It’s not just that
This is a gradual decline. From 70% in the 90s to 60% today. Today there are more options like the Euro that didn’t exist in the 90s. People can argue over EU economic stability, but it’s there as reasonable option.
This is a gradual decline. From 70% in the 90s to 60% today. Today there are more options like the Euro that didn’t exist in the 90s. People can argue over EU economic stability, but it’s there as reasonable option.
Additionally, we've now seen the EU survive the departure of a major economic power (the UK). More people are certainly willing to believe in the stability of the EU now.
Another major currency is the Yuan, and some countries may be as willing to trade in Yuan to improve relations with China, so perhaps we won't see one single reserve currency but two spheres of influence with most countries maintaining reserves of multiple currencies.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/what-to-...
Obviously that's extremely impractical and at best you're hiring a 3rd party to streamline that for you. It's a clusterfuck at tax time (edit: stable coin doesn't help here -- you must still report gains on stable coins as it is still a $0 capital gain which is different than no capital gain).
Retailers already dealing with capital gains and with high chargeback rates love it though. For instance, it's usually the cheapest same-day clearing way to buy precious metals online since credit card rates are high (chargeback), ACH takes days, and wires tend to cost $15+ with many banks.
The IRS policy is irrelevant, the law always required payment of capital gains. It's consistently been the hardest thing about accepting Bitcoin for payment.
Foreign currency payments are largely exempted.
If a bitcoin rises or falls by a calculable amount between when you received it vs when you spent a portion of it, you have gains/losses. That has always been required by the IRS to be reported, whether that is a BTC or chicken feathers.
You are required to report capital gains and losses from stablecoins on your tax return (though it’s likely that your gain will be close to 0).
It’s worthless money and I don’t see anything out of china that would cause that to change.
This is quickly going away[1].
[1] https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publication...
The Chinese government spend a lot of money keeping the value of the RMB low.
Eventually you hit an inflection point where it’s cheaper to manufacture elsewhere. Which is why China is working Africa, huh?
Interesting stuff, in a vacuum.
plus it would make Chinese debt more expensive as well.
Also, it's not like a 99-year lease has no value. That's your entire lifetime+.
Imagine if you'd invested in lithium mining in Afghanistan 15 years ago: you'd likely have paid a lot, made little money, lost employees and then lost it to the Taliban.
Don't need Econ 101 to understand this basic reality.
Bitcoin is an economic value consumer just to hold it. It does nothing if you have it.
How much do you think debt would cost and how easy would it be for businesses to get credit?
Combining a deflationary currency with a growing (or at least non static) economy is bad a everyone who has a basic understanding of history prior to the 1930s can see that. Something like bitcoin would be even much worse than the gold standard.
Having less of that garbage fiat short-termism is a good thing for society.
Yet having more of endless boom and bust cycles with major economic depressions lasting for years (outcomes of the gold standard was a good idea).
> You're forcing business to produce something valuable in real terms instead of nominal terms
I don't quite understand what does that mean. Pricing goods in oil or grain? (coincidentally either of which would function better as a currency than bitcoin).
But more importantly, you can buy a lot of stuff from the factory of the world. Which is why a lot of countries don't mind holding the RMB. Just not enough for it to become a reserve currency, and certainly no one wants it to become the petroyuan.
If you are in a country or area with a large Chinese population, you can usually pay easily in RMB with Alipay.
If you use Visa and Mastercard, you are subject to US regulations, sanctions, and embargoes. Many alternative payment processor exist, PIX in Brazil, UPI in India, etc.
There are several systems in the EU: Wero, Bizum, BLIK It is urgent that Europeans coordinate to ensure the interoperability of these systems and reduce the influence of Visa and Mastercard.
In the event of conflict, this will be the first service to be cut in order to disrupt European countries.
The US already use it for coercing European politicians : https://www.courthousenews.com/eu-strongly-condemns-us-sanct...
1) Direct payment systems via mobile phone, generally designed initially for payments between friends and family. They have been set up in several countries by neobanks, generally based on the Mastercard network (very common among neobanks). A Latvian neobank may expand into the Baltic countries, but is unlikely to succeed in Portugal. These systems are not interoperable with each other.
2) Systems promoted by banking networks, such as Bizum in Spain, which has expanded to the Iberian Peninsula, and Wero, which is supported by BNP Paribas (France, Belgium, Germany). These networks are independent of Mastercard, Visa, etc., but they seek to favor their members and do not seek to become widespread.
Discussions have been ongoing for years to achieve interoperability. The idea for the moment was to let the market structure itself naturally without too much intervention, other than to say “we must move towards interoperability at the European level.” This approach has worked very well for bank transfers, which have become simple, fast, and relatively secure, but it has taken a long time (Europe, consensus, etc.).
A lot of growing economies don't/can't trust their local currency and they overwhelmingly use USD instead of EUR or CNY. As those economies grow the USD gets a boost that will sustain it for a while over the increasing competition of CNY. But this can't sustain it forever and the US is not doing anything to offset the lost ground in global trade and forex reserves.
I don’t really understand the impact of Brexit on the euro, as Britain wasn’t on it. But clearly they were a key part of the EU. It’ll be interesting to see which side regrets the move more.
In June 2025, 56% of people in Great Britain thought it was the wrong decision:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-po...
It's hard to imagine this number would be going down after recent events like USA suddenly threatening arbitrary new tariffs on the UK.
But while "Leaving was a bad idea" isn't enough to seriously push for actual re-entry to the EU it's certainly a good sign for the EU and for the Euro. The EU is a massive bureaucracy, and I think we underestimated how much "a massive bureaucracy" might be the thing we wanted in this role..
Just curious, what privileges did it have? I can think of keeping it currency only.
It's not so clear when you consider that 48.1% of the original referendum voters wanted to stay in the EU. I'm honestly very surprised by this poll, 8% change is pretty minimal considering the turmoil the country has gone through since 2016.
How much of this can be explained by older voters dying in the intervening 10 years, I recall that demographic skewed much more heavily Leave in 2016
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/general-election-2024-t...
How many thought it was the right decision at the time?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_U...
Remain was 48% so it's actually not that large of a swing in total. It's not like it was 5% remain and now it would be 56% or something.
But it does indicate if the referendum was taking place today it might swing the other way.
Perception is hard to measure objectively, but the UK does not feel like it’s on an upswing when compared to last time I was there.
There was a small pro brexit margin, and loads didn’t vote. I don’t dispute the vote result, I just wondering what the result would have been if there had been higher turnout.
Sweden just haven’t completed the stabilization and alignment criteria to formally switch over, arguing that it is voluntary.
We had a referendum on the euro back 2003 with a clear mandate to not adopt it and the politicians don’t want to poke the sleeping tiger that is the euro question.
Presumably the IMF is not bound by the typical RMB capital controls that limit its utility for commercial entities and individuals.
I found that information at the top of the linked page, which I just checked again was indeed the page about SDRs. Maybe they're doing some stupid redirection that's browser dependent.
That said, yes, I would defend Europe against the US, even though I think that fight would be short, deadly and decisive if it really came down to it.
What a fucked up world we live in, just because idiots voted for a convicted felon.
And also, our whole military recruitment strategy here outside of drafts has been "the GI bill" – paid tuition in exchange for lining up to go to war.
I don't know that the gap in morals is as wide as you think.
Which historically has worked more for us, than against us.
Russians are much, much worse than Americans in terms of their eagerness to kill others, in my opinion. I wish it were not so.
I don't think EU vs Russia would be a "good vs evil" situation. Russia/US seem pretty similar to me, dictatorship/propaganda with a majority of the population being regular people not in favor of any war, and 30% of indoctrinated people.
Your country is the second largest weapons exporter to Israel.
Adopting English as legal secondary language in every EU member state would maybe be a good first step.
Shares values AND Ally AND Being attacked AND Attacker is evil
I think you'll continue to be safe posting on HN
I think you’ll find that threats of violence (which is what your comment is) need to be much more unhinged to be effective deterrents. Remember you’re warning off barbarians (eg us Americans or the Russians), not civilized folk.
I can already hear people storming out of the woods, ready to write how the EU itself is undemocratic, or how free speech isn't real in western European countries. I disagree with you.
And unlike you, some random anonymous poster on this polite version of Reddit, everyone knows what they do.
Have you ever even met anyone from either country?
Will we also sanction Elon Musk and other pro-MAGA individuals after the current rift between the EU and the US? Why not include Chinese ones, too, who are actually quite active? Also, far-right influencers? Far-left? They are nazis/communists after all!
Or, if you are German, consider that saying something offensive about a politician is "attacking democracy" and sentence people to prison because of untasteful memes.[0]
Of course, all of this can be justified and most undemocratic/less democratic countries get along with those rules, but at least let's stop pandering to "values" that have become pious words without any real meaning.
>Will we also sanction Elon Musk and other pro-MAGA individuals after the current rift between the EU and the US? Why not include Chinese ones, too, who are actually quite active? Also, far-right influencers? Far-left? They are nazis/communists after all!
Fantastic idea, unironically. But IMHO the far left is way less of a threat to humanity than the far right is right now. But extreme political fringes are never good.
>I don't like "Kremlin influencers", that said the Streisand effect is real, and the slope is very slippery from here to include other people along the ride.
The rules for not being sanctioned are easy to follow. Don't be a russian asset - that's basically it. Shouldn't be so hard.
They also sanction who they perceive as western assets, by the way. And see nothing wrong sending dissidents to jail with similar vague hate speech laws that we have in the EU [0]. In fact, they even eradicated their far-right! [1] Navalny was prosecuted because he was "extremist", for instance.
So how do you feel being in such ideological proximity with Putin's Russia? Just like others, you enjoy gloating about feel-good "values" but don't believe at all in them, which would require some discomfort and radicality.
[0] https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/freedom-and-restriction-s...
[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/12/16/the-death-of-t...
As for your other points: Democracy must not fall to the Paradox of tolerance.
[0] https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-war-invasion-protest...
You cherry-pick an example: posting online or holding a sign with "Merz is a liar" would expose you to a lawsuit and jail. Just like saying the N word in private in France. You get jailed for crimes without a victim.
Each territory has forbidden speech: in many countries, for instance holocaust revisionism is forbidden and punished with jail sentences. It's tolerated to justify the murder of Palestinians, including in national media, of Jews, it isn't.
It's funny that you mention protests: French military police commonly kills or cripples protesters with semi-lethal weapons, and the government uses similar tactics as the Russian one to justify crackdowns (forbidding problematic protests).
The issue with such thinking is that, just as the frog in the kettle, the water will heat up and heat up as politicians increase their use of this very convenient tool, just like Putin did. Singapore is an advanced version of this, where problematic criticism of the government action is met with diffamation lawfare.
You can see this happening in Germany, with the drastic increase in lawsuits against the AFD, or diffamation against politicians. Same with the UK, which before was good example of spotless freedom of speech.
By the way, I hate to mention this but since you are German, I'd like to remind you that the Weimar republic had stringent hate speech laws and censorship. It didn't work at all. When will you start to learn?
Regarding the EU, the only elected representatives don't have the right to choose which laws they will vote for. If it was in a soviet country no one would call it a democracy.
There is a strong political and cultural foundation in geographic Europe for the political EU: some exemplary giants/EU co-architects:
Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman
European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) Schuman Declaration (1950) [It is only right that the R. Schuman Roundabout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Schuman_Roundabout Rue houses the European quarter in Brussels.]
Konrad Adenauer
Promoted reconciliation with France pro-European
Alcide De Gasperi
Integrated Italy into Western Europe Advocated supranational institutions
Paul-Henri Spaak
institutional designer, key role in the Treaties of Rome (1957) helped design the European Economic Community (EEC) Advocated supranational institutions
Walter Hallstein
1st President, European Commission. Built EC into powerful, independent institution Championed the supremacy of European law
Altiero Spinelli
Wrote the Ventotene Manifesto (while imprisoned by Fascists) Advocated a federal Europe
Winston Churchill
A paradoxical but crucial figure: called for a “United States of Europe” (1946 speech) Influenced Europe’s post-war direction despite UK distance
François Mitterrand
Drove Maastricht Treaty with Helmut Kohl Pushed for the € Symbolized Franco-German partnership
Helmut Kohl
Franco-German friendship exemplified by Mitterand-Kohl personal friendship "Architect of modern Europe" German reunification Key figure behind the EU and monetary union
It's ironic that the name "U.S.E." (United States of Europe) was first proposed by a Brit, alas a smart one, and I'm sure Sir Winston Churchill would have had the oratory abilities to convince his countrymen that his idea had merit, but he did not live to see it. The Federation of Europe or United States of Europe is the logical end-point of the joint vision of all these foundational leaders.
Ironic to call this a "friendship", when Mitterand along with Thatcher were working behind the scenes with the soviets to sabotage and stop Kohl's reunification of Germany. It was anything but a friendship, but more of a concession.
Politics is full of such examples that look friendly to the public, but hide a lot of sabotage and back stabbings in the background. In fact, the later is the norm in politics.
Friendships are just the media facing image. In reality, if a country can gain an advantage over the other they see as an economic adversary, and has the means to enforce it without repercussions, they'll do it. Then they'll meet up in front of the media, shake hands and gaslight the peasants on how this benefits everyone.
The true friendships in between countries are made over decades/centuries over shared blood, heritage and culture because humans are tribalistic and have own group preference. Forcing friendships via political declarations doesn't work.
Let me explain with examples. If Portugal would get attacked a lot of Spaniards would go fight for Portugal voluntarily because of shared history and culture. But if Bulgaria would get attacked, most Spaniards wouldn't volunteer to go die for Bulgaria, even though they're both EU members.
Austria kept torpedoing Romania's Schengen entry just to extract some monetary concession, not exactly something friends do. So if Austria were to hypothetically get attacked tomorrow, a lot of Romanians would cheer rather than want to go help since karma is a bitch. These kinds of petty squabbles are the norm in the EU.
People aren't gonna want to die or sacrifice themselves for the EU flag since it's an artificial construct, kind of like the corporation they work for, not something they feel a sense of belonging and allegiance to like a specific group of people.
Most countries can be subdivided seemingly infinitely into groups that could find reasons to fight each other. But humans have other common 'denominators', much higher than that. Spain, the UK, the US, France, China, and many others are unions of subcultures.
You can see so much better in the world. Instead of insisting that evil is inevitable - making you a victim of it - you can work for good. Our ancestors have had great success and made it easy for us to follow.
You're beating it around the bush. Tell me how many Spaniard would voluntarily sign up to die to defend Bulgaria if shit were to hit the fan.
THat's how you measure if strength of alliances stand the test of time, or if they're just worthless pieces of paper from a bygone era of peace and prosperity wrapped up in fake nationalism under a made up flag.
> Or look at the US and NATO ten years ago compared to today.
10 years ago a lot more people in US and NATO countries could more easily afford a house and get a decent paying job with a higher purchasing power. What were you trying to prove with this?
A lot and the evidence is overwhelming. Look at wars all over the world. Russians even sign up to defend Syria, for example. Americans sign up for wars all over the world, which have always been fought with allies - WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Iraq again, Afghanistan. Georgia helped the US in Iraq, along with many others. NATO fought alongside the US in Afghanistan.
> What were you trying to prove with this?
It's evidence of my claim; see the GP.
What's amazing is, despite being handed these wonderful things that made peace and prosperity, and being born and raised in them, people are programmed to say it can't work. Those people are the problem. Instead of opposing them or quitting, get to work - it almost couldn't be easier; someone else has already solved the problem. Compare the people who had to develop the Enlightenment, human rights, the post-WWII international order.
> bygone era of peace and prosperity
The era is what you make it - you are responsible for it. What are you making it, including with these words? Why aren't you solving the problems? The people who built the post-WWII international order, based on human rights, had just been through WWI and were fighting WWII - hardly an era of peace and prosperity - and look what they did.
Plus, with global warming, this may be the last chance for the Alpine hunters to shine.
There's a certain stigma especially in Germany caused by the WW2 and the the leadership has been complacent to rely on Bretton Woods agreement. But as we're seeing now the geopolitics are doing a 180 degree turnaround and given these circumstances I expect sooner or later Europe will collectively understand the utmost importance to com together and to regrow and redevelop the military to support independence and not having to bow down to any master in the East or int he West.
It might not be in 5 or 10 years but it's inevitable. It's not going to operate like this for 50, 100 years.
Just run a mental simulation of WW2 playing out except Europe had the EU.
So while I agree the EU is becoming more an more normal and important to the average citizen, there will come a time when it has to either solidify further or break apart, and I think it's basically a crapshoot to predict how that will go now when we have basically zero info.
EDIT: by "like the US" I mean federalization. This video explains it well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnarX3HPruA
The recent electoral success of AfD in Germany and the National Front in France seem to point in the other direction.
More like the US, as-in a country? So also more like Germany, China, South Africa, etc. You are making a false equivalence - being like the US in one extremely non-US specific way does not mean you must be like the US in every other way.
I'm not sure you even understand what I'm saying - this has nothing to do with the US vs. the EU or if the US is reliable.
What does that mean exactly?
I meet a lot of people do enjoy their nation's sovereignty especially as a shield from EU's poor and unpopular decisions that they don't get a vote in, and see the common currency and freedom of movement as just the right amount of integration. Making english an official language would be even better IMHO, but that's about it. I enjoy different countries having different politics and takes on topics, as it would be shit if all EU was a just a homogenous groupthink.
And I've never met anyone who thought the likes of Ursula and Kaja should be trusted with even more power and control over nations.
Also, when the colonies united, the government they agreed on was by today's standards extremely small and decentralized and there was absolutely no welfare state. Revenue was mostly from tariffs on imports with zero income tax. Merging modern European governments would be a massive undertaking in comparison. And the wealth levels between countries are so lopsided that any such merger would mean massive transfer payments out of the rich countries to the poor. And what about tax rates? Low tax countries will not like this one bit. When the US colonies merged under the constitution, you could very truthfully go to the average citizen of any colony and say "basically you won't even notice any changes." Whereas for the EU, you have to say to the voters "your taxes will go up and we will now be sending $100 billion Euros per year to people in other countries."
Also, I was surprised to learn how heterogenous the different regions of the US were from the very beginning, in origin, character and motivations. The Puritans, Quakers, Cavaliers, French nobles and traders etc.
This video explains why it's very likely to happen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yHJehbWiNo
Is it? CNY seems to be about the same as CHF:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Most_traded_currencie...
In a similar range as AUD and CAD.
The change is that suddenly the US isn't a bastion of stability and having an independent trading currency could ensure more internal stability for other nations.
Past returns are not indicative of future performance
Source?
I live in the US and I have lived in countries with 4-5 gdp growth
The problem is the AI bubble, without it it is speculated that the US economy might actually be in a recession [2] - effectively, that web of investments, deals, ownerships, purchase contracts and god knows what is nothing more than wash trading that will come crashing down hard.
That is why for the 99%, the economy doesn't "feel" like 4.3% of growth. If you're not in AI directly or at least adjacent (e.g. datacenter or utility construction), you don't feel any of that money.
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/14/ai-infrastructure-boom-masks...
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/us-economy-grew-thi...
Between Q1/2/3, US growth has been about 1.6%.
Wait until the whole year figures come out.
It's very unlikely the US doesn't have strong GDP numbers for 2025.
K-shaped economy and all that
It’s bad enough that America’s foreign policy lately swings wildly every four years. More recently, it’s been acting aggressive toward allies, and making very strange and unpredictable moves.
The USA’s tariff policies are, frankly, utterly insane. Yes, I do mean the tariffs are irrational and incoherent. The approach to the tariffs has been overly aggressive. They’ve been changing almost daily, at times. Now, tariffs are specifically a thing that must be stable and predictable on a multi-year horizon. This must be, at least, off-putting to other governments, and to any companies wishing to do business in or adjacent to the USA.
Monkeying with the Fed is dangerous and basically unprecedented. This is going to make people nervous because it marks the end of an era of stability in monetary policy. We may be at the start of a new era where interest rates, much like the tariffs, change frequently for bad reasons or for no reason at all. Who can say?
And THAT is the problem.
I can't see how, since the end of habeas corpus, you can claim legal stability.
Your leader is World renowned for reneging on debts and is demanding bribes for companies to operate.
Isn't borrowing through the roof to pay for things like your stasi?
Daily those stasi are murdering and disappearing people seemingly attempting to foment an excuse to escalate the violence.
I don't know how that knife edge can look anything like stable to you.
But also it asserts factually a lot that isn't true, which is why I downvoted.
It's unfortunate the same division tactics the US has been facing are working elsewhere too, however.
I don't think mostly is true? Obviously it depends a lot on the time of day, but there are also a lot of Europeans on the site. Also, most comments here seem to be critical towards current US policy. So, I think there is quite a lot of manipulation going on, since the downvoting/flagging does not really match the comment section.
1. I believe Canada does have an outsized presence though!
So, 32-56% US, so not mostly US.
The excitement being blown out of proportion is hyperlocal. The system grinds on.
America was never a stable country. That 250 years includes:
* A decade of chaos under the impotent Articles of Confederation.
* The deliberately engineered election of George Washington to create the illusion of political stability, a reign which only ended because George stepped down voluntarily.
* An immediate constitutional crisis the moment a competitive election happened, causing the election of a President and Vice President from opposing political parties (imagine a Harris - Trump presidency). The ensuing chaos resulted in SCOTUS unilaterally declaring itself the final arbiter of the law.
* The Thomas Jefferson presidency, which in many ways is the alpha release of Trump.
* The Civil War, started specifically because the losing faction of slaveholders was angry at losing, and ending with the losing faction losing so hard the counter rolled back into flawless victory. They surrendered, then assassinated the President and got his party to give up on everything he stood for.
* Economy-destroying Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which are basically what Trump is doing now.
* A spectacular near-miss in which the country's business elites attempted to assassinate a Progressive president and only failed because the Marine they selected as their Hitleresque dictator ratted them out.
* Widespread civil unrest deliberately created to force America to reckon with its racist past and undo what the South had managed to convince the North to allow them to do after Reconstruction.
* The Richard Nixon presidency, which in many ways is the beta release of Trump.
* Too many foreign invasions to count.
In the entire history of America I can think of maybe 3 brief moments of political stability that weren't outright engineered fantasies. The two that are relevant to modern times are the 1950s and the 1990s. Both of these were the result of America winning a war of conquest.
Consider the turbulence that China experienced over the same 250 years, for example
Stability is a relative thing though. It's hard to judge this except in relation to what other countries were doing.
>Various Euro nations
Suicided in 1900s and destroyed everything they built
>China
Collapse, civil war, famine, poverty
*pretty good for ~30 years
Yet the Euro peaked back in 2009 and has been declining ever since.
At this point its share is not that massively higher than that of the German mark back in the 90s.
seems like once it starts falling, it would accelerate.
(Still disappointed that the winner of the FIFA peace prize wants to go to war /s.)