It’s a symptom of the lack of meaningful identities for people to adopt, and the social media push toward outlier-ism (nobody follows a boring father of 2 with a reliable job and a stable marriage) - so they choose trivial things like crypto or wokeness or Q to identify with and be extreme about.

It's striking that although there's a lack of meaningful identities to adopt, the number of shallow identities to choose from is mushrooming. Pursuits that used to be "interests" or "hobbies" (gaming, fandoms, sexual preferences) are converting into identities. What's concerning is that people will aggressively defend identities and turn them into causes, not something we need more of right now.

40 years ago if you fetishised having it off with a toaster and told your mates they made fun of you and/or you got help. Today you tel your mates; they make fun of you, you double down, find the toaster fu*er community online, feel vindicated in your newfound sense of meaning, purpose and belonging and get about defiling kitchen implements

Algorithms that serve you the "most engaging" related content pushes a lot of people to extremes.

Oh you want to eat a little less meat do you? How about you FAST for 18 hours a day and go mega-VEGAN? Oh you want to read an article about Politics? How about you now watch this very well produced documentary on how the government is run by aliens.

I would have at least 10 dollars

If price goes down, just tell everyone to buy the dip.

People like paying each other with Paypal. Unless they don't, and they prefer Zelle. Unless they don't, and they prefer Venmo (which I think is crypto based now). Unless they don't, and they prefer Monero.

Its possible my perspective on this is too moderate, since I'm not a crypto-basher, but also not a huge crypto fan. However, I really don't get the vile hatred for crypto on this site. Some of the crypto currencies are quite good, with the support of privacy, smart contacts, app integrations, etc. For as many people here that enjoy the backup of simple static webpages, sharing of data, etc, I would think a project encouraging data sharing on e.g. ipfs, should be celebrated here.

Instead, if anyone here gets a quick whiff of the word 'crypto' they're quick to dismiss it without ant consideration.

It seems to me that people who don't like crypto are equally as guilty of assigning it to their identity in a religious way.

And where did I do that? I've pointed out that the majority of BTC strength lies in the critical mass of people speculating on it increasing in value and attracting more people in when it does, further inflating the bubble. That's why everyone I know online and IRL bought in, the FOMO when they saw the crazy returns others made (by cashing out into fiat of course so they can actually spend their gains).

>People like paying each other with Paypal. Unless they don't, and they prefer Zelle. Unless they don't, and they prefer Venmo (which I think is crypto based now). Unless they don't, and they prefer Monero.

Please, Paypal and crypto payments are not the same. With Paypal you still pay and receive fiat at both ends of the transaction.

Back to my main point, people keep tooting that BTC is a payment method but I have seen no evidence of mass adoption for that uscase in most of the west and the number of users who actually use BTC for (legitimate) payments is minuscule, due to the high transaction fees and low adoption of it as a payment method, compared to the mass of big and small HODLers that's just using it for speculative gains a.k.a. gambling, gains which are turned back into fiat in order to be spent into the economy, further defeating the point that BTC is a viable currency.

The taxman does not, nor the car dealers, nor real estate agents in my area take BTC payments, only EUR. When that will change then I'll grant you that BTC is more than a FOMO driven speculative pyramid scheme.

It's mostly just the unwillingness to have a moderate view towards these currencies. Everyone on HN seems to have blind hatred steering the discussion, rather than admitting that it may fail, or may become the main transaction currency in the future, or (more likely) somewhere between - such as becoming the major way in which large banks and institutions transfer currency between countries.

It's strange to me that people are using the argument of what behavior of crypto see right now will be how crypto will continue to be used in the far future. Unfortunately it got misconstrued in recent years to be an 'asset' rather than currency, but it's still possible for it to return to being seen as more as currency.

It could remain the same or change - but I don't see why everyone is so hatefully polarized over it.

I gave you my arguments why BTC is now just a Ponzi scheme and not a currency or a good legal payment system, while you have not provided any kind arguments to support BTC as a payment system or as a currency and instead just complain that people have a blind hatred and what not.

So I'm all open for a moderated discussion but you need to bring some arguments to the table not just complaints on the participants.

The value of USD is also a pyramid scheme and entirely depends on demand from everyone to keep it's value. The federal reserve is only one small actor creating demand.

There are countries that use USD but with the exception of ecuador (where you pay taxes in USD) i cant think of one that uses it exclusively.

Anyway they are totally different assets with their own trajectories and influences. We don't know what will happen in the future.

What I do know is Bitcoin is deflationary while USD is inflationary by their nature.

This is nonsensical. More USD is traded internationally than bitcoin.

The value of USD for somebody living in Paraguay stems from a demand for US goods and services A) supplied by people who pay US taxes or B) supplied by client states of the US (e.g. saudi oil) who kind of also pay USD taxes in a roundabout way

And many do.

I think when we all are dead future generations will see crypto as a basic value store like gold. No one will call it a pyramid scheme either cause it would have been around since before they were born.

The demand for USD comes from people wanting to do business with one of the biggest economies in the world. The demand for Bitcoin comes from people wanting to make money by hoarding Bitcoins.

It could be different, but right now it is not and I'm not sure if Bitcoin (or any other cryptocoin) would survive a transition to become a currency or something else less like a pyramid scheme.

I'm not saying it Bitcoin could not be like gold, I'm saying right now it is not and everyone in it doesn't want it to be. And I'm not convinced it ever will be.

To someone who doesn't live in the US, the value of USD mostly depends on trust in the US government and economy.

To someone who does, the value of USD mostly depends on whether or not the IRS will be asking for their due next April, whether or not their landlord/bank will be expecting a rent/mortgage payment next month, and whether or not the grocery is stocked with toilet paper.

It is true that if any of those three things don't happen, you have far more serious problems than 'what currency you use'.

Or in other words: trust in the US government and economy.

If people stopped believing in fiat, there would be a major bank run.

So yes, the value of crypto, just as like the value of fiat, is based on belief.

It remains to be seen if an entirely voluntary money can be a major player in the modern world.

Then again, raw fiat is a very new experiment as well. It's only been about 50 years since the US broke the pretense of the dollar being constrained by gold reserves. So from that context, bitcoin's 13 years doesn't actually seem that radically young, especially if compared to gold's 5000 years.

Gold in coinage is only about 2700 years old, btw, not 5000, and that was really electrum. Gold, silver, or electrum by weight may go back significantly further.

Coinage really just seems to be a technology improvement to make trade more efficient, because you can more quickly verify and count the units.

Historically, there have been civil wars that threaten government's monopoly on violence every few decades? :o

That surely isn't the experience in most stable countries or is it?

It happens somewhere quite often, and the number of countries with 100-year uninterrupted continuity of government is shorter than you'd expect - basically the unoccupied Allies, Switzerland, and a few microstates.

Consider the following scenario:

Say the interest rate for a wealthy individual like Bezos is 1% per period.

Case A: Bezos sells $100 of stock. He pays 20% and consumes $80. NPV of tax liability is $20.

Case B: Bezos borrow borrows $80 to spend in a period and then at the end of the period sells $101 of stock to pay back the loan and (and pay taxes on it). Thus his tax liability at the end of the period is .20*101, which in present value terms = .20*100 = $20. Exactly the same amount of taxes he would have paid if he didn't borrow.

Case C: Bezos sells only $80 of stock and then borrows $16 to pay his taxes, ending with a debt of $16.16 at the end of the period, and he will need to sell $20.2 in stock to extinguish his total liability ($16.16 due the bank and also the $4.04 in taxes on the sale), which in present value terms is the same payment as before, namely $20.

The real reason people like Bezos borrow to pay their taxes is because the interest rate charged to them by the bank is less the growth rate of their assets. Therefore they are acting like a bank, borrowing at one rate and investing at another rate, making money on the spread. Thus keeping the stock is worth more to Bezos than borrowing to pay the tax, which is effectively what is happening.

At least, this is what they believe. Of course this type of balance sheet expansion comes with risk - risk that they bear that if the stock price falls, they will end up paying much more than if they hadn't levered up and borrowed to pay their taxes. But that's a risk they are willing to take.

So you don't need to pull your hair out worrying that Bezos is not paying taxes. He is effectively borrowing to pay taxes so that he ends up with a bigger payment down the road, which in present value terms is the same tax liability as if he didn't borrow. The treasury will receive not only all the tax money as if Bezos never borrowed, but all the tax money with interest, namely whatever interest Bezos needs to pay. However Bezos is betting that the growth rate of his assets is even higher. So now you understand why everyone is borrowing to pay taxes -- because interests are so low. So thank the Fed that this type of arbitrage is possible. It's not tax arbitrage, it's interest rate arbitrage.

It is just not true that because there is a carried interest loophole, for example, that you can just make up arbitrary other tax loopholes that don't exist and blame "the rich" for abusing them, and then when confronted with being wrong on the facts, cite the carried interest loophole as a justification. "Piketty" isn't some magic word you can use to waive away reality.

The debts will need to be paid to the banks as part of the settlement process of Bezos' personal assets, which will require asset sales, and these sales will incur a tax liability and all of the above calculations will take effect.

OK, at this point you are just speculating wildly, right? You are inventing tax loopholes that don't exist, and when this is pointed out, more loopholes are invented which also don't exist. Point is, that's not how consumer lending, tax law, or inheritance law works. Those loans will be settled requiring asset sales at his death. If banks forgive a loan, that debt forgiveness is counted as income and is taxable.

Actually it is likely they will be wound down before his death as he will want to reduce his personal asset holdings and put them in a trust, because the inheritance taxes on all of his wealth are much stricter than any income taxes. But reducing his asset holdings will require de-leveraging because loans against equity require quite a bit of collateral.

Are you aware of "step-up in basis" [1] that is widely considered a loophole around CGT for inherited assets? Any gains on assets up to the point they are inherited will not be subject to CGT.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stepupinbasis.asp#step-...

That is not a tax loophole.

E.g. if someone buys stock for $10, then the share price grows to $100 and they die, so that a family member receives $100 of stock, and then the share price goes up to $110 and the inheritor sells, then in the current system, the inheritor pays:

$40 on receipt of shares at $100 (cost basis for him is zero)

$4 on sale of shares at $110 (cost basis is now 100)

for $44 in taxes paid on that stock.

RSUs also work in the same way -- you pay taxes the moment you get them, and then if you keep them, when you sell your cost basis is the price of the shares when you were given them. That is important to know if you like to hold onto your RSU shares for a while -- know that your cost basis is not zero, but whatever the price of the shares were when you paid taxes for receiving them as income.

In your opinion. However, some people clearly believe it _is_ a tax loophole, presumably including those you're discussing with upthread.

One of the talking points against inheritance tax is that it taxes the same money twice. If I'm a middle earner I pay taxes on my income, and I pay CGT when I dispose of assets to pay for my car or retirement or whatever. Taxes are then levied a second time on what's left when I die.

People above are pointing out that, in contrast, extremely wealthy people manage to avoid the income/CGT part by borrowing against their assets tax-free and repaying the loans once they die and after the assets can be stepped up. So yes, inheritance tax may still be paid, but a great deal of their day-to-day income while alive is untaxed. Inheritance tax should be _in addition to_ income/CGT rather than instead of it, and part of the perceived injustice is that the ultra-wealthy get to dodge this in ways "ordinary" people can't.

Based on that I personally would call it a loophole.

Only people who are not familiar with basic accounting or tax economics can believe this.

> One of the talking points against inheritance tax is that it taxes the same money twice. If I'm a middle earner I pay taxes on my income, and I pay CGT when I dispose of assets to pay for my car or retirement or whatever.

OK, you are mixing two different things here. One is the "double taxation"(1) on assets in the inheritance tax. First, don't worry, only a handful of families pay this tax. But ignoring that, the double taxation applies to income not spent. It is irrelevant to this discussion, in which Bezos borrows to spend. If he didn't borrow and sold assets to spend, then those sold assets still wouldn't be taxed as an inheritance tax. So that double taxation unfairness complaint is again just a confusion about what is happening and has nothing to do with whether borrowing to spend is somehow tax avoidance.

Now as to the second point: "If I'm a middle earner I pay taxes on my income, and I pay CGT when I dispose of assets to pay for my car or retirement or whatever."

No, you only pay taxes on the gains. Think back to what we were discussing before -- you get $100 of stock, then it goes up by $10 and you sell. So you have two taxable events in which income is recognized - the income of getting $100 and then the income of getting $10. When you sell for $110, your cost basis is $100, not 0, because you already paid taxes on the $100. Thus there is no double taxation for you or for Bezos(2).

No one is treated differently here. It is the exact same re-upping you were complaining Bezos being given -- that re-setting is available to everyone else for any other kind of asset they have for any reason.

So here, too, this is just complaining about things that aren't actually happening in order to get a justification for complaints about "injustice". It's a lot of very angry people applying who/whom logic rather than getting the details right about how much is paid.

Now, if you want to talk about real tax loopholes -- for example, carried interest, mortgage interest deduction, differences in tax rates on long term versus short term gains, charitable deductions - yes, by all means let's get rid of these loopholes. Bezos pays too little taxes, not because he borrows, but because the long term cap gains rate is so low. Let's not treat LTCG differently from wage income. But trying to infer the money borrowed should be taxed at the amount borrowed is just insane. Borrowed money is not income. Bezos is not doing this to evade paying taxes, he is doing it to take advantage of spreads.

(1) It's not really double taxation, because what is taxed is the income received by the inheritor, who never paid any taxes on it before.

(2) Yeah, inflation is a legit complaint for both

It's not irrelevant if Bezos spends his borrowed money on real estate and generally vacuuming up other assets that are likely to appreciate in value faster than his loans. It's not like he consumes all of it (or even most? I don't know, but I doubt it. How on Earth do you consume a billion dollars?).

> Thus there is no double taxation for you or for Bezos(2).

As I already explained there is for me if I don't consume all of my taxed gains before I die, or if I use it to purchase assets that outlive me.

> Bezos is not doing this to evade paying taxes, he is doing it to take advantage of spreads.

He's clearly doing it for both reasons. At least to avoid, not evade. I accept that he's legally not required to pay tax in this situation, but the whole point is I'm saying that should probably change!

> So here, too, this is just complaining about things that aren't actually happening in order to get a justification for complaints about "injustice". It's a lot of very angry people applying who/whom logic rather than getting the details right about how much is paid.

Dismissing this as "just complaining" is really missing the wider point. That is that "buy, borrow, die" is a well documented strategy that the ultra-wealthy use to avoid paying tax and that is widely considered a tax loophole (even by those familiar with basic accounting and tax economics). Whether it's a loophole or not isn't even really the point, rather that we should change things such that people who "buy, borrow, die" actually pay something like CGT.

The average Joe can't do that. The average Joe shouldn't do that.

Why should Bezos?

Why are you even defending him? Your position is morally untenable.

So yes, you can borrow to pay taxes. And you can borrow to defer taxes. But that is limited by how many assets you have. Households across the country do something similar when they borrow to buy a house -- they do not pay taxes on the mortgage loan as if it was income. And, unlike Bezos, the mortgage interest paid by households is often tax deductible.

But Bezos' loan does not deprive the government of taxes, because the rate on government borrowing is always going to be lower than the rate charged to Bezos. So if Bezos defers by 10 years, with the debts accruing at some rate r, then the government makes up for that by deficit spending with its debt accruing at a lower rate. Thus when these are settled, the government will make a profit.

> Why are you even defending him? Your position is morally untenable.

I guess the first mistake here is to try to view public policy from a "moral" perspective first and "not caring" about the details of what is actually happening.

The second mistake is automatically decide who is good or evil based on some atavistic criteria and deciding the details don't matter if you are sufficiently outraged.

Because at that point you've already lost. I suggest it's better to actually care and run the math before deciding whether something is good or bad for the Treasury. And questions about what is good or bad for the Treasury should be the ones you ask when determining tax policy, not whether you are really angry at a public figure or not.

Bezos' motivation is not to pay fewer taxes across his lifetime, because he doesn't. It's that the interest rate he is charged is less than the rate of return on his stock. This has absolutely nothing to do with tax avoidance but exploiting spreads.

>He bought it mainly because you don’t pay death duties on land. “That’s the critical thing. So rather than just have money in the bank, and get a statement with numbers written on it that gives no one any pleasure at all, you could derive a great deal of pleasure and pass it on to your children.”

It seems that Clarkson is trying to take advantage of https://www.gov.uk/guidance/agricultural-relief-on-inheritan... which is a "family farm" exemption; you absolutely do pay inheritance tax on land in general.

Just borrowing against assets that have gone up is different and pretty normal.

But imagine that a secondary ecosystem emerges because of these crazy cryptocoiners, who start using crypto for everything (just out of principle) (see https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin/who-accepts/ for viability).

They also insist on getting paid in crypto (not every country puts capital gains on crypto).

This basically means we could have a small parallel ecosystem.

Imagine this thing growing to a few % of all transactions.

Now the question comes to people holding fiat: are you sure your fractional reserve money will keep its value? Only a small percentage of fearful people could cause serious issues for that fiat system.

So I agree that you are right for now. But I wouldn't rule out the possibility of it taking a shift in the future.

vs

"A Florida McDonald's is paying people $50 just to show up for a job interview, and it's still struggling to find applicants" https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-pays-50-for-job-in...

Entry-level employees will be making $11 to $17 per hour,

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/13/mcdonalds-raises-hourly-wage...

(with apologies for the scammy links, these were the first google hits I found)

However, by "anyone", we mean "any single person", in the same way that science or money permits you to not trust anyone. For example, fake ivermectin covid studies are eventually found to be fake, so in that sense we "don't trust anyone" to not fake their studies. But if everybody publishing ivermectin studies is actually in a grand conspiracy to promote ivermectin, this fails; at least some honest people have to run studies with ivermectin to find out that it doesn't cure covid. In fact, probably even a majority. This is still a great improvement over the medieval system where the Pope decided whose opinions could be published on whether the Earth moved or not.

Similarly, the great thing about money is that it gives you autonomy; if you have money, it doesn't matter that much that the Soup Nazi banned you from his restaurant, because you can just go buy soup elsewhere. You won't starve, the way a child abandoned by their parents often will.

If the crypto point of view is that no one should control currency, first of all, that's super naive and secondly, that puts it on a collision course with governments.

My money's on governments winning.

That's pretty recent actually. So in some sense, government is already losing power over money.

Seriously, why would the end of fiat cause a bank run? I would expect it would cause a switch back to trading physical goods directly, or the emergence of another currency-like thing or good (like cigarettes might have been in the past).

Whilst this looks valid on the face of it, the best explanation I've seen is that crypto-currencies, DAOs, NFTs, what-have-you are counter-intuitive to most people, even the ones hodling it, because most of these decentralized products are just not the same thing and shouldn't be all lumped up in one giant straw-man. For one, I am really bullish about payment networks like Facebook's Diem, Celo.org, Coinbase/Circle's USDC, and Stellar. These absolutely should disrupt international payments.

There's a lack of coherent understanding but just as apenwarr pointed out, eventually something good will come of it, and then everyone that is/was on the blockchain train would claim, "I told you so".

At this point, there are so many smart people working on it, that I don't see it failing in my lifetime. The key, I guess, is to pay attention to whoever is out there toiling away to make the ecosystem better and listen to their whats, whys, and hows.

You have no way of knowing that and most US geopolitical alternatives are awful. Except for maybe the EU if you include it.

I'm just generally opposed to a system being pushed by a single country. Don't care if that's the US, China, Russia or Nepal.

It's not because I don't like the US, I just wish that we all would get to say how that system is supposed to work, instead of the US thinking it knows what's best for "us". Similar to how it's for whatever reason okay that the US has it's military bases littered all over the world.

I've got nothing against y'all as people, but your government and military for sure grind my gears.

This, plus the lack of simple explanations of the various parts of the ecosystem(s), is one of my main gripes (the environmental costs being the other). Hopefully it will change in the near future, but if it takes 1000 words (and potentially as many moon/rocket emoji) to explain the what/why/how of NFTs/cryptocurrencies, that doesn't seem like a sign of success to me.

However, I think it's incumbent on us compare bitcoin as a religion to the prevailing mode of social organization (or religion, as it were) where money is concerned:

  The Rule of Law

  International Trade Relations

I just don't see how bitcoin can fulfill any of it's purported roles (asset, currency, value-store) outside the rule of law, and yet flouting the established legal ways of settling transactions, asserting ownership and saving for the future were all part of the elevator pitch.

This begs the question: What effect will bitcoin have on the rule of law? I fear that, on net, it may serve to undermine our legal, liberal traditions by antagonizing proponents to the regular economy and pursuant democratic processes for improving its shortcomings.

More directly, the unregulated nature of the bitcoin economy leaves affected societies knee-capped in managing externalities and second order effects right where the incentives are the most perverse (on the ledger), forcing heavy-handed and perhaps illiberal responses from regulators. Success on it's own terms will spell bitcoins demise so long as belief in the rule of law remains stronger than in crypto-utopia (I will take that bet).

The key point about BTC is money and the 'believers' area all holding at least some BTC and they promote it with zealotry for that reason.

It's the money and the dream of fabulous riches. Religion generally doesn't really go there in any serious way.

It's a really, really good example of bias, and how it works. Someone holds a few magic numbers and it really distorts their worldview.

Religion would be far more popular of people thought they could get rich by attending service.

There are definitely religious zealots out there but in terms of passive ownership -- it could be viewed as a scarce collectors item with theoretically infinite appreciation right?

For example, if a rare painting could not be effected by environmental degradation. Would it not appreciate forever until people stopped caring about paintings or suddenly rare paintings could be atomized into existence by a replicator?

I think it would be more accurate to compare it a monument or artifact, specifically because of the amount of real world energy that has gone into creating it.

It's currently a half terabyte immutable linked list filled with a rich history of transactions and hidden messages/graffiti that can't be copied or changed without an commitment of energy and computation resources equal to the sum of what's gone into it for these 11 years.

That's something that starts to rival the Great Pyramids (pun intended).

Crypto has gone from "It's a currency!" to "It's a commodity!" to "It's a battery!" to "It's art!" in under 10 years.

Early days it was fun to watch. Now that it's destroying the environment, I'm ready for it to end.

Everything has a cost. But is the cost worth paying is the question.

Even if Bitcoin actually became a valid means of transaction and bank branches, ATMs, etc became obsolete, it doesn’t replace the need for trading floors as an interface between finance and equities/commodities, so that’s a weird comparison.

But even so, I wouldn’t be so confident that the banking sector uses more, or will for long given the current investment spree into mining. Here’s one plant that will use nearly 4x the energy of downtown Dallas:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/31/bitcoin-mining-giants-bitdee...

Mind you, the more the price of Bitcoin goes up, the more energy miners burn on mining, so if Bitcoin actually grew to the size of the fiat economy we’d be talking about substantially more energy use.

You are not taking into account the diminishing block reward. More and more miners are chasing a dwindling supply of coin and will eventually only earn transaction fees and no block reward. This will put a natural dampener on more miners coming in (all other things being equal) and it will plateau.

Bitcoin is just additional, unnecessary carbon and e-waste on top of the existing economy. It's fatal flaw is that it's deflationary, which in a world of rational thinkers would have doomed it from the start, but instead it seems to have attracted those yearning for a system free of "money printers".

Inflation can make things bad for an economy. Deflation utterly destroys economies.

(Even more so in the third world, where quite a few people have personally lived through periods when government printed money like crazy, and saw first hand how it starts and how it ends.)

Hyperinflation is just a symptom of other broken things in those places, and the real solution is to work on that brokeness.

You don't paper over lack of trust with a system that sort of works around lack of trust, you increase trust. Otherwise you'll be screwed in a million other ways that have nothing to do with money.

It's all well and good to talk about fixing brokenness, but it's not always politically viable. Furthermore, even when it is, people still have to go around living in the meantime. "It'll be solved eventually when everything is made perfect" is not a reasonable approach, and people are well aware of that. A very popular saying where I'm from goes, "the strictness of the law is mitigated by not having to follow it".

What you want is a monetary system that is inherently trustless.

Let the policy makers deal with policy and legislation. But let's not let them mess about with our money any more. Anywhere.

It's also about a store of value. Which is no fiat currency in the world today.

Let's do a fucking carbon tax and actually solve the problem, rather than just scapegoating an easy target and wasting political capital on attacking something many people value that doesn't directly or necessarily contribute any more to the problem than anything else.

That's a a tricky problem since some countries, maybe Russia and Canada, could theoretically come to the conclusion that climate change will actually be a net benefit for them by way of opening up access to resources in their lands. And other countries might come to the conclusion that the benefits of burning lots of carbon fuels to develop and modernize their nations outweigh the risks of climate change.

Our ability to actually reverse the trend of atmospheric carbon seems grim to me.

Of course, we can always strive to reduce emissions in every facet of our lives. However, this argument applied to Cryptocurrencies didn't hold any water at all, once we make the proper comparisons.

Do you think that all of that can be waved away? What do you think will replace it with crypto? Nothing? Where will I get a loan? Heaven? The Moon?

It may take some years before developed nations have old ladies paying each other for wine night with some crypto. Although, it seems that companies like Venmo may be crypto in the backend, with a usd mask for the user. So, perhaps more than you think.

I guess I'm doing both. Good luck with your expert knowledge of economics!

We have our gods (founding fathers, dead presidents) and demigods (American folk heros, war heros).

We have our sacred texts (Constitution, Declaration, etc) and our genesis story (War for Independence).

We have our temples (capitals, court houses).

We have our core beliefs (representative democracy is good, all men are created equal, the peaceful transition of power).

Citizens of this country worship at the alter of Americanism, and many of us work hard to make the religion successful and dominant throughout the world. Like other religions, we've even engaged in genocides and wars to spread our beliefs and convert or destroy the unbelievers.

The United States succeeds only because a critical mass of us choose to believe in this religion and really want it to succeed.

Is it really that much different from Bitcoin?

Systems ought not require faith in order to be successful. An actor can believe in the good of a system without worshipping it; the kind of 'religion of America' you describe is the framework culpable for many of the worst atrocities the US has committed: Iraq, Vietnam, even Jim Crow or slavery can by tied to a reverence for some fundamental eidolon of 'Americanism'. Separating church and state is meaningless if you turn the state into a church: our systems should be meaningful without the crutch of the founding fathers, the constitution (as a historical object), or the piety of our public infrastructure.

There may be an element of the United States social project which resembles religion, an element that is likely very similar to crypto worship. However, this is not a defense of crypto's legitimacy, but a scathing critique of America's ontological basis.

Bitcoin "the price" is fundamentally different from the system, and really just serves to operate as a signal for how much collective human attention and trust it is gathering. It's incredibly volatile because it's still so young and finding it's place.

I also don't think the religious element of bitcoin is likely to be a long term thing, but a kind of bootstrapping mechanism to both draw attention, and nurture a core foundation of devotees who are committed to working diligently to integrate "the system" more and more into the real world.

It requires a bare minimum of 2 people to really work.

But that's literally true of any network protocol you can possibly imagine.

Relevant: had they not removed it, this sculpture of George Washington would have greeted visitors to the US Capitol rotunda, handing them the hilt of a sword and pointing directly upward: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_(Greenough)

…to draw their eye to the mural on the rotunda dome where a deified Washington takes the sword back from them in death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apotheosis_of_Washington#/...

> We have our sacred texts (Constitution, Declaration, etc) and our genesis story (War for Independence).

> We have our temples (capitals, court houses).

> We have our core beliefs (representative democracy is good, all men are created equal).

I'd be willing to bet a month's worth of my income that a majority of the population doesn't view it this way. The only people I know who view things this way are very far to the right (and this group is not the majority on the far right by any means).

The only part I'd be willing to bet is shared by more than 50% of the population is that all men are created equal (in theory at least; there are plenty of people with disabilities who would disagree that they are viewed as equals in practice; you needn't think too far beyond who would be sacrificed on a deserted island first and without much conflict).

The different political alignments are really just different sects of the nationalism/religion. Liberals simply idealize a different subset of the core tenants, and maybe are more tempered in their zealotry. But they are nationalist to their core nonetheless.

Having said that, there certainly are other groups that don't prescribe to Americanism, and are loyal to other 'religions' be it globalism or some other political ideology that's incompatible with American ideals.

I would even argue that Bitcoin is itself a flavor of globalism, albeit one that the establishment global elite aren't cool with, because they missed the boat on being early adopters and their power would be radically diminished if it wins.

I personally disagree with that politics as war perspective, as well as with the false equivalence

Reminds me of a dialogue from GoT: Power resides where men believe it resides.

You can’t fight a hurricane, so I have a card I use for travel points. When in Rome, or this trash fire world we live in…

When you’re first starting out, you have a vast well of future production capacity but also vast current, unmet needs.

Expecting people to “just save up” for things that they need is not optimal, especially if that thing they need to save up for is part of what they need to get/keep their first job.

Citation needed. Yes, people have needs. But vast unmet needs?

That sounds like they're missing a lot :-)

Edited the comment for clarity.

/rɪˈlɪdʒ(ə)n/

noun

the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.

Scratch the last bit, since it's a tautology. How many people in the crypto space proclaim that "decentralisation" or "smart contracts" or "hard" (i.e. deflationary) currency will fix everything and make bitcoin the new world currency and grant its loyal hodlers everlasting wealth? What percentage of them actually had a concrete idea on how that will happen?

We've had schisms (BTC), there's a mythological originator (Satoshi) and a possible historical counterpart (Hal Finney if I remember the name correctly?) as well as anointed saints and "first disciples". There's even new prophets (ethereum founder) proclaiming the last interpretation wasn't wrong but incomplete.

I've got to say, I see it rhyme. While I wouldn't say that everyone in the space treats crypto like a religion (probably), I'd wager for decent amount of people that description is a useful model

There's a reason we don't have anti-golfers, or threads over and over again rehashing how dumb it is to have 18 holes, or about the number of senseless injuries sustained while golfing, or how it's too expensive to golf. It's because people who aren't interested in golf don't feel a need to prove to others how bad it is, or to force golfers into justifying how good it is.

People who don't golf just kind of focus on other things. But Bitcoin and cryptocurrency seem to be different.

I don't agree with this characterization, but let's assume for a second that you're correct.

You need to look at the fact that every religion I'm aware of exists and thrives because it fulfills a human need.

You are therefore implying that Bitcoin does fulfill a human need, hence the current demand for it.

The fact that some people, much like with religion, will take it to extremes and/or gobble it up without questioning it and/or not believe a word of it yet use it to manipulate others to their own advantage does not seem to have any incidence on the fact that large swath of the planet's population are still religious.

Some evidence for this is that the environmental argument is easily dispatched with: Cryptocurrency is on the demand side and the climate change problem is on the supply side. We need to switch from fossil fuels to non-fossil fuels, which we need to do independent of whether or not cryptocurrency exists, and then people mining cryptocurrency powered by solar panels is not a real problem. Pass a carbon tax.

There are also cryptocurrencies that use proof of space (e.g. Chia) or proof of stake, which don't have the same energy footprint even on the demand side.

But people who say this are regularly downvoted here by people who presumably dislike cryptocurrency for other reasons and see the alleged environmental impact as a strong lever for getting undecided people against it.

It may be stupid and bad but the only reason we have strong feelings against it is because we missed out. You can convince yourself all you want but deep within we both know it's true.

I'm mad because there are people who lost their money, trusting that many "techies" know better than them, so they invested as well.

I had some bitcoins before it became a thing, I donated all of them to charity the moment I started suspecting it became (or always has been) a pyramid scheme (when it was like 10K each, yeah I'm a bit slow sometimes). I did once believe that it could be a gold replacement, but it wasn't becoming that too. Zero regrets.

"Oh I couldn't get into a scheme early enough which made many rich", may be what some feel, but there are also some who feel otherwise. If you are a bit smarter and/or technologically more savvy than the average person, there are many borderline legal ways to scam people. The faceless-victim aspect of bitcoin doesn't make it not a scam for me.

Also, I'm not judging you, I'm defending a position I believe in, which is important to me because there's not many things I actually believe.

I wonder if it is because I am used to dealing with the fragility of digital systems (not to unfairly discount their strengths either) -- so then paper money almost feels like a relief to hold in my hand and just slap on the counter and smell that fresh legal tender.

Basically it is a way to make people turn off their sanity checker "Oh yeah, I don't see the value, I guess I just don't understand, but I still want in on this opportunity!".

Facebook make billions on ads, you don't have to make people believe when you are making wads of cash. And even when Facebook was new the business model was proven to be valuable by Myspace and the many other similar sites making lots of money on ads.

So your post here just strengthens my argument, the fact that you don't see the difference between the two just proves that you have turned off your own sanity checker.

Edit: What we are seeing now is similar to the investment craze in IT before the dotcom bubble. No sanity there, people just invested without thinking. I'll believe in crypto when people starts to think before investing in it.

Austrian views on inflation have been proved several times over.

Austrian views on the value of labor are a disaster. They're entirely unable to imagine our current labor market where a substantial amount of the work is done by machines. Human Action was written in 1949. Imagine how different the world must have been back then. My iPhone can recognize the contents of pictures such that I can search them-- in 1949 that would have required an office building some storage cabinets, logistics, and a personal secretary or two. Now nobody,

not even Apple can tell you how that works.

But, I don't think it proves anything.

The scientific method is not an exclusive means to seek truth. Science has only one job-- to make testable predictions. It does not inform us about anything else.

You're essentially arguing "Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus" because of an inherently illogical belief that only science can arrive at truth.

Try hiring sofware developers with skills that aren't entirely copy-pastable from Stackoverflow and getting them motivated enough to not cash out after six months, and then tell me it isn't.

I'm talking about ditches that need be dug. Floors that needs to be swept. Notes that need to be taken. Automation has eaten low end jobs since the industrial age began.

Looks pretty low-end to me.

The true morons are the Marxists and their labor theory of value, as well ask MMT idiots. Crack pots are everywhere.

And not just in our era [0] as Heinrich Heine did put it. [0] https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/heine/lutece/ch31...

Both give hope of redemption from the burdens of life.

Have to revisit Georg Simmels, Philosophy of Money. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_Money

We had gladiators for centuries because we were ok with some dying or getting injured for the entertainment of many others. That didn't make it right.