Re:Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attribute...
by handmodel on Thursday April 22, 2021 @01:18AM
(#26899021)
> their value is in your head, or at the tip of the gun, or because you can pay taxes in it or get sent to jail.
These all seem very real. And not something that will disappear (or even drop) if media attention or nerd interest moves elsewhere.
Re:Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attribute...
by paxys on Thursday April 22, 2021 @01:34AM
(#26899104)
A lot of "real" currencies – backed by governments with guns – have disappeared in the past, simply because people stopped believing in them.
Re:Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attribute...
by matheusmoreira on Thursday April 22, 2021 @02:22AM
(#26899396)
Every currency ever created eventually disappeared. Nothing particularly special about them. The only reason people even bothered using them at all was due to government mandate: businesses are required to accept the local currency and taxes can only be paid using it.
Cryptocurrencies exist in a digital and decentralized world. They will outlast governments.
Re:Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attribute...
by dnautics on Thursday April 22, 2021 @01:20AM
(#26899032)
it's not like currencies haven't died before due to international boycott. And even internally there is a breaking point at which a sovereign that loses the confidence of its people is helpless.
That's generally true for all currencies. If everyone suddenly switched to believing "X-sovereign-currency" doesn't do anything but legitimizes that sovereign and has military and human rights costs to maintain the illusion of that legitimacy, its value would plummet.
Currencies are not real, their value is in our collective heads, or at the tip of the gun, or because you can pay taxes in it or get sent to jail. Yes, in general they're nice because it makes transactions less of a pain, but that isn't specifically true for any one currency.