This is a very basic, probably dumb question but I need to know. My basic research has not discussed this: What if the electrical grid goes down? How does one access their bitcoins?
lol: "they spell English words like English people, which is wronger than it sounds" I get a kick out of the differences. I'd like to listen to the British version of Harry Potter audio books, but I'll have to get out of the US to buy them. In Australia, instead of better and ladder, they say be-oh and la-oh. Sorry for getting off topic. ;)
I always appreciate the orange pill posts Mathew. You mentioned attracting critique to update your own understanding- I’m still hodling but follow @joekelly100 on Twitter for reasoned contra Bitcoin takes.
I haven’t heard of the ‘Bitcoin is a tool of the wef theories’ but now see a rabbit hole in my near future.
If you or any other commenters know of anyone developing adjacent or parallel systems for complex (ie securities, hypothetically, if SEC registration requirements weren’t a factor) transactions via smart contract that settle in btc and thus also are censorship resistant, please drop links! (As far as I understand lightning and liquid are facilitate transfers at speed while mitigating exorbitant fees but aren’t for more complex transactions?)
It's not the transparent public ledger that concerns me about Bitcoin, it's the 51% attack vulnerability. This occurs when a single person or group of people gains control of over 50% of a blockchain's hashing power. Successful attackers gain the ability to block new transactions from being confirmed as well as change the ordering of new transactions. It also allows the malicious agents to essentially rewrite parts of the blockchain and reverse their own transactions. Anyone who controls the majority of the hashing power can decide which transactions to include in the next block. Due to that, an attacker can even decide to build a completely empty block, with no transactions.
It's often stated that a 51% attack against larger currencies is essentially impossible because no one has that kind of purchasing power. The total value of all Bitcoins is currently $1.03 trillion. Bitcoin's so-called anonymity obscures it's ultimate beneficial ownership, but seeing as it's an entirely fungible commodity then if it's broadly owned by the same monsters that control almost all of the financial economy, then it's completely controllable by the cabal and will become more so the more it's traded. There's no KYC for Bitcoin, so there's no reason to expect that an interested group of investors couldn't and wouldn't buy a 51% stake at any time through whatever ownership structure they choose. We're making the process of controlling our currencies even easier for them.
The mitigation measures proposed so far against this attack are entirely geared towards deterring smaller attackers. The Proof of Stake mechanism establishes incentives which structure compensation in a way that makes an attack less advantageous. What if you don't care about profits, you want to crash or control or rewrite the network?
I think for this reason Bitcoin can't be taken seriously as a truly decentralised alternative to fiat currency unless and until fiat currency, the fractional reserve banking system and the mechanisms by which pension funds, insurance and other institutional investment sources are completely overhauled.
I wrote it , but you didn’t value it . Not enough to include it .
A fiat type digital replacement like Bitcoin has some nice ideas , like being finite , based on a blockchain ledger , and decentralized . It’s supposed value was primarily on the ability to exchange cheaper , while also using its decentralized attribute as a marketing tool with political funding ( wikileaks) and black market ( ….road).
Much of the advertising for Bitcoin included learning about fiat money creation by the fed reserve . Privledge and all that .
Soon the value increased and gre du people became attracted to it like flies .
The exchange utility is the real asset but not really being adopted . More so for speculation ( greeed ). One freed just replacing the legacy greed and privileges.
The. Pretty much every kind of crypto gets created , because it’s cheap to make and gets printed like a Ponzi scheme .
One way to assess value would be to assess its adoption as a medium of exchange . Otherwise it’s all projection with nothing concrete .
And here is what I pointed out in the past Mathew . The blockchain is the high utility social valuable part . The big issue in commodity trading is tracking . Where a blockchain can be tied to all commodity parcels the broad market of resources and trading
Can be consolidated into crypto digital currency that is backed by not simply gold , but any and all primary tradable commodity resources . Having to store all the gold under a couple of buildings might lead to it suddenly disappearing . And certainly the cost of storage and movement is high when it’s consolidated in such ways . But by blockchaining all commodities these values are decentralized and added into the block chains.
This is where it will go , because it simply makes the most sense . And with consolidation of power that is very much interested in being gods , such control is too big to turn down .
What does it mean for Bitcoin ? Not sure , it’s either used to extract wealth from hopeful suckers as a Ponzi type scheme , or it’s wrapped up into the new currency paradigm . My bet is on rich getting richer .
There are a few crypto funds , like the one my friend created here in Canada . They are likely safer bets then any particular one .
At the end of the day I’ll trade for food or gas not a digital stick . So it’s also a system that operates at a certain base of social contract as well
What I like about dollars is that they are butt simple to use. With bitcoin, it seems that I need to learn about exchanges, electronic wallets, ledgers, exchanges, security, accessibility in emergencies (e.g. power outages), etc. before acquiring and spending any...
De-centralized. Organically local. Open Source. Bank on yourself.
PURPOSE: Dollar-sized ArtWorks used as advertising and gifted into the local economy. To be used by businesses and citizenry … to trade.
CONSUMER Instructions
1. Use ArtWork as you would cash for dinner, coffee, soda, tips, a massage, health care, child care, & more. Ask the community business if they take the ArtWork.
2. You may receive ArtWork in your change when buying a product locally, as a gift for a birthday, as a tip for a job well done, & more.
3. Closer to the expiration date (find date on the ArtWork), turn it back to the owner of the ArtWork and they will give you cash or more-than-equivalent services or products.
4. The more ArtWork is passed for exchange in the community before it is turned in, the more sustainable the community economy!
Get real…. Spend ArtWork…. Go local.
___________________
OWNER::BUSINESS instructions
Why use ArtWork as local exchange in Advertising:
--Get people talking about what you are doing.
--Use your advertising budget locally.
--Subtract the cost of your ArtWork as advertising.
--Watch people smile & laugh when “playing” with your “funny money”.
How to get started:
--Pay a small amount to a local artist for the ArtWork. Or make your own.
--Set aside an amount of cash to pay the “reward” for the return of the ArtWork. (You also may barter for the ArtWork with services or product.)
--Write or pay a writer to add:
1. Your business & slogan & offerings.
2. Your area of “good within ___miles of your place of business”.
3. Expiration date. Usually 3-6 months.
--Give your ArtWorks away.
1. You can only spend ArtWork other than your own.
2. Offer as a thank you to: Regulars, High pay customers, Bonuses &
Perks, Friends & Family, Lovers.
When the ArtWork is presented back to you
--Give cash or
--Give services or
--Give a product.
Keep gifting it out until closer to the expiration date.
_____________________
ARTIST instructions
1. You may
--Make your own ArtWork to advertise you and your business. OR
--Be commissioned to make ArtWork for someone else to advertise.
--Do one or the other because the Kindly-Tizing ArtWork is Open Source, meaning the ArtWork is not copyrighted. K-TAW believes in a gift society and a healthy local economy.
2. If you are commissioned to produce an ArtWork for someone else:
--You may sell your labor and supplies. Once a business, person, or a not-for-profit owns the ArtWork then the ArtWork totally belongs to them. They must set aside the “reward money” to exchange by the expiration date.
3. If you create the ArtWork for yourself to advertise yourself:
--You are the owner. When you own the ArtWork, you are the one who must set aside the “reward money” to exchange by the expiration date. The Owner must give ArtWork away as a gift to the community economy.
--You may take the cost of ArtWork off your income for advertising.
4. The Owner of the ArtWork must give/gift it away during the time period.
The Exon/bitcoin piece is coming at a very strange time given we are at a massive oil deficit that will only grow and the gas prices are high. If anything this seems a little like part of a conspiracy to destroy the supply of all the factors of production. On the other hand, it also seems like AMC buying a gold miner and then trying to make an NFT out of it. Is Exon seeing itself going the way of post-pandemic movie theater companies?
Do you think it’s possible that the “dollar milkshake” (Brent Johnson of Santiago Capital) gets activated prior to the “gold milkshake” and then the “bitcoin milkshake” that eats them all?
That is, it seems that we are headed towards regional powers where one alliance forms among those who de-dollarize and they move into something gold backed, while inside the dollar world they slowly come up with a CBDC plan. Meanwhile, so many other currencies are destabilized that there is still a flight to dollar safety among the huge portion of the world that places its bets on staying within the western system. The dollar may be doomed to fail, but not before all the other fiat currencies fail first.
It seems to me supply of electricity can go down in regional patches, but I don't think it's possible for all of it to go down even in very large regions, let alone globally. Some metropolises are more vulnerable than others. When it does go down, restoration starts immediately. I don't think "the internet" can really be "shut down" either. If anyone can offer theories about how electricity or internet could go down for a long time over a significant area, I'd love to read them.
People underappreciate power of financial innovations. The first, almost internet like tectonic game changer, was the invention of joint stock company structure. The next on the scale of influence on economic growth, IMO, was fractional reserve banking (FRB).
Increase in political risk attached to USD reserve confiscation is not necessarily a verdict against financial structures like fractional reserve banking. My bet is that it will simply lead to diversification and more thoughtful management of reserves. Remember the time when S&P downgraded US Government credit?
I think USD is going to be here for a while. Unless the idiots really press on with regime change in Russia and lose the electricity grid.
“A prince, who should enact that a certain proportion of his taxes be paid in a paper money of a certain kind, might thereby give a certain value to this paper money.” - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
An important item that is not covered by both Arthur and Matt is tax. What the economically dominant sovereign dictates as a valid currency to pay taxes will matter. I don't see any reason why the US, the EU, Japan, China and India will demand tax payments in gold or bitcoin in the near future. International transactions are only part of the big picture.
David Harvey is a long time professor that teaches Marx . Specifically teaching Marx work around the book called capital . Highly recommend listening to david Harvey lectures .
How I explain money to my kids …
People do work to take care of survival needs . Like build and fix homes and cultivate and get food . When they do something well they get good at it and often can get more then they need with just a bit more work . This is an increase in efficiency of work . We called this productivity . When they have extra of a useful thing , they can trade it for some else’s extra thing . Like one person might get a bunch of wood . Have extra wood then they need and trade it some someone that might have extra salted dried fish . This kind of trade is called barter . Another form of exchange is cooperation . In this arranmgent people work together and share the produce . Anyway , another way to survive is to plumage others . The working surviving people trading goods would get attacked and their throats cut and all their stored labour , in way of stuff , stolen . So the string leader would take everyone’s extra stuff and stir it in a defendable castle . And issue instead representations of the value of the stored defended goods . Like iou based on what is owned . Many of these items are perishable and their values are short lived . So some trades are made to trade a perishable item to a non perishable item that people always need . Like eggs for coal . But some items are just so big and bulky that moving it around is a loss of labor value . Some hold over trades are ideal when they get the highest value for least lost labor value ( exchange cost). That is where snd how gold and silver became a hold over good ( money ). And why the king would often trade the surplus goods that are bulky and perishable for gold and silver . As the gold and silver were representative by a note from the king the paper document like a cheque became the first paper money . At some point of life well beyond simple survival goods and lots more people are specialization of work someone realized that no one ever saw the gold and would not even notice if it wasn’t even there . They could infect steal the gold and simple let the money be valued on an abstract idea snd no one would even notice , much . They say it’s valued on its use ( gdp). That is called fiat currency . But even with fiat currency , there is a cost to make snd maintain the money snd keep it from fraud , and arranging exchange of goods for money has a cost as people involved in some way . With trusty system like electronics the costs of exchange go way down , but somehow the people involved in making
Money from exchange continue to charge too much . So a digital currency managing exchange is better represented of cheaper exchange cost . This digital currency .
I don't think you do the position of the bitcoin naysayers justice. I think many of the people criticizing bitcoin are coming from a wider social perspective than the bitcoin enthusiasts - in other words, bitcoin enthusiasts seem like they are talking about how to grow or keep wealth in dire times, whereas bitcoin naysayers are talking about bitcoin's role in constructing a totalitarian state (not its personal impact - not fears that I, personally, will be tracked). Personally, I believe that bitcoin may make sense as a personal investment, but I also believe that it is contributing to totalitarianism, so, no thanks. In short, bitcoin (not its enthusiasts!) is "evil" because its widespread adoption and growing familiarity accelerates the public acceptance and technology necessary to turn us all into serfs of the global public private partnership (see Iian Davis). Bitcoin has convinced a lot of people that "decentralized" means safe and private, and it doesn't. The concepts behind crypto and IDs are getting merged, so people think decentralized digital IDs, like bitcoin, will be fine and dandy, because you will "own" your own data, have the private key, only give it to who you want, etc. But the analysis of safety and privacy with both IDs and bitcoin ignores the power and ownership structure - highly highly concentrated. And it ignores the "great reset's" great new business models - turning the "management" of human and environmental problems (and humans and the environment) into new markets, which run on data (surveillance) and profit from behavior modification. And it ignores the exploding technology of the 4th IR - the Internet of Things and Bodies - which means sensors/surveillance/permission granted or denied - everywhere. How useful will your bitcoin be in the company town? Or when every transaction requires your DDID and the health data therein? The second half of this, particularly, explains more: https://thefeistyadelie.com/2022/03/04/the-new-surveillance-capitalism/
On the individual level, what are your thoughts on metal, given the circumstances? Gold is pricey at the moment, and while it would almost certainly increase in value in the event it regained more of the monetary function it use to hold (in other words, as the everyman's demand for it increased), silver appears not to have increased as steeply (I hate the corrosion factor, and it has still increased as well). I looked at platinum because it's historically low, but it's said that it'll drop as soon as things get tight and people stop buying cars (they use platinum and its sister metals because of the high melting point)
Transacting in digital currencies assume that systems and network support are dependable, at least between buyer and seller, although referential integrity controls on "ledgers" require more wide scale network availability. TCP/IP networking was never designed to be secure and opted for fault tolerance, relying more on the implicit integrity of "goodwill". We have progessively become more cynical of each others motives in recent decades and all sorts of security "fear porn" has been encouraged almost everywhere and not without some evidence. I would estimate that client-side internet connected computing devices probably spend around half their CPU cycles (when they're not waiting for something to do) on security related activity, whether it's on malware related tasks, maintaining firewalls, sandpits or indirectly through software updates. The loss of "goodwill" or implicit trust, costs us all dearly, in electrical generation at the very least.
Arthur's appeal to the physics law of energy conservation, exposed: "Both sides must balance, just like in all parts of life and the universe. Everything is relative, and nothing is ever created or destroyed, just transformed." Of course he's talking about the world of money and the accounting equation where everything must balance. The early history of financial transactions was served quite well by this but it became increasingly difficult throughout the industrial age where machinery could amplify the returns for its owners. The recent rise of the information age and the fortunes bestowed on the owners of "software" and intellectual property rights have made the material balance between assets and liabilities obsolete conspiring to remove the "gold standard" for many countries in the 1930's after the global stock market crash. Whether we learned any valuable lessons or this crash became yet another opportunity to cash in on a crisis certainly fueled careers well into the twenty-first century. A fairly critical and foundational requirement for discussion about modern financial analysis must surely incorporate the concept that marketplace value isn't a law of physics but one of psychology. Value must be created or destroyed as needed, as per macroeconomics 101, as the occupation of a trusted entity (typically the Treasury/Central Bank coalition). Digital currencies are also created out of thin air, whose value is determined with the same fragility in the financial marketplace, but whose continued creation or destruction isn't particularly well defined, unlike the current crop of fiat currencies. The US dollar should, however, be regarded as an anomaly to other fiat currencies, as it has been cleverly constructed as the world currency and not subject to the same kinds of limitations taught in Econ 101.
I'm not convinced that inventing new forms of crypto-currency technologies will solve many problems and will likely create some new ones. Blockchain might be useful for high-value items used to define and record historical "ownership" when appropriate but hopeless for the majority of low value transactions. Maybe a barter like system of intrinsic value can be designed to fit on a standalone device, so that one good tree-grown apple is valued at 10 galvanized 20d nails. Or maybe that something more intangible, like software or the electronic record that is my comment adds to someones perceived sense of value, like the sharemarket does for many who own stock!
This is a very basic, probably dumb question but I need to know. My basic research has not discussed this: What if the electrical grid goes down? How does one access their bitcoins?
lol: "they spell English words like English people, which is wronger than it sounds" I get a kick out of the differences. I'd like to listen to the British version of Harry Potter audio books, but I'll have to get out of the US to buy them. In Australia, instead of better and ladder, they say be-oh and la-oh. Sorry for getting off topic. ;)
I always appreciate the orange pill posts Mathew. You mentioned attracting critique to update your own understanding- I’m still hodling but follow @joekelly100 on Twitter for reasoned contra Bitcoin takes.
I haven’t heard of the ‘Bitcoin is a tool of the wef theories’ but now see a rabbit hole in my near future.
If you or any other commenters know of anyone developing adjacent or parallel systems for complex (ie securities, hypothetically, if SEC registration requirements weren’t a factor) transactions via smart contract that settle in btc and thus also are censorship resistant, please drop links! (As far as I understand lightning and liquid are facilitate transfers at speed while mitigating exorbitant fees but aren’t for more complex transactions?)
It's not the transparent public ledger that concerns me about Bitcoin, it's the 51% attack vulnerability. This occurs when a single person or group of people gains control of over 50% of a blockchain's hashing power. Successful attackers gain the ability to block new transactions from being confirmed as well as change the ordering of new transactions. It also allows the malicious agents to essentially rewrite parts of the blockchain and reverse their own transactions. Anyone who controls the majority of the hashing power can decide which transactions to include in the next block. Due to that, an attacker can even decide to build a completely empty block, with no transactions.
It's often stated that a 51% attack against larger currencies is essentially impossible because no one has that kind of purchasing power. The total value of all Bitcoins is currently $1.03 trillion. Bitcoin's so-called anonymity obscures it's ultimate beneficial ownership, but seeing as it's an entirely fungible commodity then if it's broadly owned by the same monsters that control almost all of the financial economy, then it's completely controllable by the cabal and will become more so the more it's traded. There's no KYC for Bitcoin, so there's no reason to expect that an interested group of investors couldn't and wouldn't buy a 51% stake at any time through whatever ownership structure they choose. We're making the process of controlling our currencies even easier for them.
The mitigation measures proposed so far against this attack are entirely geared towards deterring smaller attackers. The Proof of Stake mechanism establishes incentives which structure compensation in a way that makes an attack less advantageous. What if you don't care about profits, you want to crash or control or rewrite the network?
I think for this reason Bitcoin can't be taken seriously as a truly decentralised alternative to fiat currency unless and until fiat currency, the fractional reserve banking system and the mechanisms by which pension funds, insurance and other institutional investment sources are completely overhauled.
I wrote it , but you didn’t value it . Not enough to include it .
A fiat type digital replacement like Bitcoin has some nice ideas , like being finite , based on a blockchain ledger , and decentralized . It’s supposed value was primarily on the ability to exchange cheaper , while also using its decentralized attribute as a marketing tool with political funding ( wikileaks) and black market ( ….road).
Much of the advertising for Bitcoin included learning about fiat money creation by the fed reserve . Privledge and all that .
Soon the value increased and gre du people became attracted to it like flies .
The exchange utility is the real asset but not really being adopted . More so for speculation ( greeed ). One freed just replacing the legacy greed and privileges.
The. Pretty much every kind of crypto gets created , because it’s cheap to make and gets printed like a Ponzi scheme .
One way to assess value would be to assess its adoption as a medium of exchange . Otherwise it’s all projection with nothing concrete .
And here is what I pointed out in the past Mathew . The blockchain is the high utility social valuable part . The big issue in commodity trading is tracking . Where a blockchain can be tied to all commodity parcels the broad market of resources and trading
Can be consolidated into crypto digital currency that is backed by not simply gold , but any and all primary tradable commodity resources . Having to store all the gold under a couple of buildings might lead to it suddenly disappearing . And certainly the cost of storage and movement is high when it’s consolidated in such ways . But by blockchaining all commodities these values are decentralized and added into the block chains.
This is where it will go , because it simply makes the most sense . And with consolidation of power that is very much interested in being gods , such control is too big to turn down .
What does it mean for Bitcoin ? Not sure , it’s either used to extract wealth from hopeful suckers as a Ponzi type scheme , or it’s wrapped up into the new currency paradigm . My bet is on rich getting richer .
There are a few crypto funds , like the one my friend created here in Canada . They are likely safer bets then any particular one .
At the end of the day I’ll trade for food or gas not a digital stick . So it’s also a system that operates at a certain base of social contract as well
What I like about dollars is that they are butt simple to use. With bitcoin, it seems that I need to learn about exchanges, electronic wallets, ledgers, exchanges, security, accessibility in emergencies (e.g. power outages), etc. before acquiring and spending any...
STEAL THIS IDEA!…PLEASE.
ART WORKS for COMMUNITY CURRENCY
K-TAW = Kindly-Tizing ArtWork :: a kind of funny money
ArtWork backed by community spirit of exchange
MISSION: We are artists banded together in partnership with businesses and community to exchange Art-Works in support of the local economy.
METHOD: Beyond permaculture currency. Barter. Banter. Build.
De-centralized. Organically local. Open Source. Bank on yourself.
PURPOSE: Dollar-sized ArtWorks used as advertising and gifted into the local economy. To be used by businesses and citizenry … to trade.
CONSUMER Instructions
1. Use ArtWork as you would cash for dinner, coffee, soda, tips, a massage, health care, child care, & more. Ask the community business if they take the ArtWork.
2. You may receive ArtWork in your change when buying a product locally, as a gift for a birthday, as a tip for a job well done, & more.
3. Closer to the expiration date (find date on the ArtWork), turn it back to the owner of the ArtWork and they will give you cash or more-than-equivalent services or products.
4. The more ArtWork is passed for exchange in the community before it is turned in, the more sustainable the community economy!
Get real…. Spend ArtWork…. Go local.
___________________
OWNER::BUSINESS instructions
Why use ArtWork as local exchange in Advertising:
--Get people talking about what you are doing.
--Use your advertising budget locally.
--Subtract the cost of your ArtWork as advertising.
--Watch people smile & laugh when “playing” with your “funny money”.
How to get started:
--Pay a small amount to a local artist for the ArtWork. Or make your own.
--Set aside an amount of cash to pay the “reward” for the return of the ArtWork. (You also may barter for the ArtWork with services or product.)
--Write or pay a writer to add:
1. Your business & slogan & offerings.
2. Your area of “good within ___miles of your place of business”.
3. Expiration date. Usually 3-6 months.
--Give your ArtWorks away.
1. You can only spend ArtWork other than your own.
2. Offer as a thank you to: Regulars, High pay customers, Bonuses &
Perks, Friends & Family, Lovers.
When the ArtWork is presented back to you
--Give cash or
--Give services or
--Give a product.
Keep gifting it out until closer to the expiration date.
_____________________
ARTIST instructions
1. You may
--Make your own ArtWork to advertise you and your business. OR
--Be commissioned to make ArtWork for someone else to advertise.
--Do one or the other because the Kindly-Tizing ArtWork is Open Source, meaning the ArtWork is not copyrighted. K-TAW believes in a gift society and a healthy local economy.
2. If you are commissioned to produce an ArtWork for someone else:
--You may sell your labor and supplies. Once a business, person, or a not-for-profit owns the ArtWork then the ArtWork totally belongs to them. They must set aside the “reward money” to exchange by the expiration date.
3. If you create the ArtWork for yourself to advertise yourself:
--You are the owner. When you own the ArtWork, you are the one who must set aside the “reward money” to exchange by the expiration date. The Owner must give ArtWork away as a gift to the community economy.
--You may take the cost of ArtWork off your income for advertising.
4. The Owner of the ArtWork must give/gift it away during the time period.
--Because if you sell the ArtWork, you
1. must pay taxes on the sale and
2. cannot deduct ArtWork as advertising.
5. ALL THE POINTS FOR THE BUSINESS OWNER APPLIES.
The Exon/bitcoin piece is coming at a very strange time given we are at a massive oil deficit that will only grow and the gas prices are high. If anything this seems a little like part of a conspiracy to destroy the supply of all the factors of production. On the other hand, it also seems like AMC buying a gold miner and then trying to make an NFT out of it. Is Exon seeing itself going the way of post-pandemic movie theater companies?
Do you think it’s possible that the “dollar milkshake” (Brent Johnson of Santiago Capital) gets activated prior to the “gold milkshake” and then the “bitcoin milkshake” that eats them all?
That is, it seems that we are headed towards regional powers where one alliance forms among those who de-dollarize and they move into something gold backed, while inside the dollar world they slowly come up with a CBDC plan. Meanwhile, so many other currencies are destabilized that there is still a flight to dollar safety among the huge portion of the world that places its bets on staying within the western system. The dollar may be doomed to fail, but not before all the other fiat currencies fail first.
Thoughts?
It seems to me supply of electricity can go down in regional patches, but I don't think it's possible for all of it to go down even in very large regions, let alone globally. Some metropolises are more vulnerable than others. When it does go down, restoration starts immediately. I don't think "the internet" can really be "shut down" either. If anyone can offer theories about how electricity or internet could go down for a long time over a significant area, I'd love to read them.
To sum up:
The moral and ethical evaluation of a thing is not the thing in itself as itself, but how it is used.
What is Bitcoin and other such currencies currently being used for, in the main?
People underappreciate power of financial innovations. The first, almost internet like tectonic game changer, was the invention of joint stock company structure. The next on the scale of influence on economic growth, IMO, was fractional reserve banking (FRB).
Increase in political risk attached to USD reserve confiscation is not necessarily a verdict against financial structures like fractional reserve banking. My bet is that it will simply lead to diversification and more thoughtful management of reserves. Remember the time when S&P downgraded US Government credit?
I think USD is going to be here for a while. Unless the idiots really press on with regime change in Russia and lose the electricity grid.
“A prince, who should enact that a certain proportion of his taxes be paid in a paper money of a certain kind, might thereby give a certain value to this paper money.” - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
An important item that is not covered by both Arthur and Matt is tax. What the economically dominant sovereign dictates as a valid currency to pay taxes will matter. I don't see any reason why the US, the EU, Japan, China and India will demand tax payments in gold or bitcoin in the near future. International transactions are only part of the big picture.
David Harvey is a long time professor that teaches Marx . Specifically teaching Marx work around the book called capital . Highly recommend listening to david Harvey lectures .
How I explain money to my kids …
People do work to take care of survival needs . Like build and fix homes and cultivate and get food . When they do something well they get good at it and often can get more then they need with just a bit more work . This is an increase in efficiency of work . We called this productivity . When they have extra of a useful thing , they can trade it for some else’s extra thing . Like one person might get a bunch of wood . Have extra wood then they need and trade it some someone that might have extra salted dried fish . This kind of trade is called barter . Another form of exchange is cooperation . In this arranmgent people work together and share the produce . Anyway , another way to survive is to plumage others . The working surviving people trading goods would get attacked and their throats cut and all their stored labour , in way of stuff , stolen . So the string leader would take everyone’s extra stuff and stir it in a defendable castle . And issue instead representations of the value of the stored defended goods . Like iou based on what is owned . Many of these items are perishable and their values are short lived . So some trades are made to trade a perishable item to a non perishable item that people always need . Like eggs for coal . But some items are just so big and bulky that moving it around is a loss of labor value . Some hold over trades are ideal when they get the highest value for least lost labor value ( exchange cost). That is where snd how gold and silver became a hold over good ( money ). And why the king would often trade the surplus goods that are bulky and perishable for gold and silver . As the gold and silver were representative by a note from the king the paper document like a cheque became the first paper money . At some point of life well beyond simple survival goods and lots more people are specialization of work someone realized that no one ever saw the gold and would not even notice if it wasn’t even there . They could infect steal the gold and simple let the money be valued on an abstract idea snd no one would even notice , much . They say it’s valued on its use ( gdp). That is called fiat currency . But even with fiat currency , there is a cost to make snd maintain the money snd keep it from fraud , and arranging exchange of goods for money has a cost as people involved in some way . With trusty system like electronics the costs of exchange go way down , but somehow the people involved in making
Money from exchange continue to charge too much . So a digital currency managing exchange is better represented of cheaper exchange cost . This digital currency .
I don't think you do the position of the bitcoin naysayers justice. I think many of the people criticizing bitcoin are coming from a wider social perspective than the bitcoin enthusiasts - in other words, bitcoin enthusiasts seem like they are talking about how to grow or keep wealth in dire times, whereas bitcoin naysayers are talking about bitcoin's role in constructing a totalitarian state (not its personal impact - not fears that I, personally, will be tracked). Personally, I believe that bitcoin may make sense as a personal investment, but I also believe that it is contributing to totalitarianism, so, no thanks. In short, bitcoin (not its enthusiasts!) is "evil" because its widespread adoption and growing familiarity accelerates the public acceptance and technology necessary to turn us all into serfs of the global public private partnership (see Iian Davis). Bitcoin has convinced a lot of people that "decentralized" means safe and private, and it doesn't. The concepts behind crypto and IDs are getting merged, so people think decentralized digital IDs, like bitcoin, will be fine and dandy, because you will "own" your own data, have the private key, only give it to who you want, etc. But the analysis of safety and privacy with both IDs and bitcoin ignores the power and ownership structure - highly highly concentrated. And it ignores the "great reset's" great new business models - turning the "management" of human and environmental problems (and humans and the environment) into new markets, which run on data (surveillance) and profit from behavior modification. And it ignores the exploding technology of the 4th IR - the Internet of Things and Bodies - which means sensors/surveillance/permission granted or denied - everywhere. How useful will your bitcoin be in the company town? Or when every transaction requires your DDID and the health data therein? The second half of this, particularly, explains more: https://thefeistyadelie.com/2022/03/04/the-new-surveillance-capitalism/
On the individual level, what are your thoughts on metal, given the circumstances? Gold is pricey at the moment, and while it would almost certainly increase in value in the event it regained more of the monetary function it use to hold (in other words, as the everyman's demand for it increased), silver appears not to have increased as steeply (I hate the corrosion factor, and it has still increased as well). I looked at platinum because it's historically low, but it's said that it'll drop as soon as things get tight and people stop buying cars (they use platinum and its sister metals because of the high melting point)
Transacting in digital currencies assume that systems and network support are dependable, at least between buyer and seller, although referential integrity controls on "ledgers" require more wide scale network availability. TCP/IP networking was never designed to be secure and opted for fault tolerance, relying more on the implicit integrity of "goodwill". We have progessively become more cynical of each others motives in recent decades and all sorts of security "fear porn" has been encouraged almost everywhere and not without some evidence. I would estimate that client-side internet connected computing devices probably spend around half their CPU cycles (when they're not waiting for something to do) on security related activity, whether it's on malware related tasks, maintaining firewalls, sandpits or indirectly through software updates. The loss of "goodwill" or implicit trust, costs us all dearly, in electrical generation at the very least.
Arthur's appeal to the physics law of energy conservation, exposed: "Both sides must balance, just like in all parts of life and the universe. Everything is relative, and nothing is ever created or destroyed, just transformed." Of course he's talking about the world of money and the accounting equation where everything must balance. The early history of financial transactions was served quite well by this but it became increasingly difficult throughout the industrial age where machinery could amplify the returns for its owners. The recent rise of the information age and the fortunes bestowed on the owners of "software" and intellectual property rights have made the material balance between assets and liabilities obsolete conspiring to remove the "gold standard" for many countries in the 1930's after the global stock market crash. Whether we learned any valuable lessons or this crash became yet another opportunity to cash in on a crisis certainly fueled careers well into the twenty-first century. A fairly critical and foundational requirement for discussion about modern financial analysis must surely incorporate the concept that marketplace value isn't a law of physics but one of psychology. Value must be created or destroyed as needed, as per macroeconomics 101, as the occupation of a trusted entity (typically the Treasury/Central Bank coalition). Digital currencies are also created out of thin air, whose value is determined with the same fragility in the financial marketplace, but whose continued creation or destruction isn't particularly well defined, unlike the current crop of fiat currencies. The US dollar should, however, be regarded as an anomaly to other fiat currencies, as it has been cleverly constructed as the world currency and not subject to the same kinds of limitations taught in Econ 101.
I'm not convinced that inventing new forms of crypto-currency technologies will solve many problems and will likely create some new ones. Blockchain might be useful for high-value items used to define and record historical "ownership" when appropriate but hopeless for the majority of low value transactions. Maybe a barter like system of intrinsic value can be designed to fit on a standalone device, so that one good tree-grown apple is valued at 10 galvanized 20d nails. Or maybe that something more intangible, like software or the electronic record that is my comment adds to someones perceived sense of value, like the sharemarket does for many who own stock!