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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

> Whatever your stance on cryptocurrencies are, what is of little dispute is the business opportunities they have created. Binance and Coinbase are large, successful companies. Poloniex was sold for ~400M.

This is the broken window fallacy writ large. The small value cryptocurrencies provide over other digital transaction methods is overshadowed by the huge inefficiencies of how transactions are processed via PoW. The fact that there are companies that have made a fortune dealing with all these "broken windows" doesn't change the basic fact that cryptocurrency is probably the least energy efficient way to move money digitally.

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> The small value cryptocurrencies provide over other digital transaction methods

I’m not aware of any other digital transaction methods that can send un-printable money besides cryptos.

I think devaluing currency to inflate stocks and fund wars is harmful, and cryptos are a valuable solution. Although, I think there’s better than PoW.

These are political problems. If you think that an additional form of currency will solve them, I have a bridge to sell you. Even if you convince the US government to switch to BTC (this is probably a harder political project than defunding the defence department), I'm sure they'll think of something if they need to fund a war or two. BTC would be a mere speed bump.

Yes, the US can still raise funds other ways. It would still be preferable if they were more transparent about it.

> Even if you convince the US government to switch to BTC

There's no need for that. It would be enough for some people to switch to BTC. I.e., not store their money or denominate their salaries in USD.

As things stand, most wealthy people already store their money in things other than USD that are somewhat less easy to manipulate, like stocks and commodities. It would be nice if this strategy were more accessible to people worldwide.

> I’m not aware of any other digital transaction methods that can send un-printable money besides cryptos.

That's because it's not a useful feature heh. Money is meant to be a medium of exchange and temporary store of value. To the extent it holds its value for the duration of your ownership of it, it's met its goal.

Sure, it's a fair argument that gold + paypal may be superior to bitcoin.

You can simplify this even more. Open an InteractiveBrokers margin account and request a debit card. Fund the account, purchase gold (futures, GLD, whatever) and spend on your IBKR debit card. This will pull from your margin. Your margin interest is ~1% and tax deductible. Settle up your account as you see fit.

I use IBKR margin, but didn't realize it was tax deductible!? Thanks for the tip!

Yes, you can use it to offset capital gains. Also, depending on your largesse, consider tax-aware borrowing. [1]

[1] https://csq.com/2018/04/geoffrey-berlin-private-wealth-tax-a...

PoS is replacing PoW at scale. It's time for new arguments.

When is it replacing PoW? I've heard this promise for years now. Time for new rebuttals.

Beacon chain is live with 100k validators. Merge is due late 2021 Sharding 12 months from now

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