
What Is Ethereum? - songzme
http://whatthefuckisethereum.com/
======
mikenew
There's one point in particular that took me a while to grasp: while you can
write code that runs on the Ethereum network, every single node has to process
that code.

So if, for example, you had a big 3d animation sequence that you wanted to
have rendered, you would not just send that code off to the network to be
processed. You would have to pay to have every single person on the network
process that job for you, and it would be so big the network wouldn't even
accept it. Rather, you would create a simple contract that says "if you render
this animation for me and prove that you did it right, I'll pay you X amount
of Ether". Someone would take the job and the Ethereum network would process
your contract and handle the payment. You would end up paying that person to
do work for you, and you'd pay the network (using something called gas) to
process the contract.

You could use Ethereum to create all kinds of interesting contracts for
financial purposes, voting systems, insurance, or whatever else. But it's not
some giant compute cluster that will run some big program for you.

~~~
killerstorm
I might be somewhat biased on this, but I strongly prefer database metaphor
over computing metaphor.

Every blockchain is essentially a shared database. E.g. Bitcoin is a database
which keeps track of address balances (as a first approximation) and enforces
particular authorization rules. It's a fixed-functionality blockchain.

On the other hand, Ethereum can serve as an arbitrary, user-defined database.
Ethereum smart contracts are essentially like stored procedures in SQL
databases -- they can be used to enforce arbitrary consistency rules.

And the reason why transactions are quite expensive is that you're paying to
update everyone's database. You can modify things locally for free, but if you
need everyone to see your information, you gotta pay for it.

And computation is there just for the sake of enforcing arbitrary constraints.

~~~
infogulch
Interesting. Can I ask for a description of the Etherium database from the
perspective of someone shopping databases? Paradigms, features, transactions,
distributed consensus, etc.

~~~
killerstorm
On a low level it consists of multiple key-value stores (one store per
contract). Keys and values are 256-bit integers (or 32-byte byte strings).

You never work with it directly, instead, you deploy a contract, which is sort
of a collection of stored procedures. On the low level contracts are executed
as imperative bytecode with special opcodes for reading/writing data to KV
store.

There are also high-level languages which compile to this bytecode.
Particularly, Solidity lets you to develop contracts using object-oriented
metaphor: contract is an object, its store is accessible via object's fields.
Besides primitive types, it supports types like structs, arrays and
associative arrays, which can be nested. Compiler takes care of mapping field
access to raw key-value store operations, particularly, it relies on
cryptographic hash functions for layout mapping instead of deterministic
allocation.

Contracts can also call each other, there is an opcode for it. Calls are done
synchronously, so it looks exactly like OOP.

Since this database exists in multi-user environment, access control is
necessary. The system identifies users using cryptographic signatures and
exposes this information to contracts via `msg.sender` field. Contracts can
use it to implement custom authorization policies.

The database is transactional, of course: a user-submitted transaction is
either executed in its entirety (incl. all nested calls) or fails with all
side-effects reversed).

Transactions are executed serially, one at time. So high performance is not a
feature of the system, it is more like "high security".

Reading data can be done via "stored procedures" (well, I think technically
you can read raw data from key-value store, if you want to). Also there is a
separate "event log" mechanisms: contracts can generate custom event logs,
which can be later read externally.

Distributed consensus: Each node has a complete copy of the database, so
adding more nodes doesn't increase scalability. Currently Ethereum uses proof-
of-work consensus. That means that any (mining) node can propose a new block
of transactions to be executed, and eventually they converge to a single
chain. So it's stochastic.

There are also "private Ethereum" systems which let you to use different
consensus mechanisms. Typically they have Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus,
likely inspired by PBFT. It's kinda like Paxos but with more digital
signatures.

------
SilasX
This doesn't seem to do it for me. The multiple explanations it offers are all
either:

1) Extremely vague and handwavy, or

2) Links to extremely long documents.

Neither one is an explanation, something that hits the key points and gives
you enough to know what to ask to get greater detail.

Edit: toned down criticism.

~~~
Breefield
Be my guest:
[http://github.com/Breefield/whatthefuckisethereum](http://github.com/Breefield/whatthefuckisethereum)
It's supposed to be a combination of layman information, reference material,
and humor, I agree some of the content was rushed.

~~~
SilasX
As soon as I understand ethereum, I will!

~~~
Breefield
Shoot! Explainer site missed the target. I wrote the "average person" page to
be quite high level. Unfortunately the "nerdy" page became a little too nerdy.

I should work on an "I'm a software developer who wants an intermediate
technical understanding" or something like this.

~~~
chuckdries
Me and all my coworkers are in this boat and would greatly appreciate a "I'm a
software developer who wants an intermediate technical understanding" page!

------
cslewis
Few weeks ago I decided to spend a weekend to try to understand Ethereum. I
found the whitepaper to be pretty instructive (it even helped me cement my
understanding of bitcoin). Here is an annotated version of the whitepaper by
vitalik:

[http://fermatslibrary.com/s/ethereum-a-next-generation-
smart...](http://fermatslibrary.com/s/ethereum-a-next-generation-smart-
contract-and-decentralized-application-platform)

~~~
joe_the_user
Interesting;

The document mentions creating a crop-insurance application that would depend
on a weather feed.

The problem is if the weather feed isn't something that's uniformly secureable
the result could be bad given that the insurance application would take action
automatically and no appeal to any higher authority concerning the fraud would
be possible - without a "fork" as happened earlier. Hack an insecure feed, an
insecure site or whatever and viola, free money.

And this seems like a problem any interface with the "real world" would face.
The idea of automatically occurring, no-appeal financial transactions _sounds_
but I would claim it's always going to be problematic - only a fool or a crook
would put their money in this kind of system and the crook only puts in enough
money to remove the money of the fool.

The ideal of say, money, is it belongs to you, where you is a broad but
understandable concept. Something that belong to "whoever has X, Y, Z pieces
of information about you" may sound great until someone beside you gets that
information _and there is no recourse_. Indeed, the person who had the
information "did nothing wrong" if the account really, really did belong to
"whoever has this information" rather than belonging to you.

~~~
blunte
This to me is one of the fundamental problems (or challenges) of smart
contracts - they remove humans and human judgment from the core, but they just
push it to the edges.

You still end up trusting a human - an "oracle". You trust the weather feed,
or you trust some exchange to give you the accurate price of some other asset.
If that oracle is mistaken (bug, intentional misinformation), the smart
contract can be manipulated.

~~~
eyezick
This is a significant challenge for sure, at least with Ethereum there's no
way around needing an external account (centralization) to feed data into the
blockchain.

However, I know of at least 1 promising project on Ethereum (Augur) that
provides decentralized oracles, and you can trust these oracles due to some
clever game theorish mechanics.

The gist is randomized Reporters submit real-world information to the
blockchain and earn a fee for their service. Reporters purchased a cryptoasset
to have this priviledge, and if a certain Reporter submits information in
conflict with a majority of other reporters (e.g. they lied) then they lose a
portion of their cryptoasset giving them incentive to play by the rules and
get paid for it.

And even further, if majority of Reporters report dishonestly then people will
not use the Oracle service, the Reporters will not be able to earn fees, and
the cryptoassets they purchased to allow to be reporters become worthless.

~~~
Drdrdrq
> Reporters purchased a cryptoasset to have this priviledge, and if a certain
> Reporter submits information in conflict with a majority of other reporters
> (e.g. they lied) then they lose a portion of their cryptoasset giving them
> incentive to play by the rules and get paid for it.

To be precise: it gives them incentive to submit the same information as
majority of other Reporters. This is a huge difference.

~~~
joosters
This seems to be a massive flaw in the gambling markets that they propose. For
example, let's say Augur (or any number of competitors) host a market on a
football match, where team A are supremely better than team B. The odds on A
will be extremely short, and there will be far far more people backing team A
than team B.

Now, imagine that team B somehow win the match. How can the system prevent the
overwhelming majority of team A backers from submitting a fake result claiming
that their team won? They will vastly outnumber the people backing team B, and
also outnumber any of the casual observers who might also contribute to the
results. So the market will get settled as if team A won, thanks to the
'wisdom of the crowd'. The minority backers will be robbed.

~~~
joe_the_user
Indeed, not only do you have a problem with corrupt backers of a particular
view, you have a problem with systematic slipshodness. A whole raft of
reporters would have an incentive to report "what you would expect" for any
given outcome since that actually is what happens most of the time. So even if
reporters can be separated from outcome bettors somehow, outcome bettors wind-
up with an incentive to be on "what people expect will happen".

In a lot of ways, it seems like you could create something like a theory that
it impossible to create a system that distinguishes "real world input" from
"noise that I get from outside" without that system having a model of said
real world.

------
runeks
Ethereum is very simple in essence: it's a Turing-complete version of Bitcoin.

The way you transfer a bitcoin from one person to another is by creating a
Bitcoin transaction that contains an input script that fulfills an in-
blockchain output script with which a number of bitcoins are associated. The
output script may say " _provide a public key that hashes to <some_hash> and a
signature, over a transaction (which sends the bitcoins to a new output
script) that redeems this output, that verifies against this public key_".

Bitcoins script language -- conditions be fulfilled to transfer tokens
associated with one output script to a new output script -- is not Turing-
complete, which means it's limited in how complex a condition can be set up
for redemption. Ethereum's script language _is_ Turing complete, allowing
arbitrarily complex conditions for fulfilling an output script (which allows
you to transfer coins/tokens from that output script to a new one).

~~~
Taek
Worth adding perhaps that Bitcoin is intentionally not Turing complete, as the
complexity opens up a very big space for vulnerabilities. And indeed, we see a
lot of those in ethereum contacts.

~~~
runeks
The DAO failed because of a lack of strong typing in the contract language,
not because of Turing completeness.

The main problem with a Turing-complete contract language is that it becomes
impossible to statically verify runtime properties, so a node can't know how
long it will take to verify a transaction it receives. This opens up for
denial-of-service attacks, e.g. embedding a transaction with an infinite loop
in a block in the blockchain.

~~~
pyskell
That's true theoretically and your argument still stands for a lot of cases.

However for practical purposes nodes only compute up to a certain amount of
instructions. This is known as the "gas limit". Additionally it costs Ether to
get them to run code so any DOS approached in this way is prohibitively
expensive.

------
thinbeige
Nice thread but the issue I always have with all discussions around
cryptocurrencies is:

I never know if the person who just worshipped or criticized a specific
currency has a vested interest.

Somebody who sits on billions of ETH will write totally different tham someboy
who is shorting/margin trading ETH.

~~~
eyezick
A good litmus test is the level of technical depth of discussion, it's very
easy to discuss hypothetical achievements at a high-level of any cryptoasset,
but to be able to get into the details demonstrates knowledge beyond any
regular trader as well as provides possibly objective reasons to be argued
with.

~~~
thinbeige
Good point. There is one guy in he thread who doubts that ETH will scale. He
stays quite meta but sounds credible because he gives one or two good reasons.
Still it's hard to judge if it's just a claim or is it substantial, is it
crucial for the success anyway?

This whole cryptothing feels like gambling, 'put all your money on red, red
will win..'

~~~
Taek
The state of the art for theoretical blockchains is that, to maintain
security, you need every single node to process every single transaction. No
proposed solution to fix this can maintain anywhere near the same level of
security, and while we are making progress on that issue, I think it's still
pretty far away.

------
aqsheehy
A framework for creating ponzis

~~~
blunte
I'm sure you're only partly joking, but sadly it does seem to be one of the
biggest first uses. Oh and lotteries - those are popular.

On the other hand, people will continue to run ponzi schemes as long as there
are greedy/ignorant people to attract, so it might as well be done all
visibly. At least then the guy running the ponzi can't just tell everyone
"sorry, feds raided the bank, all the money is gone" when he actually just
moved it offshore.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Instead they can just go "sorry, my site / wallet was hacked, all the money is
gone"

------
notadoc
Are we at the "mania" stage of cryptocurrency interest yet?

~~~
joeyspn
Not until Nicki Minaj or Drake appear in a music video with a bitcoin
necklace...

~~~
MichaelGG
Certainly makes it easy to have a high-density, high-value object - much more
dense than casino chips. Put the only copy of a wallet with tons of BTC on a
microSD. Fun marketing gimmick, too. Put $100 worth on a bunch of micro SDs,
spray 'em gold, toss em out at concerts or stuff.

Would totally get headlines if someone put $1M worth on an SD, then laughed
and ate it live on TV and said good luck finding it. Or tossed it out of an
airplane, or boat, etc. People show off wealth in all sorts of ways...

~~~
joeyspn
Ever heard about Casascius coins? Gold + BTC... there are physical coins with
1k BTC (~$2.5M) inside

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Casascius_physical_bitcoins](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Casascius_physical_bitcoins)

------
pimeys
What is the best place to have discussions about Ethereum? I tried to follow
the Reddit group, but I don't really need all the hype. I just need
information and opinions on writing contracts and developing applications that
use Ethereum network. I'm also very interested in the psychological side of
trading and different trading strategies. No fuzz, just reasonable discussion.

~~~
DennisP
For dev, there's /r/ethdev and various channels at
[https://gitter.im/ethereum](https://gitter.im/ethereum), along with
[https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/](https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/).

There are some attempts at serious trading subreddits, but so far nothing that
seems that informative to me.

------
prodtorok
How important is the adoption of Solidity for Ethereum's success?

~~~
52-6F-62
I've been reading a lot about Ethereum, and I am really interested in
blockchain tech -- but I also wonder about this.

I am really curious as to whether it would be possible to develop new
languages for the handling of smart contracts, or if it is possible to develop
smart contracts (using a library or other resource) with existing, popular
languages like c++, python, or javascript. I know web3 is already quite
accessible and while I haven't looked at the source, it seems relatively easy
to work with. But the core language for smart contracts... I think Eth would
benefit from some flexibility on the development end. Or maybe I just don't
know enough.

Anyway, I think that would be a big leap.

~~~
DennisP
There are several languages that compile to the EVM. Also there's a somewhat
speculative project to transition to a restricted version of WASM, which would
let languages like C and Rust be compiled into smart contracts on Ethereum.

~~~
52-6F-62
Interesting. All I knew of previously was Solidity, and it seemed... practical
but limited. That said, I haven't done a deep dive yet.

Thanks

------
myautsai
Ethereum is an awesome idea, but before any practical Ether application booms,
it's more like a bubble.

If you're interested in why there's also a token named "Ethereum
Classic(ETC)", you can search "DAO" on Google to explore more about why the
first largest Ethereum application DAO was failed and why this leads to the
hard fork(ETH => ETC, ETH) of Ethereum.

As far as decentralized storage is concerned, there's production-already a
blockchain-based product named Sia ([http://sia.tech/](http://sia.tech/) ),
but Swarm (which is a similar thing based on Ethereum) is still in very early
stage.

------
aphextron
I'm still confused. Is this anything beyond another opt-in botnet at it's
core?

------
ksikka
What is Ethereum _useful_ for? When would I need it? Why is AWS (et al) not
sufficient?

~~~
jacoblambda
well, not specifically ethereum but stuff like siacoin provide cheaper options
than AWS and while I personally cannot attest to the performance, they seem to
be interesting alternatives.[1]

In the case of siacoin, at face value it seems to be significantly cheaper
than AWS or Google Cloud for providing bulk cloud storage.

[1] [http://sia.tech/](http://sia.tech/)

~~~
hanklazard
Even more exciting for me is IPFS and Filecoin. Seems like this pairing could
allow for a truly decentralized Internet. Ycombinator had one of the founders
/ lead programmers on the podcast in the last few weeks and I highly recommend
it!

------
skrowl
Wow, I actually own some ETH on coinbase and had no idea it was more than just
a competing crypto currency.

------
amadeuspzs
Hats off to attempting to explain a deeply technical topic to a variety of
audiences, acknowledging different learner needs. A lot of posters here would
probably benefit from taking a humanistic approach to explaining what they do
to non-hacker news readers!

------
ojr
I don't believe all ICOs are illegal

ICO tokens are digital commodities/assets that are more similar to app credits
or in-app mobile purchases than securities.

Unlike with Ethereum apps/dapps, you can't trade traditional app credits/in-
app purchases on an exchange but imagine if there were farmville ERC-20 tokens
a few years backs, people will buy thousands off speculation alone, it'll be
interesting to see how the SEC will regulate this

------
flaviuspopan
Yo songzme, I have to thank you for throwing this up because as a result, I've
since stumbled on 3Blue1Brown and his awesome video on crypto and math in
general. You linked his video the same day he posted it, and I couldn't have
been happier to find something that explained it in laymen terms so well. I've
been meaning to solidify my understanding for friends and family, so thanks
for sharing! Cheers mate.

~~~
dahoramanodoceu
Link?

~~~
metasyn
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-
nXj3Ng4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4)

------
moomin
I'm being sniffy here, and the technical achievement of Ethereum is
considerable, but were I talking about a general contract computing platform,
I'd want one where I could demonstrate the assertions the code makes. And that
basically means a dependently typed functional programming language. I'd start
with Idris, but even that might need strengthening before DAO-style issues
were hard to find.

~~~
DennisP
Here's a masters thesis by someone who made Idris compile to the Ethereum
virtual machine.

[https://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/234939...](https://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/234939/234939.pdf)

~~~
moomin
That's cool (Idris seems to have an infinitely pluggable back end), but it's
not the same thing. You can code in a higher-level language, but you can't
inspect another program's guarantees and you can't safely use them within your
own system.

------
danra
The time estimate listed for an in-depth reading of the Yellow Paper (54
minutes) is... optimistic.

------
ruiquelhas
Don't need a whole website to tell me it is just a vehicle for fraudulent
securities.

------
Temasik
Ethereum is not immutable centralized and full of bugs

Good luck in the long run

------
peternicky
Is the content on this website supposed to change based on the target audience
selected in the dropdown? If so, it is broken on mobile safari.

------
dewyatt
I know I'll get hate for not commenting on the actual content of this article,
but...why is this only taking up 1/3rd of my horizontal screen space? Perhaps
all that space could be used to show the images alongside the text?

> here’s what we’ll talk about: (with links if you want to jump to a specific
> section).

Holy smokes, it's got links! Good thing he pointed it out to me since I never
could have figured that out by the visual indicators that every web browser
adds to links.

------
kensai
I love that the article ends in this line:

"Support this website! Send ETH to:
0x1c4d1804AD9d47de0D4209882843998E03E30dF9"

~~~
Mooty
I was curious so I checked, actually two persons gave him some food :
[https://etherscan.io/address/0x1c4d1804ad9d47de0d42098828439...](https://etherscan.io/address/0x1c4d1804ad9d47de0d4209882843998e03e30df9)

~ 40$

------
ourmandave
Wouldn't whatthefuckisethereum. _edu_ make more sense for an educational site?

~~~
vultour
.edu addresses are restricted to educational institutions in the US afaik.

------
djhworld
What are people using Ethereum for though.

Outside of trading it between each other based on price speculation, is there
a real world thing that isn't a prototype that people are using as part of the
smart contract system?

------
retox
An establishment backed control job.

------
Frogolocalypse
The problem with ether isn't the tech of contracts but the implementation of
the network. There are very concerning scalability issues that have not only
not been addressed, but who's 'plan' for resolution are either untried systems
in development (sharding) or have significant architectural issues (proof-of-
stake) that very smart people think will never be resolved. I hope they
overcome these obstacles, but the jury is still well and truly out.

------
amygdyl
Can anyone help me with a reference for any study that has been published on
the status of research for the conditions of successful crypto currency
launches?

Or a serious reputable journal reviewing the literature comprehensively?

If I'm unable to find filling for the gaps in the study I seek, I'm inclined
to think that I have a good chance of being able to work towards a (sincerely
and despite being tempted by the ad rates) non spammy simple site to collate
the references, this summer. So if you have any suggestions for the effort I
will with about 70% probability undertake, I'd be happy to hear from you as
well.

------
sitepodmatt
The best way to think of ethereum is bitcoin with more flexibility, and its
immutability define by owners* tolerance for loss. When vladmir and slock.it
lose money they just roll it back. * owners being the slack group with 90% of
the mining power. There exists shitcoins with more credibility than ethereum

~~~
RexetBlell
Can we please stop bringing up slock.it and the DAO fork. It was more than a
year ago and it's time to move on.

~~~
sitepodmatt
Why? It is quite defining. I would judge a bank on how it behaved 12 months
ago, or 24 months, or 10 years ago. if(lapsed > months(12)) { forget; } errr
no..

------
qbaqbaqba
Another cryptocurrency based scam?

------
cm2187
Another cryptocurrency? This is becoming a hyper inflation of crypto
currencies...

------
dmead
Sounds terrible.

------
joeyspn
Ethereum has had a good start being the first mover in smart contracts, but
EOS is coming and the value proposition is much more solid...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUZWZj1pu94](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUZWZj1pu94)

Blockchain tech is evolving...

~~~
Jabanga
EOS doesn't currently exist. It makes a lot of strong claims, and has
delivered none of them yet.

~~~
joeyspn
Larimer has delivered them already in his previous projects: BitShares and
Steemit. That's more proven track record than what Ethereum had in early 2014,
and that didn't stop people from supporting the idea. I for instance have been
a strong supporter of Ethereum since day 0, but now I feel EOS (with DPoS and
Graphene) is the next step in blockchain tech.

~~~
Jabanga
Ethereum had no "solid" value proposition in 2014, and EOS doesn't have one
now. You're overstating its proven value. We can share our opinions on the
respective projects, but that's different from a demonstrable value
proposition.

~~~
joeyspn
You should check the definition of value proposition. [0] Ethereum had one: "a
cryptocurrency with a programming language beyond opcodes"

EOS value proposition is: "a platform for building DApps beyond PoW (using
DPoS) and industry-ready TPS (with Graphene[1])".

Both DPoS and Graphene are inventions of Larimer. For many this is enough, and
that reflects why it's already a top 15 crypto.

[0]
[http://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/valueproposition.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/valueproposition.asp)

[1] [http://docs.bitshares.org/](http://docs.bitshares.org/)

~~~
Jabanga
You're saying a vaporware blockchain with unproven claims has a more solid
value proposition than Ethereum because its founder created two
cryptocurrencies that combined have a market capitalization that equals 4% of
Ethereum's.

>Ethereum had one: "a cryptocurrency with a programming language beyond
opcodes"

It didn't have one until it had working code.

~~~
joeyspn
No, I'm saying that I trusted Ethereum would be built when it was a project
idea although Vitalik was only a blogger, and that I'm trusting Daniel because
hi has even better chances of delivering.

And that is the reason why I bought __in both __crowsdsales. Your call...

~~~
Jabanga
You can trust EOS all you want, but that doesn't give it a "solid value
proposition" that can be demonstrated. I'm simply disputing your choice of
words, as it gives a misleading impression in my opinion.

------
dialupmodem
So tired of seeing blockchain, machine learning, and JS in hte news. Things
like Ethereum and even Bitcoin are 100% hype, "what if", and are nothing more
than dreams.

Last century gave us things like the personal computer, the internet, and so
on. What about this one? Fancier webpages? Selfies? Tweets?

All of this blockchain and cryptocurrency and JS hype is tiresome to see. What
happened to making real stuff that works and solves real problems?

~~~
AVTizzle
Lots of hype, for sure, but this criticism is too hard for what is still a
still nascent frontier technology.

The innovations you listed in "last century"\- PC, internet, etc - both went
through their fringe, hobbyists-and-nerds-only phases, during which their
future value to society was totally unclear and uncertain.

Only in hindsight are these technologies impacts obvious.

While I couldn't agree more about the fact that there's ridiculous hype and
(most annoyingly) greedy speculation in crypto, I for one am hugely excited
and optimistic about the potential society-changing implications of the this
tech.

------
jamisteven
Can't trust ethereum or bitcoin for the same reason we can't trust the fed and
their "quantitive easing": 1\. It's way complicated 2\. It's fiat 3\. Nobody
understand who really is in control of its value

~~~
mac01021
What's wrong with fiat currency?

~~~
jamisteven
Is this a serious question

~~~
rspeer
Yes. Can you answer it? Assume I'm neither a libertarian nor an anarchist.

~~~
ytNumbers
During the past decade, the Federal Reserve has created 4 trillion dollars out
of thin air in an attempt to prop up the economy. The Fed seems hesitant to
unwind that as it carries the risk of harming the economy. Fiat money can
always be created out of thin air, and it seems to be proving difficult for
those in power to resist that temptation.

[https://www.thestreet.com/story/14181100/1/the-fed-
normalize...](https://www.thestreet.com/story/14181100/1/the-fed-normalizes-
money-printing-marking-the-dollar-s-eventual-demise.html)

~~~
aphextron
>During the past decade, the Federal Reserve has created 4 trillion dollars
out of thin air in an attempt to prop up the economy.

During the 1840's to 1860's we created billions of dollars out of thin air by
mining gold from the ground in California. Fiat currency saves us the digging.

Money is not a static "thing" that definitely exists. Markets need liquidity.
QE has provided that liquidity as the vast majority of capital in our society
has become locked up by the top 1%. If anything, they could _increase_ the
flow of QE because of how low inflation is right now.

