Hacker News Reader

Comment by bitxbitxbitcoin | Hacker News Reader

> IMF executive directors, who represent the fund’s 190 member nations, highlighted Bitcoin’s risks to “financial stability, financial integrity, and consumer protection” and fiscal contingent liabilities, the fund said in a statement Tuesday. They urged the authorities “to narrow the scope of the Bitcoin law by removing Bitcoin’s legal tender status.”

Sounds like they feel threatened.

View on HN

Of course, if people start using another currency then they lose a lot of power. Being able to print your own money is a huge power states have. You won’t be able to print your way out if a crypto takes over, that’s why crypto will never be a thing; unless the state makes a bastardized/spy coin.

Is there any way for the government to control the issuance of crypto coins? The Fed has proposed creating a 'digital' dollar . Just not sure if its the same thing as a crypto dollar ?

The concept of Cryptocurrencies doesn’t prohibit the arbitrary creation of new coins, that’s just an implementation details of most of the popular ones. Even Bitcoin could have allowed for Satoshi to create new coins on a whim, but that wasn’t Satoshi’s goal.

A government could create a cryptocurrency where they control inflation.

Any additional cryptocurrency is already inflation.

That's not the definition of inflation. Inflation is the reduction of buying power via the creation of additional units.

Cryptocurrency is a word used to describe a class of assets, each protocol/network being its own asset.

Given that cryptocurrency is usually open source and forkable, there are unlimited amount of "currencies". I can literally register 100 domains and fork 100 variations of bitcoin to create 100 new unique projects. That doesn't mean I've inflated anything at all. 1 dogecoin is not 1 bitcoin.

The only legitimate problem with Bitcoin is the environmental impact of POW. These folks are clearly threatened by something that could supplant them.

How exactly would Bitcoin supplant the IMF? Are we going to crowdsource billion dollar loans on the ethereum blockchain so retail investors can help poor countries pay off debt?

The IMF doesn't really care about that. They can loan shark with Bitcoin just as well as with USD or EUR.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com