Wow, a volatile currency backed by nothing has large swings in value and if you pick the right date range you can tell any story you want? That’s pretty amazing.
A nicer way to put that is that taxes are collected in national currencies. You can use any currency you want in private transactions but when the tax man comes calling, you better have the government’s preferred currency.
Also, what are cryptocurrencies backed by? Why do y’all exclusively call government money “fiat” when that just means it isn’t backed by a precious metal? Is there a Bitcoin Ft. Knox out there making it not a fiat currency?
It may require a bit of TradFi history to truly understand Bitcoin and why it was even created in the first place. Much too long to even attempt at concatenating in a lemmy comment. Bitcoin wasn’t a get-rich-quick scam like the majority of shitcoins today. CypherPunk movement had been working on a trustless system without a governing authority pre-Bitcoin (see e-cash).
Government backed currencies require trust. In the US you are trading IOUs issued by the Federal Reserve, which isn’t even a Federal branch, but privatized business. There have been numerous times where the heads of the Fed have outright stated they simply enter numbers into a computer to issue money to Central banks, etc. Since Americans were robbed of a tangible currency, backed by Gold, the money printer has quite literally gone “brrrrr”.
I don’t trust the government or the bankers who have repeatedly financially rape the citizens. Remember the 2008 collapse? No one was held accountable. So, they’ve found new loopholes to continue pillaging the fiscally uneducated. The trust has been long gone as we’re repeatedly lied to.
This is what Bitcoin has sought to solve in that it’s not debased due to over issuance, unlike most fiat currencies. It doesn’t contribute to inflation, causing your purchasing power to be decreased. It quite literally removes the powers from corrupt bankers and gives it to the people.
On the subject of energy consumption, yes it has historically taken quite a lot for Proof of Work miners. However, in year’s past the miners have done a significant job at only using either green power sources or buying overproduced energy from companies. This has seen it drop far below the energy consumption of legacy banking or the Military Industrial Complex.
So, what you’re saying is, if fiat is backed by militarism, it’s really backed by death.
Fiat currency is controlled by the government over which we have a bit of power (for those of us who live in a democracy).
Bitcoin is by definition controlled by those who have the power and thus the money to mine. It’s a bit like democracy only that the more money you have the more votes you have.
Bitcoin is by definition controlled by those who have the power and thus the money to mine
This is actually 100% wrong, miners are not in control, they depend on the users of the network. This has been demonstrated during the block size conflict where miners tried to get their way and couldn’t.
You have zero power as a citizen over the currency you use. You do not directly vote for the Central bankers, Federal Reserve board, etc. Even the politicians you might vote for who appoint them will almost always side in their own favor than their constituents. I’d hardly believe a word a politician ever utters. Just look at all the lies and false promising during the campaigns of the last 5 presidents and what they actually accomplished. Biden and college debt as a more recent example.
You are also confusing Bitcoin’s Proof of Work with a shitcoin’s Proof of Stake, which is where wealth gives you more votes. As for the hash rate you’re contributing as a miner, there’s no additional power you’re given. Even if you attempted to 51% attack the network, it’d be gaining nothing beyond a double-spend by rewriting the blockchain transaction. Likely causing the currency’s price to crash. Zero financial incentives for any rich people to do that, unless they’re part of a nation-state hoping to try and destroy the currency.
Well, luckily, you don’t have to worry about explaining TradFi history to me since I studied a lot of it in college and after. To me, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency advocates haven’t read enough about the 1800’s, whether it’s the Free Banking Era or all the post-civil war panics (including the Panic of 1907 so don’t stop at 1899). A lot of hard lessons had to be learned before we created the modern system.
Yeah and look at how much things have changed since then… Why throw the entire concept of creating a digital currency/ledger? Why be so against it at the core? It’s one thing to be against Bitcoin, or proof-of-work, or literally any other current method of digital currency, but why dismiss the concept outright as some kind of old-timey dog & pony show who will be another lesson we learn the hard way?
Sounds like Luddite thinking to me. Sounds like fear of new technology.
How many literally countless attempts at human flight were there, many that were awful, stupid ideas, before we finally figured out the best way to do it?
Or maybe we should have just given up on the idea of air travel altogether…
TL/DR: I think blockchain(s) have limited, niche use cases and we shouldn’t dismiss the technology entirely but I think the hype around it was misguided and its misuse has caused more problems than it’s valid use cases have solved. (There’s also a Luddite commentary.)
I’m not against alternate currencies or air travel. I have a ton of airline miles, in fact, which proves both of those things.
I’m certainly not a Luddite in the fear of tech sense. (Though, I do think the original Luddites are more sympathetic and interesting than we give them credit for. The first ones were skilled craftsmen who were just as mad that the automated products were shit quality made in horrific working conditions by people paid sub-poverty wages. So, their initial issue wasn’t automation writ large so much as “automation that only benefits the owners of the machines while customers get worse products and workers get sub-poverty wages.” It’s kind of where “A.I.” is now: low quality writing/art/video for cheap that’s only making a few people richer.)
As for blockchain, I don’t have a problem with it existing. Append-only digital ledgers already existed when public, decentralized ones came out in 2008/2009. There’s some real, but niche use cases where you’d want that ledger distributed and public with no central authority. I’m typing this on Lemmy; so, I’m not clearly not against decentralizing things just for the sake of it. But the proof of work version obviously doesn’t scale well if it uses more power than mid-sized countries. At this point, the tech isn’t that new and hasn’t really improved anything spectacularly. And it’s got some debt to repay for its use in money laundering and enabling ransomware attacks and shit like that. So, my hostility to blockchain isn’t the neutral technology component so much as misuses of it by people.
Wow, a volatile currency backed by nothing has large swings in value and if you pick the right date range you can tell any story you want? That’s pretty amazing.
What is fiat backed by?
Militaries, usually.
A nicer way to put that is that taxes are collected in national currencies. You can use any currency you want in private transactions but when the tax man comes calling, you better have the government’s preferred currency.
Also, what are cryptocurrencies backed by? Why do y’all exclusively call government money “fiat” when that just means it isn’t backed by a precious metal? Is there a Bitcoin Ft. Knox out there making it not a fiat currency?
And the military is backed by fiat currency. It’s turtles all the way down!
It may require a bit of TradFi history to truly understand Bitcoin and why it was even created in the first place. Much too long to even attempt at concatenating in a lemmy comment. Bitcoin wasn’t a get-rich-quick scam like the majority of shitcoins today. CypherPunk movement had been working on a trustless system without a governing authority pre-Bitcoin (see e-cash).
Government backed currencies require trust. In the US you are trading IOUs issued by the Federal Reserve, which isn’t even a Federal branch, but privatized business. There have been numerous times where the heads of the Fed have outright stated they simply enter numbers into a computer to issue money to Central banks, etc. Since Americans were robbed of a tangible currency, backed by Gold, the money printer has quite literally gone “brrrrr”.
I don’t trust the government or the bankers who have repeatedly financially rape the citizens. Remember the 2008 collapse? No one was held accountable. So, they’ve found new loopholes to continue pillaging the fiscally uneducated. The trust has been long gone as we’re repeatedly lied to.
This is what Bitcoin has sought to solve in that it’s not debased due to over issuance, unlike most fiat currencies. It doesn’t contribute to inflation, causing your purchasing power to be decreased. It quite literally removes the powers from corrupt bankers and gives it to the people.
On the subject of energy consumption, yes it has historically taken quite a lot for Proof of Work miners. However, in year’s past the miners have done a significant job at only using either green power sources or buying overproduced energy from companies. This has seen it drop far below the energy consumption of legacy banking or the Military Industrial Complex.
So, what you’re saying is, if fiat is backed by militarism, it’s really backed by death.
Fiat currency is controlled by the government over which we have a bit of power (for those of us who live in a democracy).
Bitcoin is by definition controlled by those who have the power and thus the money to mine. It’s a bit like democracy only that the more money you have the more votes you have.
This is actually 100% wrong, miners are not in control, they depend on the users of the network. This has been demonstrated during the block size conflict where miners tried to get their way and couldn’t.
You have zero power as a citizen over the currency you use. You do not directly vote for the Central bankers, Federal Reserve board, etc. Even the politicians you might vote for who appoint them will almost always side in their own favor than their constituents. I’d hardly believe a word a politician ever utters. Just look at all the lies and false promising during the campaigns of the last 5 presidents and what they actually accomplished. Biden and college debt as a more recent example.
You are also confusing Bitcoin’s Proof of Work with a shitcoin’s Proof of Stake, which is where wealth gives you more votes. As for the hash rate you’re contributing as a miner, there’s no additional power you’re given. Even if you attempted to 51% attack the network, it’d be gaining nothing beyond a double-spend by rewriting the blockchain transaction. Likely causing the currency’s price to crash. Zero financial incentives for any rich people to do that, unless they’re part of a nation-state hoping to try and destroy the currency.
Well, luckily, you don’t have to worry about explaining TradFi history to me since I studied a lot of it in college and after. To me, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency advocates haven’t read enough about the 1800’s, whether it’s the Free Banking Era or all the post-civil war panics (including the Panic of 1907 so don’t stop at 1899). A lot of hard lessons had to be learned before we created the modern system.
Yeah and look at how much things have changed since then… Why throw the entire concept of creating a digital currency/ledger? Why be so against it at the core? It’s one thing to be against Bitcoin, or proof-of-work, or literally any other current method of digital currency, but why dismiss the concept outright as some kind of old-timey dog & pony show who will be another lesson we learn the hard way?
Sounds like Luddite thinking to me. Sounds like fear of new technology.
How many literally countless attempts at human flight were there, many that were awful, stupid ideas, before we finally figured out the best way to do it?
Or maybe we should have just given up on the idea of air travel altogether…
TL/DR: I think blockchain(s) have limited, niche use cases and we shouldn’t dismiss the technology entirely but I think the hype around it was misguided and its misuse has caused more problems than it’s valid use cases have solved. (There’s also a Luddite commentary.)
I’m not against alternate currencies or air travel. I have a ton of airline miles, in fact, which proves both of those things.
I’m certainly not a Luddite in the fear of tech sense. (Though, I do think the original Luddites are more sympathetic and interesting than we give them credit for. The first ones were skilled craftsmen who were just as mad that the automated products were shit quality made in horrific working conditions by people paid sub-poverty wages. So, their initial issue wasn’t automation writ large so much as “automation that only benefits the owners of the machines while customers get worse products and workers get sub-poverty wages.” It’s kind of where “A.I.” is now: low quality writing/art/video for cheap that’s only making a few people richer.)
As for blockchain, I don’t have a problem with it existing. Append-only digital ledgers already existed when public, decentralized ones came out in 2008/2009. There’s some real, but niche use cases where you’d want that ledger distributed and public with no central authority. I’m typing this on Lemmy; so, I’m not clearly not against decentralizing things just for the sake of it. But the proof of work version obviously doesn’t scale well if it uses more power than mid-sized countries. At this point, the tech isn’t that new and hasn’t really improved anything spectacularly. And it’s got some debt to repay for its use in money laundering and enabling ransomware attacks and shit like that. So, my hostility to blockchain isn’t the neutral technology component so much as misuses of it by people.
Most things work better with a centralized database than a decentralized database.