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The existing, politically-controlled system of finance and corporations has numerous and powerful enemies, hellbent on bringing it down, in whatever way possibl
by eriksank 13y ago
The existing, politically-controlled system of finance and corporations has numerous and powerful enemies, hellbent on bringing it down, in whatever way possible. Furthermore, even without enemies, it is patently clear that the fiat money system is happily busy destroying itself: raising debt ceilings, engaging in quantitative easing, and so on. The libertarian movement is probably one of their smallest enemies in terms of headcount but at the same time it really looks like the most powerful one. If you read the original paper by Satoshi Nakamoto, you can see that the entire purpose of bitcoin is exactly to bring the current system to its knees. I hope that BTC succeeds in doing that and save its supporters from being dragged along in the quagmire, before the current fiat system finally destroys itself.
- eru 13y ago> [...] the current fiat system finally destroys itself. You have high hopes.
- eriksank 13y agoThe currency of the Roman empire got debased (silver content of coins) until it became worthless. The combination of raising the debt ceiling and the practice of quantitative easing do exactly the same today. Eventually, even the imperial Roman treasury ("fiscus") began to refuse its own coins for payment of tax liabilities. They switched over to paying taxes in kind. So, yes, in my impression, history is indeed repeating itself.
- oleganza 13y agoFiat system will end without help of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is here as a place where to run when things start falling apart (without it, some other regime's currency would prevail). Gold is not a solution since it needs to be stored and moved by someone. We tried that in growing ecenomy of 19th century and it lead to a banking cartel and legalized fractional reserve lending. I think gold will collapse with fiat currencies for the exact same reasons: counter-party risk. No one wants to trade in gold/silver coins because they can't be moved and protected like bitcoin.
- ceejayoz 13y agoBitcoin's ease of movement comes with significant disadvantages, too. If I want to steal a ton of gold from a bank, it's going to take a pretty good plan. Stealing some Bitcoins just takes a zero-day.
- oleganza 13y agoIt's a question of comparing cost of protecting 1 ton of gold (vault, armed guards, managers, video surveillance and finger print scanners) with a cost of protecting 200K bitcoins. No matter how many bitcoins do you have, you can lock them up with M-of-N transaction where N separately generated keys belong to your partners and friends. And the encrypted wallet can be backed up on any number of computers for a very low cost.
- eru 13y agoWhy should the fiat system end? The US dollar's reign might end, but there are plenty of more reasonable fiat currencies. (Schweizer Franken, or the Singaporean Dollar for example.)
- oleganza 13y agoEach fiat currency is destined to crash due to constant debasement (there haven't been yet a king or a republic that did not debase its currency). But each crashed fiat currency is quickly replaced by another one, so in theory fiat system may see no end. Unless people start using Bitcoin universally and won't need any fiat currency at all. Which I expect is going to happen over the next decade.