Also the current fiat system is debt based, which means that the vast majority of money is printed by banks and the money printing power is at the highest ranking sales person, and hidden.
However as a speculative instrument eth and Bitcoin are not my cup of tea.
How does that work? Is it a vanilla Eth transfer, or is a contract generated each time and you review the Solidity code before proceeding?
If a person thinks that fiat payments work well, he hasn't really travelled yet to different cultures.
This is the genesis of a new crypto universe. It's hugely hyped, and a lot of it is clearly BS. But underlying the hype and hysteria there's a kernel of a new paradigm emerging.
Crypto applications promise to provide disintermediation on a scale not seen before. Direct peer to peer transactions, conducted transparently, without a need to verify trust and happening simultaneously anywhere in the world.
Not only that but smart contracts bring with them the potential to do stuff that simply is not possible right now. For example, providing instant conditional transactions (if my fave rental car is available book it, otherwise search for another solution, but only from these sources at this price) etc etc etc. We don't know what this means, but it could be a revolution. Or not. :)
Smart contracts, and all the other buzz words turn regular folk away. I'm hedging my bets on the coin with a dog on it for mass adoption. Even the word "Ethereum" (and "Eth") is less user-friendly to "Doge".
For me, all this ETH stuff is just hype (very few ETH owners actually care about the currency side of things and its already gone too far into pyramid scheme territory to ever recover imo). The dog coin works just great as it is right now for the amount of users it has. Any upgrades should be manageable before they are ever necessary.
They don't. All of "disentermidation" immediately turns around and restores all the institutions based on, you know, trust.
> Direct peer to peer transactions, conducted transparently, without a need to verify trust
Yup. Until you pay for something, and that something never arrives.
> (if my fave rental car is available book it, otherwise search for another solution, but only from these sources at this price)
Literally nothing prevents you from doing it right now, with existing technologies... Oh, wait. All rental car companies are closed to any integrations of any kind. Smart contracts will do literally nothing in this scenario.
Besides. If I go and rent a car from, say, Hertz, I get a contract written in plain language. It may be a little obtuse, but I can read and understand it. Smart contracts on the other hand are written in obscure esoteric programmming languages. Good luck telling people "don't worry, you won't be scammed out of your money because it has 'smart' and 'crypto' in it".
Yes, this can be a real problem when traveling.
> Bitcoin always works …
This is obviously a completely bullshit statement. Bitcoin almost never works in places where credit cards or ‘fiat’ are accepted.
> If a person thinks that fiat payments work well, he hasn't really travelled yet to different cultures.
‘Fiat payments’ covers everything from the ATM network to cash to western union to Hawala. All aspects of fiat payments indeed have problems.
However the idea that today, Bitcoin solves these problems outside of a tiny fraction of contrived cases is a delusional fantasy.
Almost nobody in the world trades in Bitcoin. Almost everybody in the world trades in ‘fiat’.
Count me among the people who have travelled and never encountered problems. I always bring two cards in case something weird happens, but I’ve never had to use the backup.
If established banking cards aren’t working in a country, it seems unlikely that relatively recent cryptocurrency would be working any better at their banking institutions. If their banks can’t take your bank card in exchange for cash, I doubt they’re going to be set up to take your Bitcoin.
In practice it has never been more that a nuisance, as I've just gone to a different bank's ATM and it's been fine.
Fiat works, and works well. You're advised to keep some cash on hand, but it works multiple orders of ↑↑↑ [1] better than bitcoin
Similarly, you shouldn't necessarily trust a central bank when they want to print money. (I'm not inherently opposed to it and think the pros probably outweigh the cons for some situations and intents; just saying accountability in cases like these isn't as simple as "it's the people's will".)
Who has the highest amount of power in Bitcoin, and why haven't they done anything, for example increase the issuance?
How would that benefit them?
It's besides the point though, you can certainly benefit from holding power of the protocol but the reality is that there is very little of this dynamic.
But let's face it: most of the hype is in well-functioning democracies. Here, I cannot fathom why anyone would wanna replace fiat currencies with this crap.
In the "well functioning democracy" U.S. You have:
- Mistrust in institutions
- An insane asset inflation bubble fueled by the biggest fiat printing spree ever
Sure, the state hasn't failed. But are you really surprised people want to expose themselves to a new paradigm with different fundamentals for money and finance, this year?
Good luck paying for things with cryptocurrency-of-the-day without electricity. Or without authorities to call if your trading partner pulls a gun on you. But I'm sure the American solution is a diesel generator and an even bigger gun ;-)
Hence the impetus to try something different and more befitting the future of our species.
So, do you think that the dollar - and specifically the inflation schedule and distribution mechanisms of the dollar - can be reasonably said to be under democratic, rather than plutocratic, control?