As for digital fiat currencies. That's coming to, btw. They will never let you have your own money. Gold and silver are fine stores of value, but are a pain in the ass to exchange. That's their weakness.
The whole purpose of a distributed ledger crypto currency is for a hedge against inflation. Milton Friedman advocated the dollar to do this way back in the 1980s, that is just increase at a steady rate of 2% a year the monetary supply.
i understand the theory, but the basis its built on leads to other consequences in practice
everytime someone talks to me about the "intended purpose" of crypto i look under the hood and i fail to see how the fundamentals its built on actually provide those things
hedge against inflation - so you're insuring a social contract fiat currency with a digital limited currency, both are not physically real and require speculation participation for value but ok.
distributed and untraceable - ledger keeping track of all transactions by design and china owning more than 50% of the mining hardware.
future of economy - only if its govt controlled, and at that point it will be a terrible scarcity nightmare
By analogy, your saying that because England had the biggest navy in the 19th Century that building ships was a waste of time.
A shared distributed ledger prevents one entity, like the Fed, from making whatever manipulations they want. With fiat currency that the government, that ALSO has a social contract with citizens, you assume, won't engage in manipulations. How's that working out in the past, historically speaking? Banks pumped and dumped subprime loans, lead to the housing bubble, and then made tons on the bailouts. The Fed, via the government never made a single person pay any consequence.
You're also mixing things up. China has 50% of the bitcoin miners, which happened by accident due to cheap electricity and Chinese people bypassing their country's currency controls with it in the early days. It wasn't by design. But not only is that share diminishing, but that's only for Bitcoin, not the rest of the currencies. Further, the "hardware" is available everywhere, China doesn't own 50% of the mining hardware.
you bring forward an excellent point of the fact that FED backed fiat currency is bullshit, which i agree with wholeheartedly believe me.
im just failing to see how its different. The only reason the USD works as an imaginary currency is cuz the US has a the biggest military in the world.
with crypto, you have a small minority of people that understand how it works and then a ton of speculators how are just trying to cash in on the money train. its value is 100% tied to how much the next guy thinks its worth, which means its going to rollercoaster for ever. (similar to current stock market yes, but comparing it to the insanity that is modern wall street inspires the opposite of confidence)
but maybe im just being thick. but the more i read about, the less comfortable i get with the idea.
The first thing to get comfortable with the idea of crypto, is not to put to much money into it in the first place. I invested no more per month than what I would have spent to go out to eat for a couple fancy meals. If it crashed completely, I'm not out that much if you look at it that way. People spend more on stupider shit. I lost more buying a house in 2006 and having to sell it after the crash.
As for not fully understanding it, it's no different than, say, paying someone to manage your 401k.
Look, crypto is at this tipping point, where it either gets co-opted by the big banks and becomes just another commodity, or it get's regulated all to hell and they try to squash it with Monero and such as a niche thing for an-caps. The cat's out of the bag though.
As for digital fiat currencies. That's coming to, btw. They will never let you have your own money. Gold and silver are fine stores of value, but are a pain in the ass to exchange. That's their weakness.
The whole purpose of a distributed ledger crypto currency is for a hedge against inflation. Milton Friedman advocated the dollar to do this way back in the 1980s, that is just increase at a steady rate of 2% a year the monetary supply.
Cash will exist for them.
i understand the theory, but the basis its built on leads to other consequences in practice
everytime someone talks to me about the "intended purpose" of crypto i look under the hood and i fail to see how the fundamentals its built on actually provide those things
hedge against inflation - so you're insuring a social contract fiat currency with a digital limited currency, both are not physically real and require speculation participation for value but ok.
distributed and untraceable - ledger keeping track of all transactions by design and china owning more than 50% of the mining hardware.
future of economy - only if its govt controlled, and at that point it will be a terrible scarcity nightmare
By analogy, your saying that because England had the biggest navy in the 19th Century that building ships was a waste of time.
A shared distributed ledger prevents one entity, like the Fed, from making whatever manipulations they want. With fiat currency that the government, that ALSO has a social contract with citizens, you assume, won't engage in manipulations. How's that working out in the past, historically speaking? Banks pumped and dumped subprime loans, lead to the housing bubble, and then made tons on the bailouts. The Fed, via the government never made a single person pay any consequence.
You're also mixing things up. China has 50% of the bitcoin miners, which happened by accident due to cheap electricity and Chinese people bypassing their country's currency controls with it in the early days. It wasn't by design. But not only is that share diminishing, but that's only for Bitcoin, not the rest of the currencies. Further, the "hardware" is available everywhere, China doesn't own 50% of the mining hardware.
you bring forward an excellent point of the fact that FED backed fiat currency is bullshit, which i agree with wholeheartedly believe me.
im just failing to see how its different. The only reason the USD works as an imaginary currency is cuz the US has a the biggest military in the world.
with crypto, you have a small minority of people that understand how it works and then a ton of speculators how are just trying to cash in on the money train. its value is 100% tied to how much the next guy thinks its worth, which means its going to rollercoaster for ever. (similar to current stock market yes, but comparing it to the insanity that is modern wall street inspires the opposite of confidence)
but maybe im just being thick. but the more i read about, the less comfortable i get with the idea.
The first thing to get comfortable with the idea of crypto, is not to put to much money into it in the first place. I invested no more per month than what I would have spent to go out to eat for a couple fancy meals. If it crashed completely, I'm not out that much if you look at it that way. People spend more on stupider shit. I lost more buying a house in 2006 and having to sell it after the crash.
As for not fully understanding it, it's no different than, say, paying someone to manage your 401k.
Look, crypto is at this tipping point, where it either gets co-opted by the big banks and becomes just another commodity, or it get's regulated all to hell and they try to squash it with Monero and such as a niche thing for an-caps. The cat's out of the bag though.