You don't understand money – and it's a good thing for Bitcoin

Re:You don't understand money – and it's a good thing for Bi... by einpoklum on Friday November 15, 2019 @03:53PM (#21548656)

> All of the author’s core questions can be answered just as well for coins and notes as they can for bitcoin— Every greenback has a unique serial number, after all.

Most money (specifically, most US dollars) are not in the form of coins or notes. See: https://www.quora.com/How-many-dollars-are-there

~1.4 Trillion USD in notes ~60 Trillion USD total

coins are certainly less than notes, but I'm not sure how much less, so let's guesstimate no more than 0.5 Trillion, and that's a stretch. So, about 97% of money is not in notes and coins.

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Re:You don't understand money – and it's a good thing for Bi... by kd5bjo on Saturday November 16, 2019 @07:36AM (#21552365)

This is certainly true. My point was that I see no evidence that, should bitcoin become mainstream, the situation would be any different- nothing about bitcoin prevents its use as the basis for a credit economy like notes are now and bullion coins were before them.

And it’s the credit that’s making things complicated, not the central banks.

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Re:You don't understand money – and it's a good thing for Bi... by einpoklum on Saturday November 16, 2019 @10:47AM (#21553191)

Bullion is usually not the basis for a credit economy. I remember reading Graeber's "Debt: The First 5000" about this point, but I forget the details. And if we're talking about an "illusory basis" (i.e. much more money than there is bullion) - so in a sense it doesn't matter all that much whether it's Gold or BitCoin. You won't have the distributed nature of BitCoin then, because banks would create "BitCoin-backed credit", i.e. banks create the money.

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