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Comment by etr-strike | Hacker News Reader

Cryptocurrency is useful. Bitcoin allows me to be my own bank. The rules of consensus define characteristics of money I believe are important. It allows me to save my money outside of the global financial system, a system I believe is corrupt and manipulated. It allows me to program my money, something never before possible. It allows me to transact freely, with whomever I please.

Money is whatever people believe it to be. You may value the USD, and that's entirely your right to do so. I choose value Bitcoin. Everyone is free to use whatever medium of exchange they believe in.

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> Bitcoin allows me to be my own bank.

I too, like to live dangerously. I run a mail server. A web server. Damn, I was tempted to (partially) host my DNS.

But running my own bank? Hell no. Those who ever had to touch things like PCI compliance or seem actual money transaction requirements will want to stay far, far away from being their own bank, so good luck there, you'll need it.

> It allows me to save my money outside of the global financial system

No, at this point in time, it really doesn't. It would, if it was accepted to be exchanged for things, which is any currency OR asset is, in theory, only good for. If you can't buy (exchange) food with it, it's worthless.

EDIT: yes, you can, in theory, exchange it to USD and some other real currencies - with a big 'if' the exchange you want to use has the means to cover it, you pay taxes on gain, and, if you're really lucky, your bank won't freeze your account when an unprecedented amount of cash flows in.

> Money is whatever people believe it to be.

Money is whatever people _agree_ on. It's not a belief.

Sounds like you're intentionally trying to be disagreeable. You don't like the features Bitcoin provides. That's fine, don't use it. Plenty of other people do like them. That's what gives Bitcoin its value.

I started writing a long comment about currencies, assets, rarity, and a few more things, but I realized it's pointless.

Please get some history books out and read about money. Read about ancient Rome and what problems rose when mad emperors decided to replace money with new coins out of the blue. Read about why and how the US dollar is not based on gold any more. Read about hyperinflation after WWII. Money is regulated to protect us from ourselves.

Now take a look at the war between BTC and BTH, at how the majority of miners are not willing to overcome technical issues and work together, the incredibly waste of energy and hardware, computing the nothing, and tell me: do you honestly think it's not history, repeating itself, just in another light?

Of course, there are always some who don't care, "get rich or die trying". I'm not one of these believers.

Your examples comes down to centralized decision & regulation, isn't money printing also "regulation" that's how they call it, wile bitcoin is the most decentralized currency, no Emperor can replace it, no changes can be done without widespread conses.

The incredible energy for digging out gold just to keep it in locked boxes, same for all precious metals, diamonds.

Gold has real life use even in electrical circuits, besides being pretty. Diamond is used in the industry as well, not just engagement rings. They are also all physical objects.

> no Emperor can replace it, no changes can be done without widespread conses.

When was the last time humans were capable of agreeing and working together for long term? The blockchain thinks it's got rid of the mad emperor problem, where in reality the BTC/BTH, ETC/ETH hard forking an existing blockchain is very similar, and introduced a whole new spectrum of problems humanity tried for centuries to solve, without success: reaching consensus.

Gold real life use is a myth, around 10% of the demand, copper is much more valuable from this perspective.

When the US constitution was born, I don't know, democracy? BTC/BTH, ETC/ETH, crypto is even more democratic as the other side can go on their separate ways, as oposite to countries.

> crypto is even more democratic as the other side can go on their separate ways, as oposite to countries.

countries go their separate ways. Sometimes peacefully sometimes with horrible violence.

Do you not see massive issues with that happening with currency? Some dev gets pissed one day and fractures the currency market?

> mad emperor problem

As a tangent, what is that? Didn't find it on google (thought I wanted the wikipedia on caligula).

> Read about ancient Rome and what problems rose when mad emperors decided to replace money with new coins out of the blue

I think it was a reference to one of the previous comments in the chain.

How can you be your own bank? You can't loan yourself money, any Bitcoin you save won't gain interest, and you can't extend yourself a line of credit. The only bank-like thing you can do is store money, which is probably the smallest responsibility banks have.

> It allows me to save my money outside of the global financial system, a system I believe is corrupt and manipulated.

You'd have to be incredibly naive or willfully ignorant not to see the same corruption and manipulation happening right before your eyes in cryptocurrency markets.

This. Large players eventually (and are already) playing the market. Anything involving money will eventually be dictated by the big players. Look at how we buy and sell crytocoins today - most rely on some authority as the middleman as opposed to full decentralized (though you can argue about P2P while also decentralized, it still requires a service to discover seeds and peers).

The only difference is you can fork and run on your own.

> Bitcoin allows me to be my own bank

Sure. If you think the only function of a bank is to maintain a ledger and transfer money.

Yeah, it's yet another instance of people going "how hard can it possibly be?" and finding out the answer is "oh, pretty hard..."

USD is backed by the biggest military and economic force on earth.

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