moralsupply

Go ahead and call Bitcoin a "fiat currency" if that suits your narrative.

Don't be surprised if some people laugh at your face, though.

A mafia or some other organization capable of enforcing rules over people could create a fiat currency too.

Quoting the first sentence of the Wikipedia article:

> Fiat money is a currency (a medium of exchange) established as money, often by government regulation.

As for the definition of the word "fiat": https://www.wordnik.com/words/fiat

> An arbitrary order or decree

> Authorization or sanction

Except that most gold being traded under the "store of value" premise doesn't exist, it's "paper gold".

Also, gold is the one most manipulated market in the world, having both banks, central banks and governments actively interfering in its price discovery.

How did you conclude that I was implying that USD being fiat is an argument for the use of BTC?

Do you know what "fiat" means? It means "mandatory".

How is Bitcoin being imposed on you?

On the other hand, if you live in the US and you decide to not use the US Dollar, you'll go to jail.

Feel free to keep all your wealth allocated in gold.

We'll talk again in 5 years time.

Following that logic China and India should be a lot more problematic than Brazil. As a matter of fact, both of those countries "mismanage" Covid-19 as well.

> And you must be laughably far right to call The Economist left wing. Marine Le Pen would call it a right wing paper.

Did you read the article? It doesn't follow a "right wing" tone.

Sweden doesn't "manage" Covid-19 according to the expectations of whoever wrote this article (no lockdowns, no masks, no "social distancing" rules, etc.).

Is Sweden "threatening the world" as well?

Or is this the usual political narrative the left-wing press uses to bash right-wing politicians?

Not dismissing her accomplishments or anything, but to keep things in perspective, do understand that NASA is a government organization, and the incentives for vertical growth within government organizations are quite perverse, as they are not meritocratic and mostly related with politics.

Does that mean more energy will be used to mine Bitcoin and more carbon will be emitted in the atmosphere, killing turtles in the oceans and burning the remains of the Amazon forest?

Bitcoin is evil as it burns forests and kills turtles in the oceans due to its energy consumption.

Buy bonds instead. They have no carbon footprint, and they are guaranteed by our governments, which only act in our best interests.

With "low CPI" the government doesn't have to update government workers' salaries to compensate for real inflation.

In the US, 1/6 of the workforce is paid directly by the government, which indirectly generate something in the range of 30-50% of all economic activity in the country.

Hence why it's in the best interest of the government to state there's "low inflation": it doesn't have to spend too much with its payroll, while it can "profit" more from the money it prints.

Dogecoin was created as a joke, but as money Doge is a lot more sound than any fiat currencies out there.

It's not that Doge is a bubble. The bubble is the US Dollar. (insert Doge meme image here)

The article should be renamed to: "Why measuring inflation using the CPI is misleading"

The CPI is designed by the government in order to give it plenty of slack to keep printing money.

The minimum wage is universally zero.

Government-mandated minimum wage is effective price control, which never works. It has the effect of taking people who are not qualified to produce enough value to justify the minimum wage out of the job market. It's a mechanism to keep poor people poor.

CPI barely reflects the actual inflation of the currency. Whatever it doesn't cover in its calculation tends to get overinflated. The government designs the CPI to be low in comparison to "real" monetary inflation so that it can get away with printing more money.

And still we can't run Among Us on MacOS...

Have you noticed that recently we get at least 2-3 bitcoin "energy consumption" stories reaching the homepage every week? You're not concerned with that, but you're concerned with my posts?

Don't give the HN crowd any insight on what Bitcoin really is.

They have been bashing Bitcoin for a long time, and they still don't get it. They downvote and fight whoever tries to bring some different perspectives to the discussion.

HN people are the types who believe they're "saving the planet", and they're fixated on the idea that Bitcoin is evil due to its energy consumption.

Let them learn the hard way. If they get any clue on what Bitcoin is, there's the risk they may get rich and attain some power in the future, which will only make matters worse.

I love how much the HN community is invested in demonizing Bitcoin for its energy consumption.

I wish for you bashing Bitcoin to keep all your wealth allocated in assets associated with fiat currencies.

I also wish that you spend lots of time running political narratives in order to stop a decentralized piece of technology from growing.

Good luck trying to reach out the Bitcoin CEO in order to ask him to shut down his "environmentally damaging operations".

In 5 years time, however, once the US dollar has lost 50% of its purchase power, you'll be begging your employer to pay you in Bitcoin.

By that time you'll conveniently forget the narrative about energy consumption.

You'll even claim that Bitcoin is one of the most important technologies ever invented, and that you always believed in it.

I actually love how much the HN community is invested in demonizing Bitcoin for its energy consumption.

It gives us, the ones who understand Bitcoin, more time to enter the market before it runs yet another full cycle.

I truly wish for you bashing Bitcoin to keep all your wealth allocated in assets associated with fiat currencies.

I also wish that you spend lots of time running political narratives in order to stop a decentralized piece of technology from growing.

Good luck trying to reach out the Bitcoin CEO in order to ask him to shut down his "environmentally damaging operations".

In 5 years time, however, once the US dollar has lost 50% of its purchase power, you'll be begging your employer to pay you in Bitcoin.

By that time you'll conveniently forget the narrative about energy consumption.

You'll even claim that Bitcoin is one of the most important technologies ever invented, and that you always believed in it.

Screenshot this.

Cryptocurrency mining is mostly about Bitcoin.

Bitcoin has maintained at least 60% market dominance year-over-year since its inception (averaging 75% all time dominance). Ethereum (which can be profitably mined using GPUs) has currently 15% dominance, with most of the other top 15 coins not being PoW (except for Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash and Dogecoin, from which only Bitcoin Cash can be mined either with ASICs or GPUs). Also, Ethereum is in the process of moving to PoS.

cryptocurrency mining is mostly done using ASICs

No they don't.

Gaming is the sole demand for all consoles and GPUs produced in the world. Those devices alone consume a lot more energy than Bitcoin miners (by about an order of magnitude).

Gold and Silver are extremely expensive to mine energy-wise.

The banking system is amazingly expensive to run. Not only it requires lots of buildings and transportation for millions of workers, it also requires a lot of computing resources to be run -- without even guaranteeing you can withdraw your money from banks, and with your money there being corroded due to inflation.

Bitcoin, in comparison, is actually pretty "green" once you consider the value it provides: a distributed ledger with 10+ years of operation and no flaws/attacks detected, meaning it's the safest store of value known to mankind, while not being under any control of any organization or government.

In any case, even if your point that Bitcoin is "evil" as it requires "too much energy to run" is true, what are you going to do about it? Feel free to short Bitcoin in a futures market, and leave all your wealth allocated in assets associated to fiat currencies.

Gaming uses more energy than Bitcoin.

Shall we place carbon taxes on gaming too?

How about a carbon tax on Gold and Silver, and on the whole of the banking system, which also consume more energy than Bitcoin?

In any case, feel free to contact the Bitcoin CEO and discuss your ideas on how to implement those taxes.

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