Comment by crote | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crote | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Surely you are not trying to claim that anything which has any value is a viable currency?

The US dollar holds value because the US demands you pay taxes in it. It also helps that you can actually use it to buy stuff - from an ice cream cone at a street vendor to an oil platform. And it is backed by a massive government, worldwide banking system, and not-too-shabby military.

Meanwhile, crypto is proving to be woefully ill-suited for any kind of payment, contract, or loan. The vast majority of its use is either speculation or crime.

Crypto seemed promising in 2012, but a decade down the line nothing convincing has come out. It is still a solution looking for a problem, and at this point I highly doubt one will come out of the woodwork any time soon.

> Surely you are not trying to claim that anything which has any value is a viable currency?

Obviously you're not going around trading ramen and cigarettes, but if you live in a some closed system like a prison, then yes, anything of value can be used as a currency. History shows many societies have used many different things as money. Eventually gold out-competed those monies and became the de facto standard for money. You forget that US dollars were originally promissory notes for redeeming gold at a bank; this is what gave US notes value (trust that you could get gold for the notes), and the de-pegging of gold gave birth to the experiment that is modern day banking.

This description of money doesn't sound right, to me? Personally, I subscribe to the Graeber-Innes hypothesis: the use of precious metal coinage was a credit risk mitigation strategy. Using gold (or whatever) was important not because of any latent value of the metal, but simply because it provided material accounting for asset backed representative monies in a distributed, robust, vaguely secure manner.

I mean, I seem to remember the Mesopotamian cultures using "fiat" accounting for 3000-odd years? That's one of the theories of the development of writing: accounting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com