
Bitcoin is not for goverment. Bitcoin is digital currency of the internet - peeyek
http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/28/why-greece-should-not-switch-to-bitcoin/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29
======
cromwellian
Another reason deflationary currency is perceived as bad is not just because
it makes life harder for debt owners, but because it can lead to its own form
of boom-and-bust cycles by reducing economic activity.

If you know, for example, that your cash holdings were going to grow at 10%
per year, then you'd be far less willing to spend any or invest in other
assets, as merely putting bitcoin under a mattress increases value. This will
reduce consumption and investment in the larger economy, inducing a recession
or depression until overall demand for currency fell, pushing those who hold
it to spend or invest to avoid losses. Of course, that equilibrium won't be
permanent, and the cycle would begin a new, but with the major disadvantage
that central banks nor government monetary policy can reduce the severity of
the swings. (Although it's a matter of faith among Austrians that somehow
there would either not be any more business cycles, or somehow the boom/bust
wouldn't be "as bad")

Bitcoin to me looks like a good way to have a distributed settlement/clearing
house system for transactions. But as a replacement for fiat currency, nope.

~~~
deweller
> you'd be far less willing to spend any or invest ... This will reduce
> consumption and investment in the larger economy

Or maybe consumers will stop buying the latest and greatest just because
advertisers convinced them it will make them happy. Instead, consumers will
demand higher quality products, which increases overall spending on R&D
instead and decreases spending on marketing. Then we will all have better
products and be more productive.

I can at least dream, can't I?

~~~
Retra
I see a lot of non-sequiturs in your reasoning here.

~~~
deweller
Granted. It is really a hope more than a well-thought out argument.

------
xacaxulu
Bloated governments are grasping at straws. Look at the US with FATCA, taxing
it's citizens wherever they are. I prefer to keep socking away savings in my
offline bitcoin account and then exchanging it for Euros when I'm back home.
Just look at all the people who had 'safe' accounts in Cyprus, or in the US
underwritten by FannieMae. Bitcoin is the Libertarian's / Anarcho-Capitalist's
dream; true freedom from the whims of greedy governments.

~~~
javert
I agree with everything except your last sentence. Don't associate bitcoin
with libertarians and anarco-capitalists. It deserves better.

~~~
leviself
I'm assuming you are ok with an association with cypherpunks / crypto-anarchy,
because one certainly exists even if newcomers would rather relegate these
roots to history. Hal Finney was a cypherpunk and bitcoin wouldn't be possible
without his RPOW system. Wei Dai, who was cited in the original bitcoin
whitepaper, was also a cypherpunk, and praised Tim May's crypto-anarchist
manifesto. The list goes on...

~~~
javert
Cypherpunk is not the same thing as libertarianism or anarchism. I'm well
aware that bitcoin has cypherpunk origins.

------
Rhapso
Bitcoin is not viable. A centralized fiat crypto currency, with the same
mechanism as bitcoin except centrally authorized by government authority
rather than mined is very viable for a government. All transactions become
trackable and every cent in circulation can be accounted for.

~~~
CHY872
You don't need or want Bitcoin in that model - the whole point of Bitcoin is
that it's decentralised and all transactions are trackable by all parties (but
not necessarily destinations). A government would just want essentially our
current bank account system, except without paper cash. That'll probably
happen sooner or later.

------
BariumBlue
Let's extrapolate, and say that no country should adopt a purely digital
currency. Would that be accurate?

I don't know too much about the topic domain, so for those who do, what would
be required of a purely digital currency to be a good candidate for a national
currency?

~~~
sj4nz
This slides in the assumption that you need a national currency.

No traditional nation-state will _really adopt_ a crypto-currency unless it
bakes in some ability to seize or inflate it's subject's currency. If that
exists in their desired crypto-currency then, of course, no one will ever use
it without the threat of violence. Catch-22 for modern nation-states.

~~~
Frondo
What threat of violence are you describing?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Some very silly people have concluded that, since ultimately no rule or law
can be enforced against the unwilling without some sort of ability to exercise
power over them, making a law is logically equivalent to saying that anyone
who breaks it should be shot; and, therefore, people who make laws against any
but the most extreme crimes are violent thugs.

And thus it naturally follows that you shouldn't have to pay taxes. Isn't that
convenient?

(I think this formulation was originally conceived by anarchists, where it is
at least logically consistent, but tax protestors and some libertarians have
adopted and deformed it into a convenient catch-all for "anything the
government does that I don't like is ZOMGviolence.")

~~~
TeMPOraL
AFAIK libertarians have this "principle of non-aggression" which basically
defines "anything I don't like" as an attack, and thus pretty much anything
that government does becomes violence.

But in general, "monopoly on violence" is a legitimate concept and I think
it's a requirement for a state-sized group of people to live in (a relative)
harmony. You need to have some means to enforce coordination or else people
get trapped in various destructive behaviours.

~~~
skilesare
They also have a tendency to put capitalism up on a pedestal even though it
requires the charging of economic rent. Apparently extracting taxes is a crime
but extracting economic rent is to be lauded.

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's why I love that 'cstross quote from [0].

"Libertarianism is like Leninism: a fascinating, internally consistent
political theory with some good underlying points that, regrettably, makes
prescriptions about how to run human society that can only work if we replace
real messy human beings with frictionless spherical humanoids of uniform
density"

This holds for other political and economical ideologies as well - they may
have some good and important points (that's why they gain followers), but
ultimately pure theoretical models rarely work well when applied to the
complexities of the real world. One needs to remember that and see places
where tradeoffs are needed to be made.

[0] - [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/why-i-
wa...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/why-i-want-bitcoin-
to-die-in-a.html)

------
SocksCanClose
i actually think this is a good idea -- wouldn't it encourage people to save
money, if the government can't deflate it away, as many do, today?

~~~
skilesare
Savings wrecks an economy.

------
chucksmart
In addition to the 'print too much currency' problem there is also a 'print
currency for my cronies' problem.

------
fargolime
I had a reasonable polite comment here but got a downvote within 10 seconds.
Downvote away further. Geez.

~~~
saraid216
Is there a purpose to this comment, or are you just mining downvotes now?

