News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Crypto, the Left and Technofeudalism by tphyahoo2 on Saturday April 23, 2022 @10:06AM (#31134381)
Governments certainly will attempt to issue IOUs backed by bitcoin. And some people will accept them.

If you are willing to trust your bitcoin to an exchange, as many people are, you should certainly be willing to trust your government.

But a lot of people hold their bitcoin offline, in hardware wallets, in cold storage. It's not that hard.

Another feature that bitcoin has, that gold does not, is proof of reserves. Barely any exchanges do this, but this will change with time.

Proof of reserves pretty much makes bitcoin IOUs for the government useless. You can't cheat by printing more.

I think far fewer people will trust their government with bitcoin under a bitcoin standard, than trusted their government with gold under a gold standard.

Particularly after a few governments default.

I discuss this more in depth at

https://web.archive.org/web/20210116135412/https://taaalk.co... (long)

Re:Crypto, the Left and Technofeudalism by shadowgovt on Saturday April 23, 2022 @11:02AM (#31134827)
Selection bias. The sort of people interested in BTC tend to be the ones who already don't trust government.

I don't expect governments to cater to the mistrustful, so I don't anticipate governments adopting BTC as their core currency in my lifetime.

Re:Crypto, the Left and Technofeudalism by ethanbond on Saturday April 23, 2022 @10:25AM (#31134533)
Yeah that’s fair, if a few govts default who knows how that’ll shake things up. Thank you for the thoughtful response!
Re:Crypto, the Left and Technofeudalism by tphyahoo2 on Saturday April 23, 2022 @11:03AM (#31134842)
Thanks for having an open mind :)