Comment by oleganza | Hacker News Reader

Comment by oleganza | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Speaking only for Bitcoin, that's a leverage against state monopoly on money issuance.

Regardless of the church you subscribe to (deflationary spiral of death VS austrian hard money libertopia), the fact remains that people:

- want to save value for later,

- want it to be liquid,

- want it to be secure

Govs' monopoly on money and ad-hoc issuance policy does not make fiat currencies a good fit. Physical gold is hard to secure, transport and partially liquidate. Gold certs and all sorts of funds are subject to counterparty risk that we begin with (see the history full of abuses in that realm). Real estate is expensive, comes with high taxes and is very far from being liquid.

Bitcoin solves all these issues because it's far more liquid and easier to secure than gold or real estate. That creates a leverage against how much gov could inflate their money supply or tax other assets: they more they do, the more value flows out into Bitcoin. Today Bitcoin is a tiny slice of the pie, but in the future it may be very visible and offer real competition and make all the people who do not even use Bitcoin find themselves in a more stable fiat environment as a result.

Decentralization is not secure from fraud. Crypto shows the unpreparedness of the masses and platforms:

Eg. https://rekt.news

And personally, i didn't see any non-tech folk know the concept of an offline wallet.

"Save value for later" just abolishes everything that has been learned to increase consumption and drive economics from the last 100 years. It's a negative growth driver for the country, if you applaud that, i think that's insane.

That's an orthogonal issue. There are plenty of non-crypto investment scams (ask your local VC), phishing etc. Some part of the population will always be robbed or scammed, regardless of the name of your country, inflation rate or what currency you use to pay the bills.

Crypto may be higher on radar because there's lure of high returns because market is expanding rapidly, and, as in any bubble, some things will pop and some people will hold the bag. Just like with dotcom bubble or california gold rush.

PS. Even though California rush left most people without much direct profit, the indirect profit was that California was populated, infrastructure developed and it became an important part of the global economy, and as a free state was one more place where people could move to build a better future for themselves, even if they were not directly interested in the gold itself.

Because some people are more easily fooled, doesn't mean that we should remove protections. Lol

Crypto IS higher on the radar because it's easier to pull off a fraud and send it through a bitcoin mixer. That's simply proven by criminals preferring crypto.

Bank money mules are a lot harder to accomplish if you're not a criminal organisation. Additionally, the money is more easily recovered through banks and banks should return your money from fraud in many cases: Eg. https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/debt-and-money/banking/ban...

You decide to frame it as "remove protections", while I frame it "here's thing with different tradeoffs". Did cars arrive on the streets with "protections removed" because they could go faster? Or we just accepted different tradeoffs and had to adjust design of the streets, cars and behaviour to improve safety of the new tech?

Of course, freedom comes with responsibility. If no one can take your coins easily, you won't be able to recover them easily from someone else either. That's an alternative compared to super-centralized hierarchical finance. People often imply that one is strictly worse than another without considering both advantages and disadvantages.

If there are no protections, describing it as removing protections is correct.

> leverage against state monopoly on money issuance.

We tried that. It was called company scrip and wildcat banking. It was a horrendous disaster that hurt huge numbers of people.

Bitcoin does not have counterparty risk. Your coins remain yours regardless of who else was doing risky bets and went bankrupt. (Provided you hold your own keys.)

As for volatility, that's purely a function of holding distribution and market liquidity (and the market right now is far from saturated - hence 30% dips and huge potential upside in the future). As soon as the "whales" are thinly spread across the globe, you don't have a risk of your coins' value suddenly crash because of one guy selling his holdings.

Bitcoin absolutely does have counterparty risk, but it's pushed onto the exchange.

The coins are yours, but their value is almost zero unless you exchange them for currency. (Very few places accept BTC directly) Exactly like with company scrips, company credit or such means.

"very few places accept BTC directly" is a non-argument.

First, we both agree that the market is far from saturated with BTC. When/if it is, then sure many more places will accept BTC.

Second, even with USD you are separating payment processors and issuers. Visa/MC being shut down does not make USD worthless. Just like if some major exchanges disappear, that would only make people seek some other ways to perform transactions they want to perform.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com