Comment by Geee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Geee | Hacker News Reader

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This is just pure evil. There is no "we". It's mind-boggling how some economists have become complete puppets for governments. He is just straight up lying in most of his arguments.

Economic inefficiency is a problem of the current monetary system, caused by its centralization and inflationary nature, and this is the problem which bitcoin is trying to fix. Most of the issues in the world today are caused by our current monetary system, from wealth inequality to consumerism and environmental problems.

He is suggesting that the monetary system should be even more centralized, and we should move into even more centrally planned economy, like in Soviet Union. This time however, they're planning to use big data to solve the economic calculation problem and to control consumer behavior. This is completely immoral, and ends up destroying both personal and economic freedoms in a society. This problem is very well understood, and no one seriously suggests central planning unless they are evil and want to decrease freedom and equality in a society.

We already have too much central planning in our current system. Central bank digital currencies would be the last step in this process of completely monopolizing money, and giving governments and central banks the absolute authority of where money is invested and how it is spent.

I don't see any wrong in what he says. So, crypto is designed for a future where all the institutional banking fails and where political borders don't exist and where no transparency is required. All that it offers is less fee and speed. First of all such future dreamed by the cypto pundits doesn't exist. And many people don't mind paying a little commission to a bank doing my payment, so that they can call the bank and hold it accountable. All this is taken away in the crypto model just for the sake of avoiding a small fee and delay. How many times does an average person transacts across border for which their fiat currency doesn't work or too difficult to use? crypto has too little to offer at the cost of enabling crime and lack of transparency. Why all this is so difficult to understand for these crypto geniuses?

You have missed the point of Bitcoin. It's not just a payment network, it's a completely new type of money. It can't be inflated, it can't be taken away from you, and no one can stop anyone from using it. It's the opposite of our current, inflationary and centrally controlled money. Bitcoin can take away these authoritarian and repressive powers from governments and central banks.

It's not really possible to understand Bitcoin if you don't know how broken our current money is and how much damage it has caused.

This website collects stats from the beginning of purely fiat monetary system. https://wtfhappenedin1971.com

> it can't be taken away from you

Eh? Almost every single day we see a HN headline where a rugpull, hack, or other scam has taken vast amounts of bitcoin away from owners.

Not bitcoin. You are talking about altcoins or "cryptos" which are all scams.

Obviously bitcoin is not resistant to your own stupidity. If you send your bitcoin to a scammer, it's your own fault. However, if you're careful and manage your security well, it is impossible to confiscate.

> Most of the issues in the world today are caused by our current monetary system, from wealth inequality to consumerism and environmental problems.

Of those three points, consumerism is the only one that bitcoin fixes, as it’s nigh useless as a currency right now, but excels at concentrating wealth[0] and burning carbon.

[0] 0.04% own 63% of bitcoin; 2% own 94% https://medium.com/coinmonks/bitcoin-and-the-concentration-o...

It doesn't concentrate wealth, because it's a zero-sum game. The only way to acquire bitcoin is to be productive and contribute to society. Otherwise, they'll have to spend their bitcoin. Fiat monetary system, on the other hand, allows creating more money for those who are already wealthy, i.e. wealth is constantly transferred from the poor to the rich.

Consumerism is caused by forced spending and growth through inflation. People who spend less are punished.

The article you linked looks just at bitcoin addresses, which is wildly inaccurate method, because it's possible to create infinite amount of addresses. In addition, it's impossible to know how many people are behind those big addresses which belong to exchanges, investment funds, nation states and so forth. This article[0] is more accurate, and puts the number at 2% of entities own 71.5% of bitcoin, where entities could still be multiple people.

[0] https://insights.glassnode.com/bitcoin-supply-distribution/

So it is very accurate to say 5% of the actual bitcoin participants—a very small number of people—own a supermajority of the currency, that the 8 billion of us are to share.

Brilliant.

All of them are not individuals, and similar power law distribution applies to all kinds of wealth.

> The only way to acquire bitcoin is to be productive and contribute to society

This actually made me laugh.

Not sure what are you laughing at. It's the nature of hard money, like bitcoin and gold. Their production cost is close to their market value, which means that you can acquire them only by mining or by trade, which both require work. No one can profit by creating them from thin air, like fiat money.

Literally all you have to do is invent a new coin.

Also - to acquire Bitcoin: https://xkcd.com/538/

Good luck trying to sell your coin to bitcoiners.

If you're trying to imply that no one who holds Bitcoin would sell to buy other coins, then I think your view of Bitcoiners may need to be recalibrated.

https://www.reddit.com/r/terraluna/comments/rs8hfv/how_to_bu...

Why do you think that creating a new coin and trying to sell it is the easiest way to get bitcoin? Most people think that it's not very easy, and buy bitcoin from an exchange.

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