
Bitcoin is teaching libertarians everything they don’t know about economics - a_w
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/01/08/bitcoin-is-the-new-middle-ages/
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olvar_
Not a libertarian nor a bitcoin fan, but I have to disagree with OP. First, he
postulates a gedankenexperiment where bitcoin replaces the dollar, but since
it tends to appreciate in value, no one actually spends their money, so the
economy halts. This train of though obviously neglects the fact that, if it
actually replaced the dollar, people would _need_ to use and spend their
bitcoins, so its price action would be very different to what we have seen.

Then he goes and mocks the idea of having a trustless currency system but IMO
he misunderstands the idea. If you use the currency for exchange you still
have to trust other people, for instance if I use bitcoin on Amazon, I'd still
need to trust Amazon and possibly some other merchant. The part of trust you
are taking away is not between people, but towards the ability of the State to
issue money and regulate its value. But then libertarians may come up with
some other ways to achieve this that do not involve cryptocurrencies.
Furthermore, you don't need to be a libertarian to agree on that principle.
One example of this is Chilean Central Bank, which -unlike the FED and by the
Chilean constitution- cannot buy the government's debt, so the government
can't just keep printing money for political reasons, like many countries in
the region have been doing for decades.

So whatever lesson he is trying to teach seems a bit farfetched. Bitcoin may
die and not mean a single thing for libertarianism, because IMO it's success
depends on technical implementation, not ideological barriers.

~~~
throwaway2016a
> he part of trust you are taking away is not between people, but towards the
> ability of the State to issue money and regulate its value.

Not 100% complete. You are also taking away the requirement that the seller
trust the buyer. Assuming of course that both the buyer and the seller are
willing to wait for the transaction to clear before delivering the product.

You are correct though, that it does not take away the need for the buyer to
trust the seller.

~~~
abhisharm
Unless and until the asset and entire supply chain you are using is also
somehow trustless, which I admit is contrived, but also interesting to think
about.

