powerful, violent standing army the world has seen.
- seanw444 2y ago
  Perhaps I misspoke. In a "fallout scenario", I'm not using Monero. The Monero is for when society is still intact, but no longer trusts the state-sanctioned currency. I don't really know what to say to the bartering point. People want valuable and scarce things they don't have in exchange for valuable and scarce things they do have. How that's a myth to you is beyond me.