Hacker News Reader

Comment by codebolt | Hacker News Reader

'Zooming out and seeing the big picture' seems to mean buying into a libertarian vision of the world where the current money system is horribly broken and blockchain technologies are a viable and superior alternative. I profoundly disagree on all points of that analysis.

View on HN

There are plenty of people on any part of the political spectrum for whom the current money system is horribly broken.

Right-wing American libertarians in particular have this simplistic view that government control over anything is the root of all evil. Therefore the decentralized aspect of crypto must seem like a wet dream.

I believe the system where a semi-independent central bank has the ability to regulate the currency of the country is a good thing on the whole. It's the best balance of compromises we have seen actualized.

Having a fixed supply of digital coins seems more like a return to the old days where there was a fixed supply of gold and silver coinage. And that era was called the dark ages. A system with fractional reserve credit is much more conducive to economic growth and prosperity.

I’m not libertarian at all. I see cryptocurrency as a fair and transparent way out of the extreme wealth inequality we see in the world today. Decentralization gets me excited. New ways of using technology gets me excited.

cryptocurrencies are not going to solve extreme inequality. they are a transparent way to transfer wealth from new investors to early investors (aka ponzi scheme)

"A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that pays existing investors with funds collected from new investors"

Sorry to burst your bubble, but cryptocurrency does not work this way. Your reasoning can be applied to any asset, for example, a shitty house in California that is now worth $1M.

A non-inflationary currency promotes hoarding. The biggest whales in crypto own a huge chunk of the total supply, even more so than in our current fiat system. How you think such a system does anything but worsen wealth inequality is a mystery to me.

There's no magic bullet for solving a problem like wealth inequality. It's a political problem that requires a political solution.

I'd also imagine that crypto ownership is massively concentrated in the top 10% wealthiest people anyways.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com