4 ms·

Why we should care about this war over the future of money

18 points by rntn 1y ago

absurdo 1y ago
Another article where discussion is engineered. If the article is in any way provoking you to question it in any way and to go down those rabbit holes with preconceived talking points, it’s by design. It’s getting tiresome reading articles where comment sections write themselves. Avoid.
- abnercoimbre 1y ago
  I couldn’t even get past the onslaught of ads on my iphone mini. Nearly crashed the browser.
- calmbonsai 1y ago
  Amen. I read it and regret it.
josefritzishere 1y ago
Crashed my browser. Got some malware on that page I think.
- jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago
  I've known women like that. Your fault for having going in unprotected.
throwaway173738 1y ago
Call me when I can buy a backhoe in bitcoin.
- kurthr 1y ago
  What have you got to hide, that you need a backhoe!? BTW you can borrow my excavator, if you're nearby.
- rib3ye 1y ago
  Never really understood this argument, you just sell the bitcoin in any currency you want in a VERY liquid market. But in 2014, you would have needed 100,000 bitcoins to buy a backhoe. In 2025 you need 1 bitcoin. That should scare you.
  - KetoManx64 1y ago
    Someone that actually understands bitcoin in this thread.
timewizard 1y ago
> The crypto world is buzzing. When isn't it? > they’ll say this is just the beginning of a financial revolution. Any decade now. > between two of the biggest names in finance. Oh, well, now I definitely don't care.
calmbonsai 1y ago
A yes, because I trust the financial acumen of a Gizmodo byline and neither Saylor nor Chanos have credible reputations with expertise in finance. Nice click-bait.
jerf 1y ago
This isn't really about the validity or utility of BitCoin. It's about the financial wisdom of: 1. Buy some BitCoin. 2. Valuate that BitCoin as an asset at well over 100% in value, because the market lets you. 3. Issue stock against your supposed new valuation. 4. GOTO 1 Strategy (previously MicroStrategy) has been taking advantage of the fact that owning 1 BitCoin has caused the market to increase the value of their company by more than one BitCoin's worth, which they then issue stock against. It doesn't matter if BitCoin is the future, this is still going to end in tears. It wouldn't matter what the asset is or how valuable or useful it is... if the market is bonkers enough to value something $YOU buy at 200% of what you paid, simply because $YOU bought it (it's not like the actually become any more valuable when purchased by this company, it's not like an acquisition where there could be synergy of some kind), and then you repeatedly turn that overvaluation into leverage to buy more, the scheme will eventually collapse when the market returns to even a sane 100% valuation. The only thing relevant about BitCoin is that it's on the short list of assets that a good chunk of buyers is willing to valuate at well over 100% just because someone bought it. A number of people are getting in on this game now too and that's going to further dilute this play.
- msgodel 1y ago
  People do the same with realestate via PP&E. I think it says more about the currency the valuation is written in than the underlying. (Not that I'm defending Microstrategy that's obviously insane.)
  - jerf 1y ago
    Yes, strong agree. A properly functioning economy, well, it's probably too strong to say it would never do this, but it shouldn't permit it for years at a time, with all the educated participants in the economy easily able to tell that's what is going on. That this is possible at all doesn't mean the system is broken, but that it is possible at this scale says there is something seriously wrong.
    - msgodel 1y ago
      Short term markets are driven entirely by liquidity, they only approach elastic equilibrium in the limit. Living with this can be painful though. I don't think anyone has serious solutions either other than just waiting for quantitative people to get better at sucking arbitrage out.
SkipperCat 1y ago
Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast just interviewed Jim Chanos about this topic. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2025-06-30/odd-lots-jim-chanos-on-why-the-markets-are-so-weird-podcast https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2025-06-30/odd-lots-jim... If you like a digestible discussion of markets and economics, I highly recommend this episode and all their podcasts.
gman2093 1y ago
I would have considered this article as overly grandiose a year ago. Part of me wonders if there is some possibility that this is becoming a more prevalent thinking. Even if bitcoin crashes to $0.01 USD, it still has some usefulness as a way to transfer value (Western Union's market cap: $2.77 billion). If the mighty dollar eventually falls out of favor, is the volatility enough to drive people away? Can it become a collective delusion to rival gold? For the near and medium term, I think giz user 'curry for breakfast' had a relevant comment: "Money? No, not money, just dollars, and specifically dollars because that's all that are at stake here. The bitcoin bubble could burst tomorrow and the rest of the world, and their currencies, which are backed by their nation's economies, will trundle on as happily as they've always done. The only real losers would be the unlucky crypto gamblers. Wrong bet, wrong time. "
languagehacker 1y ago
I've been waiting for bitcoin to collapse since it started, and books like Number Go Up make an excellent case for why the whole thing is built on a house of cards. And yet, empires are bought and sold off of questionable financial vehicles all the time. Most of it is a ponzi scheme or some other mean grift. The question mostly becomes, how much do you trust the creator of Inspector Gadget and a bit child actor with the guaranteeability of every Tether? The first full-scale run on it that shows an exchange can't be fulfilled in a timely fashion brings the whole enterprise to its knees, right? The problem has now become that enough people think these instruments are legitimate that, like most questionable financial vehicles, when they collapse, some government entity will be required to bail the bad guys out and shift the cost onto anyone who was unlucky enough to be within the blast radius of the whole thing. Which is pretty much all of us at this point, either directly or indirectly.
- specialist 1y ago
  With the race towards quantum supremacy, POW-based cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin) will be broken. Facing default, governments will fast track adoption of QuantumCoin as the reserve currency. What a32z has trademarked as “Web 4.0”. QuantumCoins (qoins) relies on a novel disproof of error algorithm to establish ownership. Somehow, a single qoin captures a unique position of the qubit matrix's superposition. tbh, I don't really understand the maths. I do know the quantum supreme race requires ever more qubits. Smart money is already investing in legendary earth minerals, needed for the superconducting cooling vessels.
  - karmakurtisaani 1y ago
    This is a joke right? Just checking, because it's a good one.
  - KetoManx64 1y ago
    You don't understand how Bitcoin works. Bitcoin is not a static thing. It has forked (changed) multiple times from the date of its inception to update it's code to go in the direction that it's users thought was a better path for it's future. That will happen again once quantum actually starts becoming something to actually worry about.
rib3ye 1y ago
After all these years, people still aren’t accepting the basics of this argument. Using nation-backed currencies, inflation can speed up rapidly — and often does. Money becomes cheaper, and it can lead to economic growth if done well, or economic destruction if done poorly. In a Bitcoin-dominated world, the supply rate slows down as programmed, so it ends up being deflationary and winners take all. So the only factor that decides if Bitcoin is a bubble is whether we take policy action to ban it as an investment product and method of exchange, or we let it replace money on a macro level. To the Americans here: given recent inflation and increasing deficits, the time to decide is NOW. In my view, if you care about 1) national sovereignty or 2) income inequality, the answer is clear that we must take a much stronger step towards censoring Bitcoin on a banking and financial sector level.
- KetoManx64 1y ago
  Bitcoin is the solution to income inequality and taking back national sovereignty from central bankers. Inflation is also a silent, invisible tax on the poor. It quietly eats away at their savings and buying power and ensures they will always be poor. Bitcoin is also the solution to perpetual war. The only reason that WW2 was able to go on for so long was due to all the Western countries leaving the gold standard, and it is the reason that we have perpetual wars in the modern world. Governments just issue more bonds and when those don't sell, they just ask the central banks to buy their bonds. Bitcoin forces countries back into sane policies.
  - rib3ye 1y ago
    Let me say it another way — When the pioneers of the Internet started working on the first protocols, MANY of them thought it would lead to a new area of peace and free-thought. In 2025, many of them now just believe they created a corporate surveillance state. As a former bitcoiner, I challenge any pro-crypto person to start imaging ways it could all go wrong. Or at least make a list of three possible downsides?
    - KetoManx64 1y ago
      It totally can. Governments around the world are trying their damnest to squeeze and crush as many of their citizens liberties as they possibly can. The European Central Bank is poised to push out the digital Euro that will track every single transaction you make and can be set to burn itself in your bank account if you post an anti immigration meme on Facebook. That is the direction the world is going. The only way we are going to protect outselves is ensure that our monetary system is a decentralized, peer to peer, self-governed and un-debankable, so that Corrupt governments do not make us financial slaves for the next 1000 years like in George Orwell's 1984.
tim333 1y ago
I disagree this over the future of money. Bitcoin is a speculative asset and maybe Saylor will continue doing well or maybe not but that's about the future of bitcoin, not money. Saylor's thing is more like borrowing to buy real estate. Maybe you'll get rich, maybe you won't but money will go on as usual.

18 points by rntn 1y ago

Another article where discussion is engineered. If the article is in any way provoking you to question it in any way and to go down those rabbit holes with preconceived talking points, it’s by design. It’s getting tiresome reading articles where comment sections write themselves. Avoid.

abnercoimbre 1y ago
I couldn’t even get past the onslaught of ads on my iphone mini. Nearly crashed the browser.
calmbonsai 1y ago
Amen. I read it and regret it.

josefritzishere 1y ago

Crashed my browser. Got some malware on that page I think.

jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago
I've known women like that. Your fault for having going in unprotected.

throwaway173738 1y ago

Call me when I can buy a backhoe in bitcoin.

kurthr 1y ago
What have you got to hide, that you need a backhoe!? BTW you can borrow my excavator, if you're nearby.
rib3ye 1y ago
Never really understood this argument, you just sell the bitcoin in any currency you want in a VERY liquid market. But in 2014, you would have needed 100,000 bitcoins to buy a backhoe. In 2025 you need 1 bitcoin. That should scare you.
- KetoManx64 1y ago
  Someone that actually understands bitcoin in this thread.

timewizard 1y ago

> The crypto world is buzzing. When isn't it? > they’ll say this is just the beginning of a financial revolution. Any decade now. > between two of the biggest names in finance. Oh, well, now I definitely don't care.

calmbonsai 1y ago

A yes, because I trust the financial acumen of a Gizmodo byline and neither Saylor nor Chanos have credible reputations with expertise in finance. Nice click-bait.

jerf 1y ago

This isn't really about the validity or utility of BitCoin. It's about the financial wisdom of: 1. Buy some BitCoin. 2. Valuate that BitCoin as an asset at well over 100% in value, because the market lets you. 3. Issue stock against your supposed new valuation. 4. GOTO 1 Strategy (previously MicroStrategy) has been taking advantage of the fact that owning 1 BitCoin has caused the market to increase the value of their company by more than one BitCoin's worth, which they then issue stock against. It doesn't matter if BitCoin is the future, this is still going to end in tears. It wouldn't matter what the asset is or how valuable or useful it is... if the market is bonkers enough to value something $YOU buy at 200% of what you paid, simply because $YOU bought it (it's not like the actually become any more valuable when purchased by this company, it's not like an acquisition where there could be synergy of some kind), and then you repeatedly turn that overvaluation into leverage to buy more, the scheme will eventually collapse when the market returns to even a sane 100% valuation. The only thing relevant about BitCoin is that it's on the short list of assets that a good chunk of buyers is willing to valuate at well over 100% just because someone bought it. A number of people are getting in on this game now too and that's going to further dilute this play.

msgodel 1y ago
People do the same with realestate via PP&E. I think it says more about the currency the valuation is written in than the underlying. (Not that I'm defending Microstrategy that's obviously insane.)
- jerf 1y ago
  Yes, strong agree. A properly functioning economy, well, it's probably too strong to say it would never do this, but it shouldn't permit it for years at a time, with all the educated participants in the economy easily able to tell that's what is going on. That this is possible at all doesn't mean the system is broken, but that it is possible at this scale says there is something seriously wrong.
  - msgodel 1y ago
    Short term markets are driven entirely by liquidity, they only approach elastic equilibrium in the limit. Living with this can be painful though. I don't think anyone has serious solutions either other than just waiting for quantitative people to get better at sucking arbitrage out.

SkipperCat 1y ago

Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast just interviewed Jim Chanos about this topic. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2025-06-30/odd-lots-jim-chanos-on-why-the-markets-are-so-weird-podcast https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2025-06-30/odd-lots-jim... If you like a digestible discussion of markets and economics, I highly recommend this episode and all their podcasts.

gman2093 1y ago

I would have considered this article as overly grandiose a year ago. Part of me wonders if there is some possibility that this is becoming a more prevalent thinking. Even if bitcoin crashes to $0.01 USD, it still has some usefulness as a way to transfer value (Western Union's market cap: $2.77 billion). If the mighty dollar eventually falls out of favor, is the volatility enough to drive people away? Can it become a collective delusion to rival gold? For the near and medium term, I think giz user 'curry for breakfast' had a relevant comment: "Money? No, not money, just dollars, and specifically dollars because that's all that are at stake here. The bitcoin bubble could burst tomorrow and the rest of the world, and their currencies, which are backed by their nation's economies, will trundle on as happily as they've always done. The only real losers would be the unlucky crypto gamblers. Wrong bet, wrong time. "

languagehacker 1y ago

I've been waiting for bitcoin to collapse since it started, and books like Number Go Up make an excellent case for why the whole thing is built on a house of cards. And yet, empires are bought and sold off of questionable financial vehicles all the time. Most of it is a ponzi scheme or some other mean grift. The question mostly becomes, how much do you trust the creator of Inspector Gadget and a bit child actor with the guaranteeability of every Tether? The first full-scale run on it that shows an exchange can't be fulfilled in a timely fashion brings the whole enterprise to its knees, right? The problem has now become that enough people think these instruments are legitimate that, like most questionable financial vehicles, when they collapse, some government entity will be required to bail the bad guys out and shift the cost onto anyone who was unlucky enough to be within the blast radius of the whole thing. Which is pretty much all of us at this point, either directly or indirectly.

specialist 1y ago
With the race towards quantum supremacy, POW-based cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin) will be broken. Facing default, governments will fast track adoption of QuantumCoin as the reserve currency. What a32z has trademarked as “Web 4.0”. QuantumCoins (qoins) relies on a novel disproof of error algorithm to establish ownership. Somehow, a single qoin captures a unique position of the qubit matrix's superposition. tbh, I don't really understand the maths. I do know the quantum supreme race requires ever more qubits. Smart money is already investing in legendary earth minerals, needed for the superconducting cooling vessels.
- karmakurtisaani 1y ago
  This is a joke right? Just checking, because it's a good one.
- KetoManx64 1y ago
  You don't understand how Bitcoin works. Bitcoin is not a static thing. It has forked (changed) multiple times from the date of its inception to update it's code to go in the direction that it's users thought was a better path for it's future. That will happen again once quantum actually starts becoming something to actually worry about.

rib3ye 1y ago

After all these years, people still aren’t accepting the basics of this argument. Using nation-backed currencies, inflation can speed up rapidly — and often does. Money becomes cheaper, and it can lead to economic growth if done well, or economic destruction if done poorly. In a Bitcoin-dominated world, the supply rate slows down as programmed, so it ends up being deflationary and winners take all. So the only factor that decides if Bitcoin is a bubble is whether we take policy action to ban it as an investment product and method of exchange, or we let it replace money on a macro level. To the Americans here: given recent inflation and increasing deficits, the time to decide is NOW. In my view, if you care about 1) national sovereignty or 2) income inequality, the answer is clear that we must take a much stronger step towards censoring Bitcoin on a banking and financial sector level.

KetoManx64 1y ago
Bitcoin is the solution to income inequality and taking back national sovereignty from central bankers. Inflation is also a silent, invisible tax on the poor. It quietly eats away at their savings and buying power and ensures they will always be poor. Bitcoin is also the solution to perpetual war. The only reason that WW2 was able to go on for so long was due to all the Western countries leaving the gold standard, and it is the reason that we have perpetual wars in the modern world. Governments just issue more bonds and when those don't sell, they just ask the central banks to buy their bonds. Bitcoin forces countries back into sane policies.
- rib3ye 1y ago
  Let me say it another way — When the pioneers of the Internet started working on the first protocols, MANY of them thought it would lead to a new area of peace and free-thought. In 2025, many of them now just believe they created a corporate surveillance state. As a former bitcoiner, I challenge any pro-crypto person to start imaging ways it could all go wrong. Or at least make a list of three possible downsides?
  - KetoManx64 1y ago
    It totally can. Governments around the world are trying their damnest to squeeze and crush as many of their citizens liberties as they possibly can. The European Central Bank is poised to push out the digital Euro that will track every single transaction you make and can be set to burn itself in your bank account if you post an anti immigration meme on Facebook. That is the direction the world is going. The only way we are going to protect outselves is ensure that our monetary system is a decentralized, peer to peer, self-governed and un-debankable, so that Corrupt governments do not make us financial slaves for the next 1000 years like in George Orwell's 1984.

tim333 1y ago

I disagree this over the future of money. Bitcoin is a speculative asset and maybe Saylor will continue doing well or maybe not but that's about the future of bitcoin, not money. Saylor's thing is more like borrowing to buy real estate. Maybe you'll get rich, maybe you won't but money will go on as usual.