hakesdev

>you underestimate the ability of countries to cooperate

you,handwaiving all 190+ nation states will go along with AND have incentive to do what the all powerful US says...

OKAY, buddy...

Also, and please be honest with yourself, would you like to live in where the US unilaterally decides what private property rights should exist and not? I sure as heck hope you don't want that future.

that isn't (fortunately) for you to decide ;-)

If you don't understand why competition in monetary commodities is a good thing then... I don't have any time for you.

It seems to me you've not thought through the game theory of banning cryptocurrency very much.

There's an immediate competitive advantage (in the form of increased business activity & tax revenue) to the first country to adopt clear, consistent rules regards CCs and their use. If a few big countries try to ban it, that competitive advantage becomes even stronger for any country willing to buck the trend.

Bitcoin (like gold since the gold standard ended) is just a "check" on Fiat currencies and can act as insulation from central banks that issue too much money too quickly.

Fiats will continue to exist alongside bitcoin/cryptos, they'll just eventually have to "compete" a bit more (i.e., not be printed so readily by gov'ts) or else they'll become significantly less relevant.

Whataboutism - why do I see this word so much these days?

Whenever I see it, I notice people are often basically trying shut down an honest comparative analysis by another party.

This. 100%.

Bitcoin (like gold since the gold standard ended) is just a "check" on Fiat currencies and can act as insulation from central banks that issue too much money too quickly.

Fiats will continue to exist alongside bitcoin/cryptos, they'll just eventually have to "compete" a bit more (i.e., not be printed so readily by gov'ts) or else they'll become significantly less relevant.

This was published in 2016. The title should reflect that.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2976749.2978408

IMHO, M2 (also called "Broad Money") is a more pure indicator of money creation. Specifically the combination of M2 and M2 velocity.

Board money supply grew ~30%+ in 2020. The reason we probably didn't see more inflation is because M2 Velocity was down ~30%. If we see velocity start to pick up with M2 increasing, expect consumer price inflation.

M2: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2 M2 Velocity: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V

Lyn Alden is very instructive on this topic: https://www.lynalden.com/money-printing/

If you use a money with an issuance scheme that doesn't derive from pure costs (useless things like hashing), the underlying incentives of that money will seed its own destruction.

What happens if you have a coin based on "useful work" and you "solve" the problem you were hoping to solve. Now a lot of "miners" leave the network, presumably because they were only there to help solve that particular problem. Now you have a weak system, and a system subject to 51% attacks by adversarial miners, and therefore not a good money/coin.

I don't see how HN commenters (in large part) don't get this. It's the Single-responsibility Principle, just in a different context.

If you use a money with an issuance scheme that doesn't derive from pure costs (useless things like hashing), the underlying incentives of that money will seed its own destruction.

What happens if you have a coin based on "useful work" and you "solve" the problem you were hoping to solve. Now a lot of "miners" leave the network, presumably because they were only there to help solve that particular problem. Now you have a weak system, and a system subject to 51% attacks by adversarial miners, and therefore not a good money/coin.

I don't see how HN commenters (in large part) don't get this. It's the Single-responsibility Principle, just in a different context.

Please read. Nic Carter is a good place to start. https://www.coindesk.com/what-bloomberg-gets-wrong-about-bit...

"First of all, Bitcoin and Visa are fundamentally different systems. Bitcoin is a complete, self-contained monetary settlement system; Visa transactions are non-final credit transactions that rely on external underlying settlement rails. Visa relies on ACH, Fedwire, SWIFT, the global correspondent banking system, the Federal Reserve and, of course, the military and diplomatic strength of the U.S. government to ensure all of the above are working smoothly.

Any energy comparison must take the above into account – including the externalities from the extraction of oil, which implicitly backs the dollar. As those who make this comparison inevitably fail to mention, the dollar’s ubiquity is partly due to a covert arrangement whereby the U.S. provides military support to countries like Saudi Arabia that agree to sell oil exclusively for dollars. It’s worth noting that the grossly oversized U.S. military, whose presence worldwide is necessary to backstop the international dollar system, is the largest single consumer of oil worldwide."

this is a really dumb argument that is trotted out every 4 years. There's also already a FoldingCoin that's been around since 2014. https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/foldingcoin/

For PoW to work it must be a costly signal. If you introduce positive externalities of mining (such as Folding @ Home) the system isn't sustainable.

this "crypto is bad for the environment" meme is a zombie meme.

https://www.coindesk.com/the-last-word-on-bitcoins-energy-co...

This is a dumpster fire of bad (often self-quoted!!) arguments against crypto.

lol...The global financial system HARDLY serves 6 billion. Why are so many concerned with "banking the unbanked"? And arguably, the end product for those that do get access is pretty bad (slow, high fees, inflation-ridden).

It's also quite patronizing of you to say who and how crypto serves others.

More data on the world's unbanked/underbanked. https://globalfindex.worldbank.org/sites/globalfindex/files/...

this is a straw man. The point is not its absolute energy consumption, but its energy consumption relative to other alternatives.

How much energy does it take to operate the current global financial infrastructure? The current global financial structure employs millions of people (who fly on planes, create waste, etc.), hundreds of millions of office square footage, data centers, etc.

Furthermore, there are cases in which consuming energy actually reduces GHG emissions, as is the case for consuming otherwise flared methane gas. See https://www.upstreamdata.ca .

Yes the fed's balance sheet has inflated, but it has inflated at the same time as dollars have stopped flowing out of the United States through trade and tourism.

The global economy needs dollars:

- 84% of all non-domestic debt globally is US Dollar debt. - Around $100trn of global debts are denominated in US Dollars.

This creates a tremendous demand for dollars, and if they aren't flowing through trade and tourism, dollars will need to be purchased on the spot market or missed debt payments will make these foreign cos go BK.

US Fed's monetary base inflation is different from the ECB and Japanese Fed in that the world will sop up basically all of the money it prints. In order for the US Fed to have the same impact on inflation, they need to print multiples of what the ECB and Japanese Fed print.

I agree in the end the dollar will come, I just think we will have a dollar bull rally before then.

See this thread from Raoul Pal: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1264224744271945728.html?...

“Let every man divide his money into three parts, and invest a third in land, a third in business and a third let him keep by him in reserve.” - Talmud

Respectfully disagree.

I don't particularly like the news, but it pays the follow certain types of news that could have an outsize impact on you.

Furthermore, the "prescribed" ultra long equities/diversified index fund allocation strategy you alluded to above is relatively new by historical standards. It's possible that this strategy doesn't pan out well in certain types of prolonged global economic states (such as persistent global stagflation, as one example).

I'd agree with the above if your investment strategy had been around for longer (more "Lindy"). One example folks like to cite is the Talmud Asset Allocation:

“Let every man divide his money into three parts, and invest a third in land, a third in business and a third let him keep by him in reserve.” -Talmud

https://seekingalpha.com/article/293665-the-timeless-talmud-...

One example of a portfolio that might be more robust is one of 1/3 land, 1/3 personal business/equities, 1/3 emergency fund cash/gold/bonds. With that portfolio, in just about every time period in human history, you'd probably be okay and wouldn't have to worry about the news at all.