Way back when Bitcoin was first being talked about on Slashdot, I mined for a while. On my processor. For like a month. I got about 1/20 of a Bitcoin out of it.
And then I lost interest for a long time. And then it became clear blockchain is an infinite self-similar fractal of scams and ponsis.
I haven’t done anything with my 1/20 of a Bitcoin. I don’t have any expectation it will go up or down. If the bubble takes back off and inflates so much 1/20 of a Bitcoin becomes life-changing money, I might try to sell it. Maybe if a bunch of crypto-owning crypto-skeptics organize a mass sell event to drive it to zero, I’ll take part. Otherwise, it’ll stay where it is for the forseeable future.
Ironic that someone like me who believes wholeheartedly that blockchain is snake oil is such a model hodler.
A deflationary currency would simply cause people to be more careful with their spending. You still need food, shelter, transportation, entertainment, etc. An inflinflationary currency encourages overconsumption, because material things hold value better than money.
For sure. Also, the inherent unscalability of blockchain as a technology makes for a payment system far too slow for your typical payment scenarios, which makes transferring Bitcoin a pain in the ass, further incentivising hodling.
(Just to address some of the "akshully"s I’m probably going to get for the above, you can make blockchain fast if you centralize it like Solana does, but if you’re going to centralize it, you’re better off using Postgres than blockchain.)
I think largely the argument that convinces some people that cryptocurrency is worth “investing in” is that it’s going to revolutionize the way we pay for things. In which case the fact that it doesn’t work as a currency completely robs it of any legitimacy as a security.
If you want something that does have potential to improve the way we go about buying groceries, look into GNU Taler.
Way back when Bitcoin was first being talked about on Slashdot, I mined for a while. On my processor. For like a month. I got about 1/20 of a Bitcoin out of it.
And then I lost interest for a long time. And then it became clear blockchain is an infinite self-similar fractal of scams and ponsis.
I haven’t done anything with my 1/20 of a Bitcoin. I don’t have any expectation it will go up or down. If the bubble takes back off and inflates so much 1/20 of a Bitcoin becomes life-changing money, I might try to sell it. Maybe if a bunch of crypto-owning crypto-skeptics organize a mass sell event to drive it to zero, I’ll take part. Otherwise, it’ll stay where it is for the forseeable future.
Ironic that someone like me who believes wholeheartedly that blockchain is snake oil is such a model hodler.
You’ve basically explained why crypto can’t work.
Deflationary currencies don’t make sense to spend because their future value will be higher.
The outcome is people hold onto them in the hopes they gain value. The exact opposite of what you want for a currency.
A deflationary currency would simply cause people to be more careful with their spending. You still need food, shelter, transportation, entertainment, etc. An inflinflationary currency encourages overconsumption, because material things hold value better than money.
If you’d like a world with zero discretionary spending then yeah, deflationary currency is for you.
I don’t think that’s an economy you want to live in though.
For sure. Also, the inherent unscalability of blockchain as a technology makes for a payment system far too slow for your typical payment scenarios, which makes transferring Bitcoin a pain in the ass, further incentivising hodling.
(Just to address some of the "akshully"s I’m probably going to get for the above, you can make blockchain fast if you centralize it like Solana does, but if you’re going to centralize it, you’re better off using Postgres than blockchain.)
I think largely the argument that convinces some people that cryptocurrency is worth “investing in” is that it’s going to revolutionize the way we pay for things. In which case the fact that it doesn’t work as a currency completely robs it of any legitimacy as a security.
If you want something that does have potential to improve the way we go about buying groceries, look into GNU Taler.