Re:Tornado Cash and collateral damage
by dgs_sgd on Thursday August 18, 2022 @04:26PM
(#32514458)
When you say "artificial digital scarcity" are you referring to bitcoin's supply limit, or are you making a general statement about cryptocurrencies?
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The general idea is that for something to have monetary value, it has to be scarce. Why would you ever trade a loaf of bread for something that you have an infinite supply of in the first place?
Cryptocurrencies are fundamentally a means of creating a decentralised digital scarce resource, and the Bitcoin blockchain is a rough proof of concept that it is theoretically achievable, albeit using a spectacularly inefficient method.
Artificial digital scarcity is the whole point.
Scarcity is a hard requirement for something to be money.
Since we as a society require money to transfer and preserve value, the money being open-source, decentralized artificial scarcity(like Bitcoin) does not contradict with FOSS ideals. On the contrary, it widens them from a technological sphere to economics.