Ask MtGox users what happened with their "currency"... and it's not even a big case in terms of amount of money gone.
The thing is, yesterday I sent USD from US bank to UK and received it in less than 30 seconds paying less than 1% in total on fees (including FX), using Transferwise. Coinbase wants to charge me 4% and will take its time...
A month ago I made a typo when making a transfer. The money bounced back in 3 days. Try sending BTC to your ETH wallet and see what happens.
The problem that cryptocurrencies solve can and is being solved because the technology is at that level now so it's possible. Yeah banks suck, we need new, better banks. Transfers suck, we need more like Transferwise.
Blockchain is a different story though...
Coinbase is FDIC insured and has insurance for Crypto holdings?
Don't use exchanges if you don't like them?
Of course, with bitcoin, ether, and fiat, you don't need a bank. You can always keep your money yourself. Except with bitcoin and ether the ability to secure your own money is much more attainable for average people.
On the flip side, a lot of people conflate trust in web exchanges or bitcoin banks with the stability of the currency itself. Isolated, you have a reason to trust bitcoin way more than any state actor - its math, codified, and nobody can erase it now. On the other hand, state actors have force of violence if anyone breaks the money. If someone breaks bitcoin with an exploit in the blockchain, you are screwed without recourse. At this point, with the amount of participation it has, the bitcoin protocol should be considered robust - but that also is what translates into its valuation. It is only worth so much because it is proven through its long years of use.
Clearly reality is not agreeing with this assessment? As an example of this counter-argumemt : bitcoin.
In a global economy of some 64 trillion, 42 billion (plus the gold and other precious metals, and many other "lack of faith" stores of wealth) is not even a drop in the bucket.
And even at that, you don't have to have no faith in established currencies to also use bitcoin. I personally don't think the banking system in power now will fail any time soon, but I also can recognize how valuable a cryptocurrency would be to replace it.
'Objective amount'? What it is is an amount, and growing, that feel exactly what you imply doesn't exist. There are clearly many people that have lost 'faith' in fiat currencies, or the central banks that manage them, or the economies behind them, or all of these things, to the tune of the market-cap of bitcoin. How more objective an amount can you get than that?
Eh, yeah, good luck with this. Maybe ask the citizens of Cyprus how trusting their government's promise to pay out in full on their bank accounts worked out.
The US banking system is now hugely concentrated, with a huge pile of leveraged derivatives bets being pyramided on top of depositor money. When this unravels in spectacular fashion, the choice will be to print a massive amount of new USD to paper over depositors' losses, or bail-ins. Either one will accelerate adoption of BTC to escape the depredations of fiat currencies controlled by gov't backed banking cartels.
https://bitconnect.co/bitcoin-news/254/bitcoin-millionaires-...
Or are you saying that quantitative easing consolidates wealth? How?
Or are you just inserting an unrelated complaint into the discussion?
It's like you're cheering on an arsonist because after the fire he lit that has burned down your house, he hands you a bucket of urine to help put the fire out.
1. Strawman. It is the concept of value itself that has been perverted through this process.
2. Because organisations (i.e. banks and the owners of their service channels) closer to the feed of treasuries suffer the least of the effects of monetary expansion.
3. I thought we were talking about inflation and bitcoin as a store of value?
Furthermore, I don't know how to make heads nor tails of the statement that the "concept of value itself" has been "perverted". Such a vague and sentimental notion could mean many different things.
The criticism that our economic system aggregates wealth in the hands of a few is valid, but at least the dollar isn't suffering from deflation and extreme volatility, which is what makes it viable as a unit of account (unlike bitcoin). I wasn't considering bitcoins or dollars as stores of value, just as units for measuring value and devices for transmitting it. Maybe at some point bitcoin will overcome these problems, but for now, I'm rather glad a graph of the dollar's value looks nothing like the graph shown in the original comment.
> The US, UK, and Japan are all currently fighting deflation with QE policies, which seem to be working fairly well.
... and I said :
> If by working you mean rapidly transferring wealth into fewer sets of hands, yes.
... and then you said :
> Are you saying that avoiding deflation and volatility is what consolidates wealth?
I was talking about the effect of QE. That effect being the objective fact that money has transferred from people with less to people with more. You were inventing a strawman about the theory that if the people who were doing this didn't get what they wanted, we would have 'deflation and volatility'? Seen the house markets over the past 30 years? Looks pretty volatile to me, so it doesn't sound like whoever is making policy has their fingers on the pulse, do they? Sounds more like a marketing gimmick to me.
I had to write a paragraph of crap to answer a BS premise that had no relationship to the argument at hand. So. Strawman.
> Furthermore, I don't know how to make heads nor tails of the statement that the "concept of value itself" has been "perverted"
Maybe you got fixated on your strawman.
> but at least the dollar isn't suffering from deflation and extreme volatility
Yeah. Theft is much better. Here is a gun to your head. Give me what I want or I pull the trigger. But at least you don't have deflation and volatility. Remind me again... how many people went to prison for the GFC?
Are you saying you don't want to respond, but something forced you?
The saying, "It takes one to know one," seems appropriate here.
Coming out and saying that you "had to write a paragraph of crap to answer a BS premise" is a bit transparent, don't you think? It's a roundabout way of saying, "you're so stupid that I had some kind of moral duty to correct you, which is a waste of my time because I have better things to do." But... why would you call attention to the fact that you have better things to do than argue with me? Isn't that basically the same thing as admitting that you're bad at prioritizing your own time, that you feel compelled on some emotional level to debase yourself by talking with me?
Which brings me to an alternative strategy: if you think someone's wrong, ask questions. Maybe you'll learn something, maybe they'll learn something, and maybe it's just a misunderstanding.
Cryptocurrencies have the latter 2 features sewn-up but there aren't a lot of hard-goods out there that are predominantly priced in crytocurrencies. . . until that happens their valuations will remain volatile.