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?
Thanks MC for all this...re bitcoin is internet money....I think the amount society pays/ has paid out to create the internet, use the internet, build the internet is comparable to road building and maintenance, but also to library building and general commerce building. With all that value combined, compared to what we are really paying for it, the internet is low valued possibly? Maybe I just need more coffee. Best.
You're asking an important question that the thought leaders don't understand or are paid not to.
Yes, the internet is undervalued. Dramatically! The Dot Com bubble got people thinking the opposite, but stocks/corps are imperfect detectors of value. They only signal value that can be captured with the "dollar catching nets" of corporatized financial feedback loops.
Decentralization of the internet would result in explosive growth of small business, and decentralize power worldwide. People think that happened, but they ain't seen nothin' yet.
that is very inspiring Mathew-thank you (in my nervous 'talking to a movie star' voice) . Seems even the value of a road or a bridge is very hard to quantify, and always changing...the value of a library also.....my thing is to find the discarded or unused items, the steam that boils off, etc and see if it could be cycled into some value (boiling the bones to make soup).....but wrt to the internet...and I do wonder about the potentially weak connections in the system, as fragile as electricity. I searched 'solar powered internet cloud bank'...as if we could all be a tiny internet hub covering some area....hmmmm
Ultimately, Bitcoin is the optimization problem that puts the value of money closest to the value of energy. This encourages more optimal use of energy.
Line loss alone eats the majority of electricity on the U.S. grid (upwards of 60%). That incentivizes energy producers or even utilities to load balance entire electrical grids with mining equipment. Much of the energy spent to mine Bitcoin will be energy that was never going to reach a point of use.
We are likely to see that load balancing change the way energy is traded on exchanges. Currently, in deregulated energy states (18 of them?), electricity is sold at a flat rate to Retail Energy Providers (REPs) who then look for customers to balance load, but the night time demand never reaches the daytime demand. There is some shutting down and repowering of production sources, but this comes at substantial cost and lost energy.
Cool recycling: As night time energy often trades for fractions of pennies, it can be bought and used to power up old miners for a few hours a day. Paired with batteries that store solar energy, this load balancing will save Americans billions a year while strengthening the energy stability of the entire grid situation.
One way is to look at replacement cost . The social utility is a challenging thing to assess . Looking at replacement cost of internet equipment , it’s likely far cheaper now then what it initially cost . But , the replacement cost is far far cheaper then roads and bridges .
If the electricity goes down, those without gold and silver will definitely have problems. Even paper may have more value than crypto under such circumstances.
We need to start with proper understanding: “Gold is the money of kings, silver is the money of gentlemen, barter is the money of peasants – but debt is the money of slaves.” - Norm Franz
Proper understanding continued: Gold is miles away from silver. It does not lend itself to everyday transactions - it is an exquisite store of value, and helps preserve the capital (savings) you have. It is not to be spent lightly. For illustration, ten gold coins could buy you a new car, and you can hold them all easily in the palm of your hand.
There is a general misunderstanding about value - the value remains more or less constant; only its expressions via currency tags will change. In my book (and excepting bitcoin), Arthur Hayes has it right: "Remember: it’s not gold or Bitcoin that is increasing in price, it’s a decrease in value of the fiat currency in which they are priced."
There is nothing to prevent you from demanding gold as payment for your services as long as they are correspondingly valuable - do you provide enough units of your work to be paid by at least a single gold coin? If you tried it out, you would also see the ratio between your work and the reward in gold it commands at the moment, and would have a measure for any future events.
If electricity goes, so will your mortgage. It might be an interesting exercise suggesting your lender that you would pay in gold and/or silver - as long as it is legal tender, I do not see why not.
If electricity goes, the local community will at once start devising ways to keep the exchange of necessary goods going, and value and countervalue will be quickly established. It would not go amiss preparing for such an event, and to get organized now, in good time.
By the way, shovels would be bought for silver, not gold.
I was referring to the value of gold; historically, it keeps its value. I see currencies as a lost cause due to fractional banking, with exchange rates relatively moving but all fielding the race to the bottom. I wonder how cryptos will fare when CBDC is introduced, and each serf stamped with QR code.
I find the hardest thing to do these days is understand value . Alot of that is due to specialization of work that makes people ignorant. If one were to go to an Amish auction one will observe how Amish farmers assess the value of capital in direct relation to what it takes to afford and what the capital will in turn do .
I think there can still be over valuations when much of the valuation is based on speculation . Bitcoins value is not being set on its utility . So there got I would not assume it’s high value is an actual lowering
How does it work with gold and silver? With power out, and a chunk of gold or silver, and say you need to buy a shovel. I spose only certain retailers will be willing to take the chunck of gold, but how would you calculate the value? The last known value will not be the current value and no one will know the current value. I cannot accept gold as payment for my services and cannot use it (without the internet) to pay a mortgage. Thanks Castigator.
No, just to bury...(reality), but I might have said 'computer fan' or 'candles' as well...we depend on so much stuff...this will be a good lesson about all the stuff...we don't really need. Best
A fairly simple solar generator (they’re not really “generators” but that’s what they’re called) and some solar panels will easily provide power to run a ham radio, plus keep your rechargeable devices charged up. And your freezer, until you eat everything in it.
I have been holding onto a business plan that is simlar to one that Thiel invested $50M in (poor decision) since before that point, but that includes pairing miners with those ordering solar panels, then managing the mining returns for them. There are other pieces as well. Ultimately, it's energy/work that is money, not the particular commodity or form of gold. Bitcoin is simply the solution to the math problem that allows for that to be digitized.
Thank you. This has been my worry. I went from trying to convince my husband we should put some of (what is left) of our savings in crypto currency, to fearful that he is embracing this too enthusiastically. It also appears the Canadian government managed to cut-off crypto access for some of the convoy organizers? Or are they just bluffing?
FWIW, I purchased 24 silver ounce coins the other day. It's smart to have multiple currencies and investments specifically crossing the lines of "What is the world that we might live in, fundamentally?"
I also own enough seeds to plant some acreage of wheat and vegetables. Packets of seeds would be currency in an early electricity crisis.
With respect to Bitcoin, it's value is within a world/universe with internet. So be it. I'm still quite optimistic about the long term future of the world for humans even if the power goes out temporarily.
I'm assuming you're meaning a hardware wallet for cryptos here. I guess my question is what happens to the coins when the hardware fails (as it inevitably does).
Hardware wallets don't actually store any of your bitcoin, it just holds your private key. If you keep your 12 / 18 / 24 seed phrase safe, you can use it to recover your funds. The seed phrase is basically your private key. Guard it with your life, at the same time have a plan that will allow you to pass it onto your loved ones once you depart this earth. This is were a multisig wallet comes in handy.
Yep that's another problem with crypto. When your drive fails, and they always do eventually, there's going to be some hair pulling. Back up to what a USB drive? Cue panicked raising of floorboards wondering if that USB dropped down that hole in the floor (it's the last place left).
Regulators can cutoff access at the on and off-ramps if the sender or receiver are converting between crypto and fiat or if their wallets are hosted on an exchange but they can’t cutoff peer to peer transfers of bitcoin if the individuals are hosting their own wallets. (I don’t know if other peer to peer crypto transactions that aren’t Bitcoin can be regulated or confiscated).
I'm not entirely certain that cutting off the on-off ramps will harm Bitcoin. Ultimately, the value of the dollar will seep into Bitcoin (but in a one-way direction) every time oil or commodities transact in BTC (which is already taking place, and has been for several years even if the public is unaware). However, the big exchanges and derivatives (futures in particular) provide a mechanism through which prices can be subdued. Synthetic supply can depress the market. We have been hovering between the mining cost floor and the midpoint up to the stock-to-flow ceiling of value this entire cycle so far without a real spike above.
And it may be the dissident economy that really builds Bitcoin: those whose bank accounts get frozen because they are "anti-vaxxer terrorists" or some such nonsense.
If you're using the exchanges (who exactly owns them?) then you've already had your on-off ramps limited. When you sign up you are supposed to provide them with your income and I think total assets. Consequently this then goes into the algorithm that decides how much crypto that you can buy. So my 50k daily limit at the bank (I don't use it that often but I do occasionally) becomes something like 1500 a day on Coinbase. Which is practically useless.
Electrical grids going down would also destroy your ability to use visa, mastercard, atm machines, etc.. Anyone without a lot of paper laying around in a permanent grid-down situation is instantly a poor man.
This "what if" was always a bit of a red herring to make people question cryptocurrency's potential value as a currency. The reality is that humanity knows 1000 different ways of generating electricity and it's not going to stop doing so in any permanent manner anytime soon.
This question is like asking "What if the river runs dry" back in some past time when ground flour from a waterfall-driven mill was a form of currency.
What about an EMP? From what I understand there is the possibility we could be cast back to the 1800s in an instant.
I am not saying this as an argument for or against bitcoin. I am just saying that until we deal with the threat of an EMP, we are teetering on rickety scaffolding.
That's a bit of an exaggeration. Yes, EMPs can damage electronics that are plugged into the power grid, or electronics tied to antennae, but electronics sitting in ESD packaging on a store or warehouse shelf waiting to be purchased would be almost entirely unaffected.
I am relying on memory of several reports I read a few years ago. As I remember, one was a report to Congress on the threat, and one thing I remember was that there was not a whole lot of testing done on the effects of an EMP. Again, as I remember, most estimates of damage are based on a few very early in the cold war bomb tests.
If you could point my to your sources of info I would appreciate it.
It always seemed to me that EMPs and their potential impact have largely been ignored by the government with the exception of shielding some critical defense infrastructure.
There is lots of public information on the 400km altitude nuclear emp test conducted by the U.S. that affected Hawaii's electrical grid 900 km from ground-zero.
The biggest threat is to systems with lots and lots and lots of conductors tied to them because those conductors act like antennas and route all of the EMP energy into power stations. The effects do not generally destroy the conductors, they damage/destroy the inductors, capacitors, and resistors at the power distribution centers. This damage/destruction can take out large sections of power grids, that's true, but it is entirely unclear if this is necessarily a permanent condition. It would leave local power generation (in the home generation) virtually untouched, especially if protected from grid surges.
I know, right. And the internet going dark is a physical impossibility. Science and all that.
So I guess if the power grid went down, you would have a generator built from stuff you dug up in your backyard in what, a couple of hours? I mean, with 1,000 different ways of generating electricity, it should be easy to find one that you could throw together on short notice.
I am neutral on “crypto” but weak arguments for it are, in my opinion, its worst enemy. If this is the strongest argument available to counter the observation that cryptocurrencies rely on a certain base level of technology for which there is no guarantee of continuity of service, then it’s actually counterproductive.
As we get saddled with more and more “renewable” (i.e. unreliable) energy, the threat to continuity of electricity supply gets more and more real. Just ask South Australia.
Totally on board with this. Somehow or another, there has to be some sort of physical store of money that can supply the whole damn world - or at least some significant percentage of the personal savings of most or even all individuals. (This is a very simplified version of what I'm actually thinking, but it gets the general idea across.)
I don't have the answer to how that is done, but the goal needs to be to use our collective human genius to come up with a way to make sure people don't lose everything if the internet is blasted out of existence, even for just a significant while. Or even if some new way of hacking comes about that can lay waste to a digital currency / electronic funds system. There's no way we should just cross our fingers and hope such things never happen.
I’m pretty sure I would prefer a physical store of value (land, ammo, gold) than something ephemeral that is heavily reliant on a “common good” such as the internet.
Not saying crypto doesn’t have its place, but I want to be able to buy things I need irrespective of any “outage” (see “Cyber Polygon 2021”).
I’m very suspicious of “nothing bad could ever happen” arguments for crypto. People who are intellectually honest about it acknowledge the shortcomings rather than make hand-waving arguments about why objections are invalid. That’s true of anything, not just crypto.
Well because the thing that makes a network vulnerable to collapse is centralization. More people have generators than did 5-10 years ago. More people have solar installations and battery banks in their home than 5-10 years ago. Electrical grids have deregulated to allow consumers to put energy they don't use back on the grid.
I don't find it credible to say the grid is more vulnerable to collapse now simply because politicians are corruptly pushing "renewables" when the net effect of much of what they are doing is the grid becoming more distributed in its ability to generate power. If anything these blind idiots are improving the grids robustness to the loss of any single generator in their absurd zeal to abandon fossil fuels.
So what fraction of total energy requirements are covered by point-sources such as household generators?
And what’s the average equivalent KWH fuel supply?
I have a generator, but it’s small and sufficient only for my freezer, the well pump and a light or two, because I can’t be storing hundreds or thousands of gallons of fuel.
It’s not nearly sufficient to put anything meaningful back into the grid.
As far as I know only Bitcoin is decentralized and has a capped supply. All the other cryptocurrencies that I am aware of have individual(s) behind them with the ability to modify rules and mint new coins at their discretion. Bitcoin began with an anonymous white paper and relies on users and nodes in the network to verify new transactions and add them to the ongoing ledger so the ability to ban users or mint more coins isn’t in the hands of any one individual, group of people, or company.
What prevents countries from creating serious legal ramifications and restrictions on outside currency usage inside it’s borders? If a sovereign nation’s government relies on fiat currency to maintain their control, they will do whatever they can to keep that control.
Route traffic through nodes overwatched by No Such Agency - they capture and store all electronic and signals transactions as is. If a bitcoin transaction is detected, flip one random bit per packet. That would do the trick.
Entities that lock themselves out of the network must either commit to total war against it, or will suffer irrelevance on the other side of the technological step.
Technology is hard to keep down.
Remember the boats. China burned theirs, so went from the world's most powerful nation to the greatest target of plunder of the European corporate era.
Bitcoin likely succeeds due to that natural prisoner's dilemma.
So far, bitcoin is the hardest and most pristine money. Once I realised this, I stopped wasting time researching the other alt coins. It takes away the paradox of choice for you. Being orange pilled, has also changed the way I look towards the future.
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?)
I think that ICE or BAKKT is development a settlement system for crypto security settlement. That's been whispered about for a few years now, but under tight wraps. Harder to find out about than some classified secrets.
I'm not worried much about high velocity transaction solutions. I think most small money, high velocity transactions can/will take place without need for block space. This might happen with chains that find another equilibrium for security at that level. Bitcoin will be for savings. Actual banking. I have a lot of thoughts here, but don't want to talk about them publicly because they may be projects I get involved with.
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.
We should certainly be concerned about Sybil attacks. But can they succeed?
I have wondered if the supply chain disruption of chips is really manufacturers switching over to producing ASICs sold to...maybe the DoD? Who else would have the money to fund that fight?
But then will it require a trillion dollars a year to fight the Bitcoin industry? Will Bitcoiners flip to other chains and participate in a clever game of whack-a-mole that will raise costs of attacks higher? Will Bitcoiners just airdrop 100 copies of Bitcoin onto the network at the outset of such an attack, raising the stakes of the game and the cost of the attacks? The miners follow the users for profit, so that's a potential game theory.
Will the entire dollar economy be risked in this game...in order to save the dollar economy?
The question is who has that much money and I think we’re coming to realise that a tiny number of people in the world control almost all of our fiat currency. Between the totally unaccountable central banks and their superiors at a global level to the cartel of commercial banks given license to invent money to the two or three asset management firms that control all publicly traded corporations, there are the governments supposedly protecting the interests of ‘we the people’ but really in lockstep with the aforementioned. I say all of this to note that the level of control and lockstep in the system, especially evidenced throughout C19 has been extraordinary.
Cryptocurrency is supposed to be a means of countering that centralisation, but with that amount of control over the fiat economy I don’t think Bitcoin is fit for purpose with that vulnerability.
But I don’t say that they’re doing this to protect the dollar economy. It seems to me that the dollar economy has had a couple of Ukrainian C19 planes fly into it and is about to collapse into its own footprint. The inflation and eventual collapse will entail further consolidation at the hands of the cabal and unfortunately I think people will cry out for more security from government, not more freedom. What’s waiting in the wings to replace the dollar is more fiat and more control leading to humanity’s further degradation.
Does that mean I think crypto has no future? No, but I think we’ll at some point require a Great Divorce between those that want to be free and self sufficient and those that want to be slaves and for that purpose we’re going to require a currency that is truly divorced from and cannot be controlled by the fiat regime.
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...
Also, understand that the switchover to paying attention to new systems in a different way will entail the lack of need to pay attention to systems that only provide value to parasites. The things that you will no longer have to learn to keep track of will outweigh those that you do, and by a lot. People will have more time and money leftover...for healthy life and growth.
Precisely this. Now think about how intelligent the average person is and how skillfully they manage fiat currency when it becomes digitally represented.
Now think of millions of illegal immigrants suddenly granted citizenship that have probably never held a bank account previously.
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.
Like the artist JSG Boggs? I just found out he died in 2017. But he's the artist who had (almost) no money, and sat in a coffee shop in Chicago drawing a dollar bill. With great skill. And his waitress liked it so much, she accepted it as payment for the meal. And that was the beginning of the rest of his amazing story.
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.
So long as there is conversion, all currencies are overlaid on a single graph. There is friction, of course, but taxes can be paid in any convertible currency through the conversion. On the other hand, unless the entire cryptocurrency system is well tracked, governments will lose sight of how much money each person makes.
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/
You saddle Bitcoin with a description of the status quo in order to say that Bitcoin won't work. I see no particular argument here that isn't circular.
"Wont work" is very broad. In fact, I said, it might very well work to increase personal wealth, depending on the time frame. My argument is not circular. Bitcoin has not arisen in tandem with the "status quo," it precedes it, which to be clear - is not the status quo (ie. what is present now - in terms of what I am talking about, cant say what you are talking about) but rather an unwanted future including a China style surveillance/control "social" credit system in a pervasive real world environment filled with sensors and automatized infrastructure for "commerce" and "public services." Bitcoin introduced critical elements of the technology necessary for this future - tokenized payments and blockchain. Its not that block chain is actually required, its that it is a marketer's dream package for transforming privacy and freedom valuing people into gullible fools with buzz words like decentralization, privacy, trust/trustless and self-sovereignty. I think promoting bitcoin as a "freedom" technology promotes this future to the masses who will never understand that sole ownership of their private key, storage of their wallet on their own hardware, not having to use the exchanges, an internet that doesnt require logging in with their Ddigital ID (web 3.0), and willing sellers who can get everything in their supply chain outside the RFID tagged system is all required to make Bitcoin useful in the situations where you would actually need it (CBDC is the currency and they don't like you, in short). Yeah, you cant put the genii (blockchain) back in the bottle, but you don't have to shout that its the next best thing since sliced bread.
Ya. In agreement. In addition, as a (now retired) attorney who specialized in IT and IP for part of my career, I can say this. There is no data device or network in the world that cannot be hacked, given enough time, tools, and expertise. Blockchain may be ‘nearly’ impossible to penetrate, but the operative word is nearly. Holding Bitcoin on a centralized platform is no different than holding cash in your banks checking account, in terms of the relative risk of being a victim. The absolute risk may be lower, due to blockchain. But it’s not low enough for me. I’ll pass for now.
"There is no data device or network in the world that cannot be hacked, given enough time, tools, and expertise."
While technically true (because people can be enslaved and have an overlord sit watching over their shoulder if nothing else), the game of developing mathematical trap door functions for cryptography runs fast away from the game of deciphering code. The elliptic curve ciphers of Bitcoin are not even the best algorithms, though the best algorithms are nonpublic. I know of one in particular, which is a long story, but will change the game when needed.
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)
Oh, that's another good question. Assuming that seeds means what seeds should mean, is that a commodity you'd view as salable enough at any given time to view as a store of value (or investment)? I have to figure yes.
I think that near a risk horizon of this magnitude, seeds become a currency. I would not generally treat as such on as large a scale as I do currently. Transitions are a different animal.
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!
Berter systems always evolve toward proof-of-work value storage, historically.
The internet will be decentralized hand-in-hand with Bitcoin. If central authorities begin to withhold channels, the wealthy Bitcoiners will rebuild them or buy them up. All that matters for Bitcoin is that a signal can be transmitted in the network. The only way to prohibit that is through total warfare, and that's the real risk.
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?
If the electricity goes down, we have bigger problems.
Bitcoin is internet money.
Thanks MC for all this...re bitcoin is internet money....I think the amount society pays/ has paid out to create the internet, use the internet, build the internet is comparable to road building and maintenance, but also to library building and general commerce building. With all that value combined, compared to what we are really paying for it, the internet is low valued possibly? Maybe I just need more coffee. Best.
You're asking an important question that the thought leaders don't understand or are paid not to.
Yes, the internet is undervalued. Dramatically! The Dot Com bubble got people thinking the opposite, but stocks/corps are imperfect detectors of value. They only signal value that can be captured with the "dollar catching nets" of corporatized financial feedback loops.
Decentralization of the internet would result in explosive growth of small business, and decentralize power worldwide. People think that happened, but they ain't seen nothin' yet.
that is very inspiring Mathew-thank you (in my nervous 'talking to a movie star' voice) . Seems even the value of a road or a bridge is very hard to quantify, and always changing...the value of a library also.....my thing is to find the discarded or unused items, the steam that boils off, etc and see if it could be cycled into some value (boiling the bones to make soup).....but wrt to the internet...and I do wonder about the potentially weak connections in the system, as fragile as electricity. I searched 'solar powered internet cloud bank'...as if we could all be a tiny internet hub covering some area....hmmmm
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/946533
https://e360.yale.edu/features/energy-hogs-can-huge-data-centers-be-made-more-efficient
best-j
Ultimately, Bitcoin is the optimization problem that puts the value of money closest to the value of energy. This encourages more optimal use of energy.
Line loss alone eats the majority of electricity on the U.S. grid (upwards of 60%). That incentivizes energy producers or even utilities to load balance entire electrical grids with mining equipment. Much of the energy spent to mine Bitcoin will be energy that was never going to reach a point of use.
We are likely to see that load balancing change the way energy is traded on exchanges. Currently, in deregulated energy states (18 of them?), electricity is sold at a flat rate to Retail Energy Providers (REPs) who then look for customers to balance load, but the night time demand never reaches the daytime demand. There is some shutting down and repowering of production sources, but this comes at substantial cost and lost energy.
Cool recycling: As night time energy often trades for fractions of pennies, it can be bought and used to power up old miners for a few hours a day. Paired with batteries that store solar energy, this load balancing will save Americans billions a year while strengthening the energy stability of the entire grid situation.
So if I switched to living at night I would be more patriotic? And be more like a bat? /s?
One way is to look at replacement cost . The social utility is a challenging thing to assess . Looking at replacement cost of internet equipment , it’s likely far cheaper now then what it initially cost . But , the replacement cost is far far cheaper then roads and bridges .
If the electricity goes down, those without gold and silver will definitely have problems. Even paper may have more value than crypto under such circumstances.
We need to start with proper understanding: “Gold is the money of kings, silver is the money of gentlemen, barter is the money of peasants – but debt is the money of slaves.” - Norm Franz
Proper understanding continued: Gold is miles away from silver. It does not lend itself to everyday transactions - it is an exquisite store of value, and helps preserve the capital (savings) you have. It is not to be spent lightly. For illustration, ten gold coins could buy you a new car, and you can hold them all easily in the palm of your hand.
There is a general misunderstanding about value - the value remains more or less constant; only its expressions via currency tags will change. In my book (and excepting bitcoin), Arthur Hayes has it right: "Remember: it’s not gold or Bitcoin that is increasing in price, it’s a decrease in value of the fiat currency in which they are priced."
There is nothing to prevent you from demanding gold as payment for your services as long as they are correspondingly valuable - do you provide enough units of your work to be paid by at least a single gold coin? If you tried it out, you would also see the ratio between your work and the reward in gold it commands at the moment, and would have a measure for any future events.
If electricity goes, so will your mortgage. It might be an interesting exercise suggesting your lender that you would pay in gold and/or silver - as long as it is legal tender, I do not see why not.
If electricity goes, the local community will at once start devising ways to keep the exchange of necessary goods going, and value and countervalue will be quickly established. It would not go amiss preparing for such an event, and to get organized now, in good time.
By the way, shovels would be bought for silver, not gold.
I like the leading quote on a practical level.
But I strongly dispute the idea that "value remains more of less constant."
The value of a currency is dependent upon its network. And there are four distinct models:
The Equation of Exchange
Total Monetary Supply
Stock to flow
Metcalf's law
Clearly these are all variable-driven identities.
If values never changed, neither would exchange rates.
I was referring to the value of gold; historically, it keeps its value. I see currencies as a lost cause due to fractional banking, with exchange rates relatively moving but all fielding the race to the bottom. I wonder how cryptos will fare when CBDC is introduced, and each serf stamped with QR code.
I guess they get to borrow 2 cryptos at birth.
I find the hardest thing to do these days is understand value . Alot of that is due to specialization of work that makes people ignorant. If one were to go to an Amish auction one will observe how Amish farmers assess the value of capital in direct relation to what it takes to afford and what the capital will in turn do .
I think there can still be over valuations when much of the valuation is based on speculation . Bitcoins value is not being set on its utility . So there got I would not assume it’s high value is an actual lowering
Value of paper money
dang, yer brain...merci
How? Are we going to the baker and buy bread with a tiny piece of gold? Like use a chisel to chip from a bar?
How does it work with gold and silver? With power out, and a chunk of gold or silver, and say you need to buy a shovel. I spose only certain retailers will be willing to take the chunck of gold, but how would you calculate the value? The last known value will not be the current value and no one will know the current value. I cannot accept gold as payment for my services and cannot use it (without the internet) to pay a mortgage. Thanks Castigator.
If the power goes...nobody is asking for a mortgage payment. Just watch out for bandits.
Why the shovel? To bury the gold in your back garden?
No, just to bury...(reality), but I might have said 'computer fan' or 'candles' as well...we depend on so much stuff...this will be a good lesson about all the stuff...we don't really need. Best
Gold and silver are typically exchanged as coins.
Maybe I am missing something however it seems to me the currency you have in the bank is internet money too. How many people carry cash these days?
It's all that I use.
I have been moving in that direction as well 😊
Ham radio
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2019/03/04/bitcoin-coders-send-international-lightning-payment-over-ham-radio/
That's a method of transmission, but we do need electricity to run the miners. At least...I don't plan to operate that hand crank.
A fairly simple solar generator (they’re not really “generators” but that’s what they’re called) and some solar panels will easily provide power to run a ham radio, plus keep your rechargeable devices charged up. And your freezer, until you eat everything in it.
I have been holding onto a business plan that is simlar to one that Thiel invested $50M in (poor decision) since before that point, but that includes pairing miners with those ordering solar panels, then managing the mining returns for them. There are other pieces as well. Ultimately, it's energy/work that is money, not the particular commodity or form of gold. Bitcoin is simply the solution to the math problem that allows for that to be digitized.
Thank you. This has been my worry. I went from trying to convince my husband we should put some of (what is left) of our savings in crypto currency, to fearful that he is embracing this too enthusiastically. It also appears the Canadian government managed to cut-off crypto access for some of the convoy organizers? Or are they just bluffing?
FWIW, I purchased 24 silver ounce coins the other day. It's smart to have multiple currencies and investments specifically crossing the lines of "What is the world that we might live in, fundamentally?"
I also own enough seeds to plant some acreage of wheat and vegetables. Packets of seeds would be currency in an early electricity crisis.
With respect to Bitcoin, it's value is within a world/universe with internet. So be it. I'm still quite optimistic about the long term future of the world for humans even if the power goes out temporarily.
Not your keys not your coin. Make sure to get your coins off the exchanges and into your cold wallet.
Never a bad time to drop that advice until every human knows it as axiomatic.
I'm assuming you're meaning a hardware wallet for cryptos here. I guess my question is what happens to the coins when the hardware fails (as it inevitably does).
Hardware wallets don't actually store any of your bitcoin, it just holds your private key. If you keep your 12 / 18 / 24 seed phrase safe, you can use it to recover your funds. The seed phrase is basically your private key. Guard it with your life, at the same time have a plan that will allow you to pass it onto your loved ones once you depart this earth. This is were a multisig wallet comes in handy.
Yep that's another problem with crypto. When your drive fails, and they always do eventually, there's going to be some hair pulling. Back up to what a USB drive? Cue panicked raising of floorboards wondering if that USB dropped down that hole in the floor (it's the last place left).
Mind numbing idiocy.
Regulators can cutoff access at the on and off-ramps if the sender or receiver are converting between crypto and fiat or if their wallets are hosted on an exchange but they can’t cutoff peer to peer transfers of bitcoin if the individuals are hosting their own wallets. (I don’t know if other peer to peer crypto transactions that aren’t Bitcoin can be regulated or confiscated).
I'm not entirely certain that cutting off the on-off ramps will harm Bitcoin. Ultimately, the value of the dollar will seep into Bitcoin (but in a one-way direction) every time oil or commodities transact in BTC (which is already taking place, and has been for several years even if the public is unaware). However, the big exchanges and derivatives (futures in particular) provide a mechanism through which prices can be subdued. Synthetic supply can depress the market. We have been hovering between the mining cost floor and the midpoint up to the stock-to-flow ceiling of value this entire cycle so far without a real spike above.
And it may be the dissident economy that really builds Bitcoin: those whose bank accounts get frozen because they are "anti-vaxxer terrorists" or some such nonsense.
If you're using the exchanges (who exactly owns them?) then you've already had your on-off ramps limited. When you sign up you are supposed to provide them with your income and I think total assets. Consequently this then goes into the algorithm that decides how much crypto that you can buy. So my 50k daily limit at the bank (I don't use it that often but I do occasionally) becomes something like 1500 a day on Coinbase. Which is practically useless.
Or the internet.
Electrical grids going down would also destroy your ability to use visa, mastercard, atm machines, etc.. Anyone without a lot of paper laying around in a permanent grid-down situation is instantly a poor man.
This "what if" was always a bit of a red herring to make people question cryptocurrency's potential value as a currency. The reality is that humanity knows 1000 different ways of generating electricity and it's not going to stop doing so in any permanent manner anytime soon.
This question is like asking "What if the river runs dry" back in some past time when ground flour from a waterfall-driven mill was a form of currency.
What about an EMP? From what I understand there is the possibility we could be cast back to the 1800s in an instant.
I am not saying this as an argument for or against bitcoin. I am just saying that until we deal with the threat of an EMP, we are teetering on rickety scaffolding.
That's a bit of an exaggeration. Yes, EMPs can damage electronics that are plugged into the power grid, or electronics tied to antennae, but electronics sitting in ESD packaging on a store or warehouse shelf waiting to be purchased would be almost entirely unaffected.
I am relying on memory of several reports I read a few years ago. As I remember, one was a report to Congress on the threat, and one thing I remember was that there was not a whole lot of testing done on the effects of an EMP. Again, as I remember, most estimates of damage are based on a few very early in the cold war bomb tests.
If you could point my to your sources of info I would appreciate it.
It always seemed to me that EMPs and their potential impact have largely been ignored by the government with the exception of shielding some critical defense infrastructure.
There is lots of public information on the 400km altitude nuclear emp test conducted by the U.S. that affected Hawaii's electrical grid 900 km from ground-zero.
The biggest threat is to systems with lots and lots and lots of conductors tied to them because those conductors act like antennas and route all of the EMP energy into power stations. The effects do not generally destroy the conductors, they damage/destroy the inductors, capacitors, and resistors at the power distribution centers. This damage/destruction can take out large sections of power grids, that's true, but it is entirely unclear if this is necessarily a permanent condition. It would leave local power generation (in the home generation) virtually untouched, especially if protected from grid surges.
I know, right. And the internet going dark is a physical impossibility. Science and all that.
So I guess if the power grid went down, you would have a generator built from stuff you dug up in your backyard in what, a couple of hours? I mean, with 1,000 different ways of generating electricity, it should be easy to find one that you could throw together on short notice.
I am neutral on “crypto” but weak arguments for it are, in my opinion, its worst enemy. If this is the strongest argument available to counter the observation that cryptocurrencies rely on a certain base level of technology for which there is no guarantee of continuity of service, then it’s actually counterproductive.
As we get saddled with more and more “renewable” (i.e. unreliable) energy, the threat to continuity of electricity supply gets more and more real. Just ask South Australia.
Totally on board with this. Somehow or another, there has to be some sort of physical store of money that can supply the whole damn world - or at least some significant percentage of the personal savings of most or even all individuals. (This is a very simplified version of what I'm actually thinking, but it gets the general idea across.)
I don't have the answer to how that is done, but the goal needs to be to use our collective human genius to come up with a way to make sure people don't lose everything if the internet is blasted out of existence, even for just a significant while. Or even if some new way of hacking comes about that can lay waste to a digital currency / electronic funds system. There's no way we should just cross our fingers and hope such things never happen.
I’m pretty sure I would prefer a physical store of value (land, ammo, gold) than something ephemeral that is heavily reliant on a “common good” such as the internet.
Not saying crypto doesn’t have its place, but I want to be able to buy things I need irrespective of any “outage” (see “Cyber Polygon 2021”).
I’m very suspicious of “nothing bad could ever happen” arguments for crypto. People who are intellectually honest about it acknowledge the shortcomings rather than make hand-waving arguments about why objections are invalid. That’s true of anything, not just crypto.
This will tell you a lot of what you need to know about bitcoin - https://github.com/bitpay/bitcore/tree/v8.0.0/packages/bitcore-lib
Do you actually think the electrical grid is becoming more centralized than it used to be?
I don’t have any view on that. Why do you ask?
Well because the thing that makes a network vulnerable to collapse is centralization. More people have generators than did 5-10 years ago. More people have solar installations and battery banks in their home than 5-10 years ago. Electrical grids have deregulated to allow consumers to put energy they don't use back on the grid.
I don't find it credible to say the grid is more vulnerable to collapse now simply because politicians are corruptly pushing "renewables" when the net effect of much of what they are doing is the grid becoming more distributed in its ability to generate power. If anything these blind idiots are improving the grids robustness to the loss of any single generator in their absurd zeal to abandon fossil fuels.
So what fraction of total energy requirements are covered by point-sources such as household generators?
And what’s the average equivalent KWH fuel supply?
I have a generator, but it’s small and sufficient only for my freezer, the well pump and a light or two, because I can’t be storing hundreds or thousands of gallons of fuel.
It’s not nearly sufficient to put anything meaningful back into the grid.
... which is actually a distinct possibility given the regime change in Russia is officially on the table.
Even more basic, is it actually Bitcoin or is it any of the other startup baby bitcoins that came after Bitcoin?
If something else comes along with superior attributes, those can be added to Bitcoin's open source code.
The network is important because that would only be rebuilt in the event of catastrophic divergence.
As far as I know only Bitcoin is decentralized and has a capped supply. All the other cryptocurrencies that I am aware of have individual(s) behind them with the ability to modify rules and mint new coins at their discretion. Bitcoin began with an anonymous white paper and relies on users and nodes in the network to verify new transactions and add them to the ongoing ledger so the ability to ban users or mint more coins isn’t in the hands of any one individual, group of people, or company.
What prevents countries from creating serious legal ramifications and restrictions on outside currency usage inside it’s borders? If a sovereign nation’s government relies on fiat currency to maintain their control, they will do whatever they can to keep that control.
Enforcement of laws comes at a cost. India failed to ban crypto. Why? Because the mechanism would be expensive.
By what enforcement mechanism would you ban Bitcoin?
Route traffic through nodes overwatched by No Such Agency - they capture and store all electronic and signals transactions as is. If a bitcoin transaction is detected, flip one random bit per packet. That would do the trick.
US government refuses to exchange Bitcoin for $, or refuses to take payment in Bitcoin?
It's a peer-to-peer currency system.
Entities that lock themselves out of the network must either commit to total war against it, or will suffer irrelevance on the other side of the technological step.
Technology is hard to keep down.
Remember the boats. China burned theirs, so went from the world's most powerful nation to the greatest target of plunder of the European corporate era.
Bitcoin likely succeeds due to that natural prisoner's dilemma.
You can still fork blockchains.
So far, bitcoin is the hardest and most pristine money. Once I realised this, I stopped wasting time researching the other alt coins. It takes away the paradox of choice for you. Being orange pilled, has also changed the way I look towards the future.
The value proposition of "being the banking system" is historically hard to beat, no matter how clever the alt coin design and purpose.
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?)
I think that ICE or BAKKT is development a settlement system for crypto security settlement. That's been whispered about for a few years now, but under tight wraps. Harder to find out about than some classified secrets.
I'm not worried much about high velocity transaction solutions. I think most small money, high velocity transactions can/will take place without need for block space. This might happen with chains that find another equilibrium for security at that level. Bitcoin will be for savings. Actual banking. I have a lot of thoughts here, but don't want to talk about them publicly because they may be projects I get involved with.
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.
We should certainly be concerned about Sybil attacks. But can they succeed?
I have wondered if the supply chain disruption of chips is really manufacturers switching over to producing ASICs sold to...maybe the DoD? Who else would have the money to fund that fight?
But then will it require a trillion dollars a year to fight the Bitcoin industry? Will Bitcoiners flip to other chains and participate in a clever game of whack-a-mole that will raise costs of attacks higher? Will Bitcoiners just airdrop 100 copies of Bitcoin onto the network at the outset of such an attack, raising the stakes of the game and the cost of the attacks? The miners follow the users for profit, so that's a potential game theory.
Will the entire dollar economy be risked in this game...in order to save the dollar economy?
The question is who has that much money and I think we’re coming to realise that a tiny number of people in the world control almost all of our fiat currency. Between the totally unaccountable central banks and their superiors at a global level to the cartel of commercial banks given license to invent money to the two or three asset management firms that control all publicly traded corporations, there are the governments supposedly protecting the interests of ‘we the people’ but really in lockstep with the aforementioned. I say all of this to note that the level of control and lockstep in the system, especially evidenced throughout C19 has been extraordinary.
Cryptocurrency is supposed to be a means of countering that centralisation, but with that amount of control over the fiat economy I don’t think Bitcoin is fit for purpose with that vulnerability.
But I don’t say that they’re doing this to protect the dollar economy. It seems to me that the dollar economy has had a couple of Ukrainian C19 planes fly into it and is about to collapse into its own footprint. The inflation and eventual collapse will entail further consolidation at the hands of the cabal and unfortunately I think people will cry out for more security from government, not more freedom. What’s waiting in the wings to replace the dollar is more fiat and more control leading to humanity’s further degradation.
Does that mean I think crypto has no future? No, but I think we’ll at some point require a Great Divorce between those that want to be free and self sufficient and those that want to be slaves and for that purpose we’re going to require a currency that is truly divorced from and cannot be controlled by the fiat regime.
I suggest an ancient Persian solution. Every 7 years redistribute the 'bitcoin' evenly to everyone on the planet and forgive all debts.
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...
You don't have to learn about exchanges now?
The security responsibility is a feature. It's like...having to learn about health so that Pharma can't play you. Same deal.
Ledgers are just basic book keeping.
Wallets are like wallets.
Also, understand that the switchover to paying attention to new systems in a different way will entail the lack of need to pay attention to systems that only provide value to parasites. The things that you will no longer have to learn to keep track of will outweigh those that you do, and by a lot. People will have more time and money leftover...for healthy life and growth.
Precisely this. Now think about how intelligent the average person is and how skillfully they manage fiat currency when it becomes digitally represented.
Now think of millions of illegal immigrants suddenly granted citizenship that have probably never held a bank account previously.
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.
I designed a logo for a similar idea that you might like. Maybe we can connect somehow? I could send you a link.
Sure. astrid@earthlink.net
Like the artist JSG Boggs? I just found out he died in 2017. But he's the artist who had (almost) no money, and sat in a coffee shop in Chicago drawing a dollar bill. With great skill. And his waitress liked it so much, she accepted it as payment for the meal. And that was the beginning of the rest of his amazing story.
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.
The USD will be the last fiat currency to fail, most likely, unless the U.S. military is compromised. And it might just be.
“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.
So long as there is conversion, all currencies are overlaid on a single graph. There is friction, of course, but taxes can be paid in any convertible currency through the conversion. On the other hand, unless the entire cryptocurrency system is well tracked, governments will lose sight of how much money each person makes.
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 .
You may enjoy this:
https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/the-monetary-wars-part-ii
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/
You saddle Bitcoin with a description of the status quo in order to say that Bitcoin won't work. I see no particular argument here that isn't circular.
"Wont work" is very broad. In fact, I said, it might very well work to increase personal wealth, depending on the time frame. My argument is not circular. Bitcoin has not arisen in tandem with the "status quo," it precedes it, which to be clear - is not the status quo (ie. what is present now - in terms of what I am talking about, cant say what you are talking about) but rather an unwanted future including a China style surveillance/control "social" credit system in a pervasive real world environment filled with sensors and automatized infrastructure for "commerce" and "public services." Bitcoin introduced critical elements of the technology necessary for this future - tokenized payments and blockchain. Its not that block chain is actually required, its that it is a marketer's dream package for transforming privacy and freedom valuing people into gullible fools with buzz words like decentralization, privacy, trust/trustless and self-sovereignty. I think promoting bitcoin as a "freedom" technology promotes this future to the masses who will never understand that sole ownership of their private key, storage of their wallet on their own hardware, not having to use the exchanges, an internet that doesnt require logging in with their Ddigital ID (web 3.0), and willing sellers who can get everything in their supply chain outside the RFID tagged system is all required to make Bitcoin useful in the situations where you would actually need it (CBDC is the currency and they don't like you, in short). Yeah, you cant put the genii (blockchain) back in the bottle, but you don't have to shout that its the next best thing since sliced bread.
Ya. In agreement. In addition, as a (now retired) attorney who specialized in IT and IP for part of my career, I can say this. There is no data device or network in the world that cannot be hacked, given enough time, tools, and expertise. Blockchain may be ‘nearly’ impossible to penetrate, but the operative word is nearly. Holding Bitcoin on a centralized platform is no different than holding cash in your banks checking account, in terms of the relative risk of being a victim. The absolute risk may be lower, due to blockchain. But it’s not low enough for me. I’ll pass for now.
"There is no data device or network in the world that cannot be hacked, given enough time, tools, and expertise."
While technically true (because people can be enslaved and have an overlord sit watching over their shoulder if nothing else), the game of developing mathematical trap door functions for cryptography runs fast away from the game of deciphering code. The elliptic curve ciphers of Bitcoin are not even the best algorithms, though the best algorithms are nonpublic. I know of one in particular, which is a long story, but will change the game when needed.
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)
I think the article says it. Commodities including metals will become the basis for more international trade, so the price will increase.
Understand that while I own more Bitcoin, I also own some metal. It's wise not to keep all eggs in the same basket.
I also own...plenty of seeds.
Oh, that's another good question. Assuming that seeds means what seeds should mean, is that a commodity you'd view as salable enough at any given time to view as a store of value (or investment)? I have to figure yes.
I think that near a risk horizon of this magnitude, seeds become a currency. I would not generally treat as such on as large a scale as I do currently. Transitions are a different animal.
A risk horizon which is almost completely caused by this 'digital reset'.
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!
Berter systems always evolve toward proof-of-work value storage, historically.
The internet will be decentralized hand-in-hand with Bitcoin. If central authorities begin to withhold channels, the wealthy Bitcoiners will rebuild them or buy them up. All that matters for Bitcoin is that a signal can be transmitted in the network. The only way to prohibit that is through total warfare, and that's the real risk.