> Having a system of enforcing contracts is essential to having a working currency. You are basically saying that banks are being evil when they repossess and foreclose on property, but if they weren't allowed to do so, they wouldn't lend money in the first place. And like it or not, credit is essential to the functioning of a society; it's been around in some shape or form since the ancient Egyptians. We've come a long way from having a private army come to your house to sell your family into slavery, but it's the same thing in principle - we sign contracts and are held to them. These contracts need to be regulated with the force of the government. There's a large web of mutual obligations here - the government forces banks to lend responsibly, and in turn the government guarantees through the courts and the police that it will enforce these contracts.
>Bitcoin doesn't have any of this. And that's why it's so volatile and why speculation drowns legitimate transactions.
I don't understand. Bitcoins are just an asset so they have all of this under the law. You can't steal people's bitcoins legally anymore than you can steal someone's tv or gold or whatever.
The ability to have easy credit was the foremost event which brought about the consumer era. Reverting back to a defacto gold standard would be a retrogression on a scale rarely witnessed in the previous few centuries.
I think that there's a certain amount of truth to this - countries are able to shape their currency according to their interests. For example, China deliberately keeps the yuan weak in order to stay competitive with exports. This tends to benefit the elite and dick over the poor. However, I think that a cryptocurrency is a bad alternative to this, due to the next point:
> These banks then operate through violence to guarantee peoples assets to falsely make the currency look more secure than it is, by threatening you if you don't pay the taxes to recoup the losses of risk in storing your money with someone else.
Having a system of enforcing contracts is essential to having a working currency. You are basically saying that banks are being evil when they repossess and foreclose on property, but if they weren't allowed to do so, they wouldn't lend money in the first place. And like it or not, credit is essential to the functioning of a society; it's been around in some shape or form since the ancient Egyptians. We've come a long way from having a private army come to your house to sell your family into slavery, but it's the same thing in principle - we sign contracts and are held to them. These contracts need to be regulated with the force of the government. There's a large web of mutual obligations here - the government forces banks to lend responsibly, and in turn the government guarantees through the courts and the police that it will enforce these contracts.
Bitcoin doesn't have any of this. And that's why it's so volatile and why speculation drowns legitimate transactions.