The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

Re:The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of th... by mbrock on Friday December 08, 2017 @11:46AM (#15879973)

Multiple competing privately issued currencies is also a trope of libertarianism; people refer a lot to Hayek's The Denationalization of Money.

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Re:The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of th... by paulgb on Friday December 08, 2017 @03:42PM (#15881869)

I've written about why I think this is a disingenuous comparison: https://paulbutler.org/archives/stop-dragging-hayek-into-bit...

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Re:The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of th... by mbrock on Saturday December 09, 2017 @01:37PM (#15887237)

I don't claim that Bitcoin is a winner according to the criteria set out by Hayek, in fact it's obviously problematic as a unit of account as you explain.

The various decentralized stablecoin projects (disclaimer: I'm involved with one of them, MakerDAO) attempt to create competitive currency as laid out by Hayek, using collateralization and continual supply/demand tweaks to encourage a stable market price.

From that perspective, Bitcoin is indeed more like a trailblazer and a collectible precious metal, and not a serious contender for actual currency status. Still, it seems to have an important role in the ecosystem of denationalized currency.

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