All money is fiat money. It has an agreed upon value outside of its intrinsic worth. If you want to get away from fiat money you have to go back to barter.
That is part of the problem. As long as the economy grows, then Bitcoin is deflationary. This encourages people who have it to hoard it, rather than to move it around and drive the economy. It is almost perfectly designed to be used as a speculative investment rather than an actual day-to-day currency.
Having a fixed pool of money to represent your economy only makes sense if the total value of the economy will never change. This doesn’t happen in the real world. Populations grow, new technologies add value, and poverty generally goes down. This is all fairly simple math.
Amid all of this, nobody has managed to give me a reason why I would want to use crypto for transactions instead of my debit/credit card.
Crypto doesn’t come with any of the consumer protections I expect from my current payment methods. And in fact, it is designed to make some of them literally impossible (I.e. chargebacks). This might be appealing to sellers, but financial transactions are a buyers market. Sellers hate dealing with PayPal, but they put up with it because consumers trust PayPal and demand to use it.
So right now, crypto has these problems:
It is riskier to me than my current solutions.
Even with PoS, it is an order of magnitude more energy intensive than current centralized solutions. The the energy cost for just McDonald’s to replace all their credit card transactions with Ethereum would be staggering.
Most importantly, it does not solve any problems I have that other solutions do not. There needs to be a reason for consumers to change their habits. You can’t build your sales pitch on intangible benefits that are only relevant to a tiny minority.
It’s been over a decade and blockchains are still a neat technology without a useful practical application.
Ah, I see, you think that because you can mint Schmecklebux or whatever and use it as a medium of exchange, you’re somehow exempt from the laws of whatever country you’re in when the trade goes down? Tell me, does your flag have a fringe on it?
Then how are you free from “corrupt governments”? You’re still paying taxes on income and on property, so even if you acquired property with funny money the government is still getting its cut. And if the government felt like crypto was getting out of hands it would apply further laws to it or outlaw it.
ipv4 addresses. Also bitcoin is the worst example here, as it’s just an asset. It’s not bearable as real money, you can’t trust its always changing value. It’s also a victim of constant market manipulation. XMR on the other hand is a relatively stable currency.
Bitcoin is also a privacy and ecological nightmare.
In general it’s also really fun that you can lose all your money without doing anything wrong.
But that’s digital scarcity, even if not designed like that.
You didn’t lose anything because it’s completely random. There are big pools just randomly generating wallets to see if they get a used one. And they had multiple hits.
Even when not talking about people not good with computers, people mess up backups and forget passwords. They shouldn’t lose their belongings just because of that.
I think crypto could have its place as the cash of the internet. No one can watch your transaction, but if the other person takes your money and runs you are shit outta luck. No way to revert transactions, perfect for money laundering, but also anonymous, which can be a plus.
But all this makes it completely unsuitable in everyday use.
Also: yes, there is a fixed amount of Bitcoin. But you know what governments all over the world did when Inflation was sky high? Change the interest rates to change the amount of money that goes into the economy to make everyday items affordable again.
And for Bitcoin in particular, if everyone actually uses it as intended the artificial limit of the transaction rate would only allow you to perform one transaction every two yearsor something like that.
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All money is fiat money. It has an agreed upon value outside of its intrinsic worth. If you want to get away from fiat money you have to go back to barter.
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So you prefer your currency to backed by the full faith and credit of… nobody? And you think you’re not being duped. Hilarious.
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That is part of the problem. As long as the economy grows, then Bitcoin is deflationary. This encourages people who have it to hoard it, rather than to move it around and drive the economy. It is almost perfectly designed to be used as a speculative investment rather than an actual day-to-day currency.
Having a fixed pool of money to represent your economy only makes sense if the total value of the economy will never change. This doesn’t happen in the real world. Populations grow, new technologies add value, and poverty generally goes down. This is all fairly simple math.
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Amid all of this, nobody has managed to give me a reason why I would want to use crypto for transactions instead of my debit/credit card.
Crypto doesn’t come with any of the consumer protections I expect from my current payment methods. And in fact, it is designed to make some of them literally impossible (I.e. chargebacks). This might be appealing to sellers, but financial transactions are a buyers market. Sellers hate dealing with PayPal, but they put up with it because consumers trust PayPal and demand to use it.
So right now, crypto has these problems:
It’s been over a decade and blockchains are still a neat technology without a useful practical application.
Ah, I see, you think that because you can mint Schmecklebux or whatever and use it as a medium of exchange, you’re somehow exempt from the laws of whatever country you’re in when the trade goes down? Tell me, does your flag have a fringe on it?
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Then how are you free from “corrupt governments”? You’re still paying taxes on income and on property, so even if you acquired property with funny money the government is still getting its cut. And if the government felt like crypto was getting out of hands it would apply further laws to it or outlaw it.
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ipv4 addresses. Also bitcoin is the worst example here, as it’s just an asset. It’s not bearable as real money, you can’t trust its always changing value. It’s also a victim of constant market manipulation. XMR on the other hand is a relatively stable currency.
Bitcoin is also a privacy and ecological nightmare.
In general it’s also really fun that you can lose all your money without doing anything wrong.
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But that’s digital scarcity, even if not designed like that.
You didn’t lose anything because it’s completely random. There are big pools just randomly generating wallets to see if they get a used one. And they had multiple hits.
Even when not talking about people not good with computers, people mess up backups and forget passwords. They shouldn’t lose their belongings just because of that.
I think crypto could have its place as the cash of the internet. No one can watch your transaction, but if the other person takes your money and runs you are shit outta luck. No way to revert transactions, perfect for money laundering, but also anonymous, which can be a plus.
But all this makes it completely unsuitable in everyday use.
Also: yes, there is a fixed amount of Bitcoin. But you know what governments all over the world did when Inflation was sky high? Change the interest rates to change the amount of money that goes into the economy to make everyday items affordable again.
And for Bitcoin in particular, if everyone actually uses it as intended the artificial limit of the transaction rate would only allow you to perform one transaction every two yearsor something like that.
you should read “what is money” by mitchel innes. he shows very well that pretty much any money ever has been fiat money
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