How many wars started, how many countries destroyed, and how many livelihoods and families ruined for the USD?
No one wants to talk about that, yet we are supposed to wring our hands in grief over some extra computers left running. Give me a break.
That is a huge issue, and I'd love to talk about that. The more people see the world for what it is the better. I don't see how this redirects criticism away from BTC, or how BTC would be immune to the same kind of incentives. The horrendous things that have been done to prop up the USD aren't an inherent property of fiat currency, if an entire nation state had a large stake in BTC would it really be any different?
> yet we are supposed to wring our hands in grief over some extra computers left running
So the fact that we're using as much energy as an entire developed nation to produce <10 transactions per second isn't concerning?
The reason why the US government is willing to take drastic measures to protect the dollar is not because they own lots of dollars, but because they can exert geopolitical influence and control the international redistribution of wealth through the dollar and its associated payment networks.
In fact, the USG does own a nice stack of Bitcoin from the Silk Road seizure, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the intelligence agencies have a secret stash, too. But just owning the asset doesn’t mean they can use it to boss people around. Bitcoin’s payment network is open and free, and its inflation schedule is fixed. The only way the USG could stop it is by making it illegal, and no one knows what the opportunity cost of such a move would be.
Transactions per second isn’t a great measuring stick for Bitcoin. I would look at it in terms of savings protected from reckless inflation. If I just throw a number out and say that 50% of Bitcoins have been lost or destroyed, that leaves about $300 billion in value that has been rescued. Is that worth the electricity of a medium sized nation? I don’t know. What if that grows to $3 trillion? Or $300 trillion? How much wealth preserved for future generations is enough to justify the cost?
Hmm, let me think. The number of countries that were invaded to prop up the USD was... uh... zero.
The US has certainly waged imperialistic wars almost purely for the benefit of its corporations (see, e.g., the Banana Wars), but that has nothing to do with maintaining the power of US currency.
No it has not. The "multiple countries" of which you likely refer to is in fact two: Iraq and Libya, and the declared reason in neither case involved oil. The US went to war against Iraq ostensibly because of Saddam's WMD programs (which were only later conclusively found not to exist), and the intervention in Libya was at the bequest of the United Nations following the popular revolt and civil war against Muammar Qaddafi, itself largely deriving from similar uprests started after a Tunisian set himself on fire and improbably drove the Tunisian dictator on the exile.
In neither case was control of oil a declared reason. And in neither case has control of oil ever been clearly demonstrated to be an actual reason for going to war.
Just because the US manufactures some other excuse doesn’t mean it’s true. Why would you believe the invader?
https://mobile.twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/11918082011...
This position assumes the US is completely incompetent and invaded a country for a fake reason. I’d argue that’s nonsense- they knew exactly what they were doing but the reason wasn’t palatable to the American people so they had to fabricate a “better” reason.
This cost must be taken into account.
At any rate, the narrative that the Somali shilling maintained its value is directly contradicted by Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_shilling#Modern_history
It starts with "Following the breakdown in central authority that accompanied the civil war, which began in the early 1990s, the value of the Somali shilling was disrupted" and gets worse from there. The currency became worthless and they dollarized.
The only reason the shilling is - very recently! - recovering is because they once again have a central government and a central bank.
As bitcoin becomes more popular and stable, it's "appreciation" relative the fiat currencies will reveal how much value governments are secretly stealing through inflation.
Exactly what goldbugs have always claimed about gold, since fiat currencies displaced commodity representational currencies (particularly gold-denominated) currencies.
The thing is, insofar as inflation can be said to “steal” from anything, it's idle holders of dollar-denominated assets. But it's pretty easy to mitigate by moving holdings other than for short-term liquidity into productive assets (which itself promotes real, not merely nominal, economic growth) rather than (or by borrowing against) dollar denominated assets.
Meanwhile, it benefits those with dollar denominated liabilities. Mild, slowly changing inflation (volatility in either price or inflation rate is a problem) isn't much of a problem for anyone in practice, and there's a pretty small audience that is receptive to the scare tactic (and Bitcoin fever has already fully reached that audience.)