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   Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 03:23:31 JST Steve Randy Waldman

   management of the US dollar is now in the hands of… the people who’ve been buying a ton of bitcoin in a bet on the imminent death of the US dollar.

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 03:23:30 JST feld

     in reply to
     @interfluidity I don't know how to break it to you but the US dollar has been in the hands of people destroying it for over 100 years now
   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 03:47:41 JST feld

     in reply to
     @interfluidity never stop studying, you're not there yet
     
     https://ia904501.us.archive.org/5/items/english-collections-1/Economics%20in%20One%20Lesson%20-%20Henry%20Hazlitt.pdf
   • Embed this notice
     Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 03:47:42 JST Steve Randy Waldman

     in reply to

     • feld

     @feld i’ve maybe devoted years of my life to thinking through this stuff. and, um, no.

     here’s a presentation that directly addresses what you misinfer from that graph.

     https://www.interfluidity.com/uploads/2017/10/Fiat-Is-Effective-Minitalk-light-edit-to-share.pdf

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 03:52:48 JST feld

     in reply to
     @interfluidity
     
     > Fiat money is an instrument of state power
     
     yeah and that's a bad thing, a very very bad thing.
     
     Today's problems are directly related to QE. You can't even have "uber but for slavery" unless QE exists. All the things we hate today only exist because QE made it possible for people to access a nearly infinite amount of cheap capital to fund their disruptive ventures in the hopes that someday they'll profit when the competition is eliminated
     on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ, Another Linux Walt Alt and Sick Sun like this.
   • Embed this notice
     Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 03:52:49 JST Steve Randy Waldman

     in reply to

     • feld

     @feld here’s maybe a more concise and entertaining version.

     https://www.interfluidity.com/uploads/2019/10/uber-but-for-slavery-2019-10-30-post-edit2.pdf

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 03:55:28 JST feld

     in reply to
     @interfluidity
     
     > crypto has been a terrible store of value
     
     except when it's the best performing asset of the decade?
     
     https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-becomes-best-performing-asset-132208120.html
   • Embed this notice
     Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 03:55:30 JST Steve Randy Waldman

     in reply to

     • feld

     @feld you might address the basic point that the dollar has retained and gently increased value over time as long as it’s been held in the form of zero-credit-risk Treasuries. your graph just shows the existence of a mattress tax, not a weakness of the dollar as a store of value. while crypto has been a terrible store of value, because a currency has to accommodate those who expect to store negative values (be indebted) over fixed periods.

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 04:00:51 JST feld

     in reply to
     @interfluidity QE got us into the mess of needing to do a trillion dollar reverse repo every night to keep the banks afloat but okay, it doesn't do anything. It's only like one of the most powerful tools the Fed has.
     Another Linux Walt Alt likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 04:00:52 JST Steve Randy Waldman

     in reply to

     • feld

     @feld QE does much less than you think. But you are getting to the actually interesting questions. Fiat is extremely effective. It’s a tool of statecraft. The question is whether its effectiveness is a good or bad thing.

   • Embed this notice
     Hyolobrika (hyolobrika@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 04:40:30 JST Hyolobrika

     in reply to

     • Hyolobrika
     Maybe deflation is bad. Idk enough about economics to say anything about that.
     But it's worth noting that a cryptocurrency doesn't have to be "deflationary".
   • Embed this notice
     Hyolobrika (hyolobrika@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 04:40:31 JST Hyolobrika

     in reply to
     Ok, but what's wrong with the US dollar dying? Especially if it's then replaced by something better (such as a censorship-resistant cryptocurrency).
   • Embed this notice
     Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 04:40:32 JST Steve Randy Waldman

     in reply to

     • Hyolobrika

     @Hyolobrika sometimes people are glad to win bets by helping them come true.

   • Embed this notice
     Hyolobrika (hyolobrika@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 04:40:33 JST Hyolobrika

     in reply to
     @interfluidity why is that bad?
   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 10:54:28 JST feld

     in reply to

     • Hyolobrika
     @interfluidity @Hyolobrika calling the "institutional state" more decentralized than bitcoin is detached from reality and so is the insinuation that there is a "small group of people" controlling bitcoin
   • Embed this notice
     Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 10:54:29 JST Steve Randy Waldman

     in reply to

     • Hyolobrika
     • feld

     @Hyolobrika @feld that is why we invented the institutional state. it’s very much the same story as the blockchain. there’s a central power (central ledger) but no small group of people controls it, only a large decentralized community. we can trust that community, and enjoy the (absolutely extraordinary) benefits that can derive from central authority.

     but, in both cases, there is always an attack surface.

   • Embed this notice
     Hyolobrika (hyolobrika@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 10:54:30 JST Hyolobrika

     in reply to

     • feld
     @interfluidity @feld Giving people power is good if you trust them, bad otherwise. Since we can't all agree on who to trust, it's better to, as a society, trust no one.
   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 11:05:37 JST feld

     in reply to

     • Hyolobrika
     @interfluidity @Hyolobrika there is no community to trust. The whole point is it's trustless because math protects the network. Nobody can change bitcoin without getting 51% of the community to agree and install software that modifies what the chain is capable of doing.
   • Embed this notice
     Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 11:05:39 JST Steve Randy Waldman

     in reply to

     • Hyolobrika
     • feld

     @feld @Hyolobrika I made no insinuation that a small group of people control bitcoin. I made an analogy between the trust strategies. Devise a central authority (the whole point of a blockchain is to define a single, unified legder) maintained and controlled by a very dispersed community. Then if you trust the community, you can trust the authority.