> The Federal Reserve doesn't even publish the amount of M3 money anymore:

except they do. See below.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MABMM301USA657S

I am not anti-crypto. I think in the future most transactions would move there. But the state of the current crypto's won't get us there. If you close your eyes for a min and just think about the .com bust that is exactly what is happening here. I know of companies during that time that had nothing to do with IT and they would just announce that they are investing in IT and there stocks would triple. Read below for similar crypto news.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-18/fintech-m...

> except they do. See below. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MABMM301USA657S

> Source: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development

St Louis fed is publishing third party estimates there, official reporting stopped in 2007.

See this

https://mises.org/library/death-m3-fifth-anniversary

And

https://www.garynorth.com/public/6538.cfm

TLDR:

The end of the first link provides a response from Bernanke which says that the public would still have access to the data but the fed won’t aggregate it and report it. What the OECD does is the aggregation and reporting based on the raw fed data.

The second link provides why the M3 was useless to begin with.

Hmm I'm confused in that case. Did the Fed start publishing it again? The link I provided is to the official Federal Reserve website clearly stating they are discontinuing the publication of M3.

You can't pay your taxes in Bitcoin.

What? That doesn't even make any sense. You can sell the bitcoin for USD then pay your taxes. Just like you can't pay your taxes with 1 billion dollars worth of Facebook stock or gold.

The argument you are looking for is: "USD has value BECAUSE the state makes you pay your taxes in it."

Notice that that argument does not end with, "and this is the only way a commodity or currency can have value." Because there are different reasons that different things have value and more than one thing has value.

Your comment is intellectually lazy and you don't have to believe in crypto to come to this conclusion.

You are assuming his intent without asking, and you are calling that intellectually lazy. What?

You do not pay taxes with bitcoin because the government does not accept it. Simple as that. Not lazy, just fact.

> What? That doesn't even make any sense. You can sell the bitcoin for USD then pay your taxes.

If that's the logic we're going with, I can pay my taxes with baseball cards and beanie babies too.

That's a great analogy, thanks for posting. I'm going to use that. I think it really will help drive home the speculative nature of the markets right now, especially to total newcomers who just want a quick buck.

Actually you can (depending on the place where you live): http://fortune.com/2017/09/12/switzerland-chiasso-bitcoin-ta...

I can't pay my taxes in USD

as you can't pay them with gold..

Gold doesn't claim to be a currency just as real as the Dollar.

You know, I'm willing to bet if you showed up at your local tax collector's with a large enough chunk of gold, they'd work with you.

Yes, but if you showed up in Tax Court with a chunk of gold, you would risk being held in contempt.

A 1-ounce gold coin issued by the US Mint is legal tender to the tune of $50. It says so right on the coin.

If you want to pay your taxes using gold coins, go right ahead. They will gladly accept it.

> Bitcoin is as real as the USD

Not really. The USD is as real as the US government. If the US government collapses I'm not going to trust Bitcoin to save me.