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Comment by lordofgibbons | Hacker News Reader

1) > Cannot be printed away.

Why would any government want this a feature? As far as sovereigns are concerned, this is a bug, not a feature. You and I might or might not agree with it, but no sovereign government would give away its ability to print money.

2) Bitcoin has a public and transparent ledger. Why would any government want the whole world to see their reserve amounts and movements in real time?

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> Why would any government want this a feature?

I'm not a sovereign and I don't want this feature either.

On an selfish/individual level it’s rational to prefer no inflation or even deflation if you have a lot of cash and no debt.

For the economy as a whole? Well it leads to a lot less debt amongst other things constant economic depressions (like back in the 1800s)

    no sovereign government would give
    away its ability to print money

Germany can print Dollars?

It can indirect influence the amount of dollars US is printing. e.g. having Euro interest rates at 0% or less would force the FED to lower them to some extent too.

How would a government get the ECB to lower interest rates? They could change spending and taxation to affect its own economy (increase/decrease inflation/growth employment) which can influence the ECB but that and any political pressure would face opposition from other governments, the markets and the ECB itself.

> Why would any government want this a feature?

As an issuer, they wouldn't. But nobody can issue Bitcoin anyway, so that's clearly irrelevant.

As a reserve, it would be the same ones who buy gold, for the same reason.

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