“I like everything about cryptocurrency except all the things that are wrong with it”.
Not really sure why currency has to be “outside the control of any single person or entity”. Other than an intellectual curiosity. Currency is inherently social. Goldbugs keep harping on about the inherent value of gold, but its value is just as socially constructed as cowry shells or giant granite rings. China was a huge trading party in the time before the Opium wars and it preferred silver to gold.
The existence of a currency that everyone can transact in is fundamentally a public good. It must be maintained with the public good in mind, rather than the good of whoever happens to have lots of it or whoever has the ability to personally influence it.
i can kinda understand “liking the idea” in the same way that I “like” the very simple currency systems in single-player video games, where you do work (fight monsters, collect items, win Pokemon battles) and are automatically rewarded with currency you can use to buy items, which are always reasonably-priced because the game developers balanced it that way. It’s just that these systems have nothing to do with reality. But that simplistic view of money is pretty much all that’s left of cryptocurrencies if you look past the get-rich-quick scheme.
I like the idea behind cryptocurrencies, decentralized and outside of the control of any single person or entity
Obviously there’s gazillion problems with them that makes the whole thing fall apart in practice
“I like everything about cryptocurrency except all the things that are wrong with it”.
Not really sure why currency has to be “outside the control of any single person or entity”. Other than an intellectual curiosity. Currency is inherently social. Goldbugs keep harping on about the inherent value of gold, but its value is just as socially constructed as cowry shells or giant granite rings. China was a huge trading party in the time before the Opium wars and it preferred silver to gold.
The existence of a currency that everyone can transact in is fundamentally a public good. It must be maintained with the public good in mind, rather than the good of whoever happens to have lots of it or whoever has the ability to personally influence it.
i can kinda understand “liking the idea” in the same way that I “like” the very simple currency systems in single-player video games, where you do work (fight monsters, collect items, win Pokemon battles) and are automatically rewarded with currency you can use to buy items, which are always reasonably-priced because the game developers balanced it that way. It’s just that these systems have nothing to do with reality. But that simplistic view of money is pretty much all that’s left of cryptocurrencies if you look past the get-rich-quick scheme.