On Thu, 21 Apr 2016 13:45:50 -0700 Sean Lynch <seanl@literati.org> wrote:
I think in ZeroHedge's case their goldbuggery goes beyond your belief in gold's superiority (which I share) and into the realm of irrationality. It starts sounding like a long-term pump-and-dump scam, if there were such a thing.
Well, I personally don't trust the likes of zerohedge too much (I don't really follow them either) but it seems to me that although the market for gold is risky because it isn't too free, the price of gold still is a reliable measure of the devaluation of the dollar (or any other gov't paper)
Being truly decentralized and anonymous are not properties that any cryptocurrency has, as far as I know.
Indeed, though I think Bitcoin and related research have provided the necessary building blocks. ZeroCoin/ZeroCash, for example. As far as decentralized, it's not clear to me that Bitcoin is really worse than gold has proven to be in practice, with governments cornering the market on mining & minting.
Yes. But any kind of physical cash is decentralized in the sense that two parties can make a transaction without needing a middleman/miner/unique database/computer network.
On the other hand, a cryptocurrency like bitcoin is threat to governments and the financial mafia, so it's reasonable to assume that the mafia is going to come up with some kind of countermeasure.
Indeed. I'm just hoping it proves to be too little, too late.
I guess we'll have to wait and see...
But yeah, it's also true that they've been 'developing' their own electric monies before bitcoin arrived into the scene...
And I agree with you that they will probably try to coopt Bitcoin or at least blockchain technologies. If not to build their "cashless society" then at least to try to crowd out potential uses for anonymous transactions by ensuring that all the "legitimate" players are playing on a controlled & tracked blockchain.