News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Bitcoin mining is being banned in countries across the globe. Parent comment

Re:Bitcoin mining is being banned in countries across the globe by kube-system on Monday January 10, 2022 @01:12PM (#29878955)
Cryptocurrencies, in general, are not in fixed supply. Some coins do not have fixed supplies, and even if you choose one that does, it can be forked, or new coins can be issued. I don’t see any reason why a government couldn’t implement QE with crypto.

The mechanics would work differently, but the value of an IOU issued by a global superpower has intrinsic worth regardless of how it is assigned. Governments are not powerful because of their currencies; their currencies have value because of their power. If the US Treasury forked bitcoin tomorrow, it would certainly have positive value.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Bitcoin mining is being banned in countries across the globe by nybble41 on Monday January 10, 2022 @07:51PM (#29885545)
> Cryptocurrencies, in general, are not in fixed supply.

Cryptocurrencies, in general, are not all valued the same. And why stop at crypto—surely the same reasoning would apply to USD supply inflation, if you're just going to lump all (crypto-)currencies together as a single good?

Sure, you can introduce new types of coins or massively inflate the ones which don't have a fixed supply, but that doesn't impact (for example) the limited supply of bitcoins. The overall effect is mainly just to devalue the inflated coins relative to other currencies.

[ Parent | on HN ]