Re:A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
by tim333 on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @08:28AM
(#19198778)
>hedge against mis-management and failure of national currency regimes
At the moment cryptocurrencies seem a good be worse than fiat. Imagine your salary or mortgage was a set number of bitcoins.
There were probably a number of initial uses imagined but if you look as Szabo's twitter pretty much the first link is The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto about circumventing government and libertarian freedom which I think was a big part of the inspiration.
(https://mobile.twitter.com/NickSzabo4/status/107401811082955... )
Re:A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
by SkyMarshal on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @09:58AM
(#19199311)
They’re a hedge in that they have different failure modes than govt fiat, which means they’re a potential safe haven in the event of govt currency collapse/hyperinflation/etc. Which is part of what the cryptoanarchists wanted.
Yes they’re volatile, but they’re new, immature tech, with shallow market depth. None of those things will last forever.
Re:A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
by tim333 on Wednesday February 20, 2019 @06:52AM
(#19207189)
Guess if they become accepted enough. At the moment businesses transacting with iffy countries often do the deal in USD so I guess it could be the new USD maybe.
That wasn't the original use case for crypto. In the bitcoin white paper he mostly talks about micropayments, which bitcoin has ironically failed at.
Re:A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
by Qasaur on Monday February 18, 2019 @06:22PM
(#19195403)
This is wrong. Satoshi Nakamoto was incredibly well-read in the Austrian school and mentions central bank controlled credit bubbles in his whitepaper as well as in many of his online posts on forums. The genesis block is even dedicated to this goal:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block
"The coinbase parameter (seen above in hex) contains, along with the normal data, the following text:
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"
Re:A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
by tim333 on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @08:31AM
(#19198795)
I don't see any mention of credit bubbles in https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
Re:A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
by SkyMarshal on Monday February 18, 2019 @01:57PM
(#19193202)
He covered his bases and talked about everything, but micropayments don’t need expensive decentralization to implement. Incorruptible digital money does.
But national currencies are getting increasingly shaky, even the USD where it appears Congress has no political will to control the US national debt and deficit, and where the GOP blows bigger deficit holes with tax cuts and the Dems are talking about MMT. Not to mention the risks to the Euro and Yuan, along with the many smaller countries with distressed currencies.
It’s interesting to me that cryptocurrrency skeptics and critics seem to regularly ignore this as a use case, when in fact it is the most important one (maybe even the only one). It seems many people can’t bring themselves to believe that modern national currencies can fail and don’t need an independent hedge, even though the 1800s and 1900s were full of exactly that.