You really also need to include the entire military budget (and eco damage) as that's what props up the state, which backs the fiat.
First of all, countries secure energy because people want energy. Even in a world where we use Bitcoin, people are still going to want HVAC, cars, cell phones, and all the other things that we use/buy that consume energy and damage the environment. The idea that a country will magically stop wanting oil because it's using Bitcoin is just laughable.
Second, Bitcoin uses a ton of energy by design. It's literally built to create a competition between miners for hashing power in order to prevent 51% attacks. This structure is why increased hashing efficiency hasn't reduced Bitcoin's energy usage, it only results in spending the same amount of electricity on new hardware rather than old. A country that runs on Bitcoin will need a bit more energy as a fiat country, because maintaining sufficient hashing power will suddenly become a strategic problem. Up until today the risk of a 51% attack on Bitcoin is a private concern; only the miners and those involved in Bitcoin are concerned about it. But if a country used BTC as its main currency, suddenly that is a strategic problem. Does anyone honestly think that the USA wouldn't use its military to secure oil in order to hedge off a 51% attack on its entire financial system? Honestly, it would be dereliction of duty to not do that, given that scenario.
I don't really care about the USA, and I want to be in control of my own money. Maybe from your perspective of being able to control the citizens of a country, USD is better. But from my perspective of protecting my own interests, BTC is a compelling solution.
The funny thing is that we know that neither fiat currency nor oil is necessary for empire building or warmongering, because both fiat currencies and large scale oil consumption came out after the greatest period of imperialism and colony building that humanity has ever seen. The idea that replacing something that’s been around for ~50 years will solve a Millenia long problem of humanity’s is just funny.
Is it? Communicating over distance was a problem we've had for millenia (or much longer) and it's now solved. Technology is amazing and we hit an inflection point last century. We're essentially already living in a post-humanity world, and crypto is the currency to match.
There's a reason why I say that bitcoin fans participate in magical thinking, and this is a prime example. So the argument goes that because we've solved communication, bitcoin is supposed to solve war ... how again? There's not even a fig leaf of an argument here, only a blunt assertion that because we've solved other problems, therefore your preferred technology will solve other issues.
Maybe one day we'll solve war. But the burden of proof is on you to argue that your specific thing will solve that issue. And you're not even really trying.
> We're essentially already living in a post-humanity world, and crypto is the currency to match.
Lol, what? This is the intro to a cyberpunk novel, not an actual argument with testable claims. What the heck does "post-humanity" even freaking mean? As an actual human being living in this society, I'd argue that any claims that I'm "post" are objectively wrong.
This is always the issue with any sort of enthusiast; your enthusiasm does not scale. Just because you're really excited about a thing doesn't mean that anyone else will be; you have to actually find things that other people want and connect your interest to them persuasively (blunt assertions don't really work). "We're already living in a post-humanity world, and crypto is the currency to match" is the kind of thing that'll get you plaudits on crypto sub-forums, and worried looks from everyone else who has no <explicative deleted> idea what you're going on about.
If anything, limited supplies of anything, including bitcoin, are a likely to spark wars, not end them.
If you truly wish to help stop wars, join a peace-loving organization, attend marches, lobby politicians. You'll find all of the real work on this are in leftist organizations, which fight against the real foundations of war, such as inequality, ideas of exceptionalism, corporate greed and others. Fiat currency is well down on the list of the world's problems.
Quite the contrary. You'll find that many currencies were created specifically to support an army or war.
If the US government wanted to go to war, was lacking money for this, and for some reason didn't want to seize the entire bitcoin network (which it could pretty easily do, make no mistake), it could simply issue its own cryptocoin, just like in 1652. And people will buy it, because they know the US is good for it, for the same reason that dollars don't particularly devalue even if you print another hundred billion of them today.
It's important to understand that you can't fight social problems with technical solutions. The disgusting amounts of power that big states have make it impossible to oppose them with fun projects like bitcoin. If you are truly serious about combatting US imperialism, try reading some Noam Chomsky - that is a man that has spent his life fighting against these things, but also understanding the levers of power.
Financial games are in the end games; they may seem important because it is where the rich spend their time, but if push comes to shove and the system is threatened, the game is quickly stopped and any necessary controls is asserted. Just look at what happened with the GME stock (and we haven't even seen the end of that). Make no mistake, if BTC ever becomes a real threat to any monetary system, you will see much worse than that.
This can only be combatted in the arena of politics and democratic control, by changing the rules, not playing the game.
2. Fiat is not a social problem but a technological one that crypto is well poised to take on.
3. BTC is well on its way to passing gold in aggregate value. It's safe to say, it's no longer a "toy".
4. I'm left of Chomsky but in general, a big fan.
2. I don't understand how fiat is a technological problem. Fiat was a solution to the problem of a fixed supply (gold-pegged) currency. Crypto is generally a step back.
3. The value of bitcoin is irrelevant to its impact on global financial systems. It can handle 7 transactions per second, while consuming more power than the Czech Republic. That people are willing to bet good money on it for now is does not mean that is should be taken seriously as an alternative to anything in the financial system.
4. Interesting, I honestly expected from your arguments that you were more in the area of a more-socially-conscious-than-average Rand Paul fan, glad to hear I was wrong.
2. Fiat is a technological solution, as is Bitcoin. Really though, the dichotomy between "social" and "tech" solutions is false. Technology and society are one and the same.
3. BTC has moved billions of dollars into crypto. That crypto can be pegged in smart contracts on more appropriate tech stacks (like ETH) to enable currency use-cases with alt coins. It's early days here, but very exciting.
4. There's not many leftist libertarians but it is an actual philosophy. Individual liberty + social and humanitarian thinking + acknowledgement of the role racism and exploitation has had in today's power structures. I believe in radical decentralization and leveraging technology and automation to make life better for all.
2. I was wrong in my explanation, you're right that fiat is a (social/financial) technology and in principle crypto could be an alternative. What I was thinking of initially is that the problems of the finance system are social, not technological: the incentives in the current system (the rich keeping their richness at the expense of everyone else) are a social problem, which can't be fixed with technology. As long as the rich stay rich and powerful, they will control crypto just as well as they controlled gold and fiat before it.
3. ETH can do, what, 24 TPS? Right now there is no coin that can realistically compete with the global banking system, especially on the last mile. And I don't think PoW or PoSpace will ever get there. And PoStake doesn't seem like it has any real advantages over a trusted distributed DB, to be honest.
4. Those are quite noble goals. Probably a major difference of belief between us is that I don't believe any change towards decentralization can come from (computer) technology, I believe it must be a social movement with democratic power that moves things first and foremost - any kind of purely technological solution will easily be co-opted by the rich and powerful. In this way, crypto should look at what happened with the Internet itself, as Google and Facebook and others slowly absorbed it.
Arguably currency is a consequence of wars, as are markets[0]. Markets and currency (fiat & hard specie) are usually the consequence of states needing to raise armies, equip and pay for armies, and do something with the tribute collected from vanquished foes. Small scale agriculture can work on either physical barter or interpersonal debt systems, it's only when you need to equip and train men to fight full time that you need actual coinage and markets to produce arms for them and do something with whatever they seized abroad.
Assuming that one accepts this, this is actually a pretty big problem for the "bitcoin will stop wars" crowd, as arguably currencies are a consequence of wars and not vice-versa. If one wants to stop wars, one has to tackle the root causes, not the side-effects.
Furthermore, it's also clear that it's possible to organize and fund wars on the back of several different types of currency. We've seen wars funded with hard specie (early Roman Republic/empire), diluted hard specie (late Roman Empire), wheat backed coin (Sumaria), lead (Sparta), paper notes backed by land (French directory), gold backed paper (America pre-1971), fiat (everyone nowadays), and probably more still. There's really no clear reason why one couldn't use a cryptocurrency to organize and fund a war.
Heck, if they actually worked it would probably make modern wars a bit easier. Modern conflict often involves the funding of proxy groups with a variety of openness and plausible deniability. This usually requires the actual transit of physical money, which is dangerous and expensive. The ability to just digitally wire a bunch of currency to your proxies without the need to fly pallets of money and gold to your proxy fighters would simplify things significantly for current world powers. The ultra-private currencies would be a pretty good way to send money to terrorist and rebel groups you don't want to be seen visible funding too.
0 - For more on this see David Graeber's Debt, the First 5000 Years.
To the extent that inequality, competition, and unfairness create tension, that tension doesn't go away just because there's a different set of people at the top.
try sending money to someone in north korea. how many hours does that take?
> actually interested in them as currency
it is still a currency.
North Korea leader has an army of hackers trained to steal bitcoins and uses them to launder money...
probably not the best example
Thats the best defense for Btc you have?
>it is still a currency.
The only people consistently using BTC as currency are drug dealers or drug buyers.
it is the most obvious use case that is superior to everything currently in use.
> The only people consistently using BTC as currency are drug dealers or drug buyers.
no. but even if true, does that make it less of a currency?
Come on. Of all of the cryptocurrency-utopia claims that exist, this is surely the least believable.