As long as the Visa/Mastercard duopoly exists and continues to police what I can and can't spend money on, I will continue to support the ideology behind cryptocurrencies. I lament what they have become, but the initial logic behind their existence remains sound to me.

Honestly curious, what about the ideology behind crypto is not okay? Apart from the high power usage of PoW, which is an unfortunate side-effect, not really part of the ideology.

The Ponzi aspect obviously. Letting gullible millions pay for the crypto barons at the top.

What way of holding wealth is any better in this aspect?

All other forms of holding wealth.

If I buy Apple stock, I have a piece of a company that rakes in billions in actual profit by turning raw materials into useful machinery.

If I buy a US bond, I get interest, and it is guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the United States.

If I buy gold, I own a physically rare and hard to counterfeit asset that humans have valued for thousands of years.

If I have a savings account, I get interest, and the money is guaranteed by the FDIC.

Even dollar bills under the mattress don't decrease in value by 10% in a single day.

Sure but your dollar bills under the mattress do not increase 70% in value in one year either. Volatility is not necessarily a bad thing, it means cryptocurrencies are growing. There is a good chance they will stabilize eventually.

If you own, say, ADA and stake it then those staking pools run smart contracts.

Except that gold could be used for industrial purposes, so hoarding it is not only useless, but harmful.

Stocks because (you own part of a company which has assets and/or produces income), real estate obviously.

> Stocks

At current valuations (Shiller PEs ~40), stocks are disconnected from their income. Therefore, if the Fed tapers harder or even reduces the money supply, it will crash. This leads to a "Ponzi" musical chairs aspect where investors getting in last will have bailed out the ones before them.

> Real estate obviously

Valuations are still heavily influenced by monetary policy, but also by intrinsic scarcity. As space runs out around desirable areas, the ways to acquire are increasingly limited to buying from an existing owner.

Right but what effect do stocks changing hands in the stock market have to the company? Perhaps if you had enough of them you could influence the company's direction, but it's the same with some cryptocurrencies.

But for the average retail investor owning stocks is the same Ponzi, no?

That ain't ideological. The first waves of crypto were driven by ideology now it's driven by market. Getting rich quick is a cult but I wouldn't put it in the same lot as the cypherpunk/libertarian early adopters.

The idea that governments, regardless of their legitimacy or level of competence, can't be trusted to manage the money supply is anti-democratic. Because, after all, governments are also responsible for maintiaing law and order, which is even a more delicate issue since it involves the use of violence. So the government can be trusted to use violence responsibly, but it can't be trusted to manage the money supply? No, this is stupid. The implication is that governments can't be trusted and are essentially oppressive and evil. And democracy isn't a lesser evil, it's just evil. This is the basic tenet of anarcho-capitalism.

Have you seen what is happening in Venezuela? Turkey?

Freedom and democracy is taken, not given. If you ever stop fighting, the government will become complacent and leech away a large part of an economy.

Are you able to find a single government, democratic or not, in human history that did not debase their currency? It’s the story of every failure of every empire.

Humans, and by extension governments cannot be trusted with the money supply. It is just human nature. I don’t think control of issuance of currency is even a matter of democracy — for it is not the people that elect the chair of the central banks, the imf, the bis. People have no say in the monetary policy, it is thrust upon them by the unelected. If the individual could have a choice, would any democratic candidate be bound to follow their wishes? So, instead, we bypass this. Step outside the system where it cannot be corrupted.

You trust humans and governments too much. I trust math. Math won’t let you down like humans will.

I don’t even know where to start with this comment; it’s so full of non sequiter I find it challenging to assume good faith.

Yes, empires have historically debased their currencies during a decline. Blaming the decline on debasing the currency rather than the other way around is an argument one could mount, but the evidence either way is scant.

As far as elected governments hiring civil servants being anti-democratic goes, must every candidate for every role be voted on? At what point can the people vote for someone and delegate authority to them?

The IMF was created by elected officials and exists with their support.

You have the same say in that as all other voters; you just don’t like being outvoted and have elected to claim the rules are unfair instead.

Debasing a currency is not necessarily a bad thing so long as inflation rates are kept under control. Sometimes it is necessary to print more money. I'm moderately pro-crypto myself, but I generally trust the Federal Reserve to do a good job.

Keynesian lies. Luckily, with Bitcoin, we can opt out of such delusions.

So you have personally reviewed the code in each cryptocurrency you hold, and you understand all the math behind it?

I certainly do. I’ve found bugs, submitted patches. I not only understand the math, but have written libraries and tools, audited cryptographic implementations and frequently communicate with other developers and engineers in the field.

I have developed educational materials for folks and played with this technology a long time. I will admit I don’t grok every line of the science experiment geth (ethereum client), but I do understand the math, it is the same as Bitcoin. I haven’t been keeping up with Eth client nearly as much as BTC. Running an eth full node needs some real hardware. BTC runs on a potato.

There are plenty of governments that can't be trusted to maintain law and order, or to refrain from arbitrary violence. When that happens, we do our best to let people vote with their feet and obtain asylum protection elsewhere, to the greatest feasible extent. Do you view that as an "undemocratic" practice, too?

There are plenty of undemocratic governments out there that can't be trusted to manage the money supply.

This could be said for any currency/form of payment.

No. The difference is that at this point accepting a crypto currency is entirely optional for them, while using regular currency of their country is not or they could not be a company (since they have to pay taxes in that currency).

Not inclined to you but in general: Someone does X and then judge Y because they have some axe to grind about Y. I despise attitude like this. It's the kind of woke activism that has made the world so toxic.

What if I only accept stable coin?