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For his first point "You cannot be cheap and secured by proof-of-work at the same time". The US dollar used to be part of a much more expensive "proof-of-work"
by tuna-piano 12y ago
For his first point "You cannot be cheap and secured by proof-of-work at the same time".
The US dollar used to be part of a much more expensive "proof-of-work", the gold standard. In order to create dollars, someone had to buy expensive mining equipment and spend a ton of time and money physically digging gold out of the ground, melting it, and keeping it safe. Seemed to work out well for a pretty long time.
- ianferrel 12y agoBeing pegged to gold and being secured by gold aren't the same thing. The gold that backed the dollar had already been dug up. It was already in the hands of the government. Whatever the costs were to get it, they were sunk costs based on the value of the gold, not the currency system layered on top of it. The dollar was secured via tricky-to-duplicate printing techniques and police powers.