> You just posed a false choice. There are choices besides central authority and gold coins. Any currency in which people have faith and trust can be a legitima

> You just posed a false choice. There are choices besides central authority and gold coins. Any currency in which people have faith and trust can be a legitimate currency on that basis alone. Of course, any currency must earn trust, and Bitcoin is nowhere near earning the public's trust. My point was its equivalent to gold in the fact that it has no central authority controlling the supply. >Let's ask Weimar-era Germans what they think Oh yes, it had nothing to do with the massive amounts of money they were forced to pay in reparations and the rebuilding they had to do. By the way, no one ever said there wasn't a bad way to central bank. My argument is for good central banking, as Bernanke has done. Not the type of shit that Alan Greenspan did. (or the weimar republic). Just like I endorse democracy, but there are plenty of failed democracies. I could just as easily turn your weimar point back at you and say the great depression was because of the gold standard. Because we happened to have a gold standard at the same time. If we had central banking at that point, it could have mitigated a lot of the damage.