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Comment by Edmond | Hacker News Reader

couldn't have said it better.

The very idea that a random citizen in a modern country can invent their own notion of money is beyond problematic so it is confounding that this whole thing has been allowed to mushroom into what it is today.

Proponents like to drag skeptics into crypto debates but that is far off the mark when it comes to the real implications of the current situation.

Some questions to ponder:

When will the government decide it is illegal to create your own money? will those who have already amassed fortunes (even imaginary) be allowed to keep it? And if so why would the citizenry tolerate such a situation?

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"money" is a representation of value that is recognised as such by a group of people. If a few people decide that a bunch of stones are now money[0] (in other words, represents value), should they be arrested? Similarly, when a group does the same not to stones but to seashells [1] or salt are they committing securities fraud? Someone decides to do the same for a few hashes on the internet and suddenly they can't? What's the difference?

What about doing the same with currencies recognised in countries other than the one you're in, is that illegal?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_money

edit: the way I see it, you're advocating against the concept of trading.

Is it really money if nobody's using it like money? When people started using sea shells as money, they were buying stuff with it, not just speculating about its value using some other currency.

The problem with these analogous argument about what money means fails to account for the implicit contract that we all sign as members of a society. If you buy your own island like Sir Richard Branson then by all means do what you please.

Legal tender is perhaps the most important corner stone of a modern nation state, if an entrepreneur can invent their own money and subsume the one issued by a government then you don't have a government. I for one prefer having a government.

This is not a trivial issue as cryptocurrency proponents seem to think it is.

>>if an entrepreneur can invent their own money and subsume the one issued by a government then you don't have a government. I for one prefer having a government.

Nonsense. We've had non-political money before. During the free banking era we had thousands of bank-issued currencies that competed in an open market, and the state was alive and well.

The state exists as long as it has a monopoly on force within its jurisdiction. It doesn't need to monopolize the control of money and imprison anyone who has wrong-think about what they consider to be money.

I understand that a lot of people here don't like cryptocurrency and the get-rich mentality around it, but understand that when you call for laws to prohibit various uses of it, you're calling for people to see the inside of a prison cell because they have different ideas about what money is than you.

Thank you! Only those with a short memory equate money exclusively with government.

So wait, okay, in the 1800s state-and-gold-backed banks issued legal tender in lieu of anything else, this is a fair analogy to cryptocurrency and anybody against cryptocurrency just wants to see people in jail

Firstly, I don't think it's likely a cryptocoin is going to destroy any major currency.

I don't agree having a non government issued currency means you don't have a government, for one there seem to be a few countries that use the Dollar or Euro as the de-facto currency.

When they allow a foreign currency to become the de-facto medium of exchange in a nation, the government is basically admitting that it's lost the ability to issue currency and manage its own economy. The loss of economic control involved is so extreme that you'd only do it if you had essentially no other options left - the government is close to failure.

Good point, what about the Euro?

See my other comment, but TLDR it's not a foreign currency if you're a Eurozone country.

Does it really change that much though? I suppose they would not be able to control inflation, but taxes and tariffs would remain the same. It's not a total loss of control.

Not necessarily. Government can delegate things up or down - the Euro is not an effect of Germany, the UK or France admitting economic defeat but a realization that a shared economy can benefit all.

Yes, but that's very different - the Eurozone countries are not allowing another nation's currency to become their defacto currency, they're creating a pooled economy where they all still have a voice in the management of the common currency. (And it's still causing a ton of problems, when you consider what's happened in Spain, Italy and Greece.)

It's radically different from allowing your defacto currency to be one managed by another country, particuarly one that has no common economic interest with yours.

There's an exception to that: most European microstates adopted the Euro but aren't part of the Eurozone (nor the EU) and have no power in decisions made about it. Of course I concede that microstates have unique properties that break away from most considerations that are applicable to "typical" sovereign nations but it's not as clear-cut as you describe.

I'd argue this isn't inconsistent; these states are so small they effectively have ceded control of their economy, as well as their national defense, to the larger European community. Kosovo and Montenegro, for example, previously used the German Mark. This seems pretty close to an admission that for whatever reason (scale, stability) they're not able to issue their own currency in a credible manner.

This sounds like trumps if you don't have a border you don't have a country.

Having alternative currencies doesn't obviate all the benefits of organized representation.

It does not even replace the nation currency unless you think that the national currency is so defective that citizens will collectively choose coins.

>Legal tender is perhaps the most important corner stone of a modern nation state, if an entrepreneur can invent their own money and subsume the one issued by a government then you don't have a government.

Legal-tender laws already prevent non-government currencies from subsuming fiat. Nobody is obliged to accept Bitcoin as payment of a debt, but they are obliged to accept legal tender.

And besides that, there will always be demand for fiat at least for paying taxes.

By my read, neither of those are ever converted into currency.

I'm reminded of Simon & Garfunkel's "The Boxer":

    I am just a poor boy
    Though my story's seldom told
    I have squandered my resistance
    For a pocketful of mumbles
    Such are promises

I know a car dealership that had a customer attempt to purchase a vehicle with a cheque drawn on a currency called RA, or something similar. The customer said that they were paying the sum of $30,000 in comparable spiritual RA. Would you have taken the cheque?

The question is not whether or not someone would accept it. The question is, would it make sense for charges to be filed against you if you had accepted the cheque (or not accepted the cheque).

> If a few people decide that a bunch of stones are now money, should they be arrested?

As long as they pay (using real money!) the taxes owed on the economic transactions carried using this alternative currency, I think they will be fine.

Obviously not everyone has this same notion about the role of government. Since we (at least aspire to) live in a society of democratic ideals and freedom, what do you say to people who want innovation in this space?

I prefer for government to be wholly uninvolved in the matter of decided which assets constitute currency; it seems to me to be an utter conflict of interest.

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