One could argue crypto is a corruption of proper money, since transactions can't be reversed. Imagine the scenario where you wanted to metaphorically 'burn' 1M dollars. Say you hand Coinbase $1M in exchange for Bitcoin, then purposefully delete your wallet.dat and made it irrecoverable. The $1M is still there in Coinbase's account. It didn't get absorbed into the BTC blockchain. If you could think of money as a form of speech - then crypto just tramples all over that notion.
This whole comment seems a little off to me. Could you elaborate?
> crypto is a corruption of proper money, since transactions can't be reversed
Is cash also a corruption of proper money?
> The $1M is still there in Coinbase's account
How is that different from physical cash exactly?
(1) You send $1M in electronic dollars to Coinbase/Bank
(2) Coinbase/Bank sends $1M in BTC/Cash to you
(3) You burn the BTC/Cash
In all cases some institution has $1M in electronic USD from you, some institution is missing $1M in some asset, and that asset is missing from the world.
Is the conclusion that _both_ crypto and cash have some undesirable property, or is there an additional nuance or distinction those examples were supposed to illustrate?
Sorry if I confused you. In simpler terms imagine this scenario:
You burn $1M dollars, but beforehand you take note of the serial numbers on each note. Then you tell your bank those specific notes got burned, and ask the bank to re-issue you the notes, with the assumption you will not burn them again.
Cryptocurrency is different. If your wallet.dat's password is forgotten, or the wallet.dat gets irrecoverably deleted, then you have no recourse. Banknotes are simply that: Notes saying you own a certain store of value.
Coinbase still retains your money even though they issued you with the equivalent BTC. If you burned the BTC assets, that's on you. Coinbase gets to keep the banknotes you gave them, however, and there is no mechanism to burn those assets, in line with your crypto assets being burned.
I'm trying to say that Bitcoin transactions should be reversible like cash, since cash can be recovered if it was burned by accident due to serial numbers, and that cash is just a fancy IOU note.
Cash transit vans hold cash in special boxes where if they're being stolen, they automatically taint / dye the notes a dark red color. The notes can be swapped out with fresh notes, and the tainted notes discarded. Cash is a note saying you own a store of value. They are not the intrinsic value itself.
