Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures 7 years in [drifted from: txrate, forking, etc]

[Sean Lynch]

On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 3:02 PM Juan <juan.g71 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 7 Jul 2015 15:21:50 -0400
> grarpamp <grarpamp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> > Creating a system in which a Botswanan can give a few bits
> > of their impoverished wages to their friend in Mumbai
>
>
>         What? Bitcoin exists so that rich people in western countries
>         especially the US can become even richer. So far it worked
>         pretty well.
>

Really? What rich person has gotten richer through Bitcoin so far?
Remittances seem like the biggest use of Bitcoin at the moment. Sure,
there's plenty of speculation, but your claim that Bitcoin's purpose is to
make the rich richer is also speculation. And FUD.


>         Bitcoin hasn't led to any meaningful political/economic
>         change yet, apart from possibly triggering the demise of
>         government cash, which would be a complete disaster. Talk about
>         'unintended consequences' (unintended?)
>

I can't imagine you've read a single thing written by the people who
influenced the creation of Bitcoin if you think that the collapse of fiat
currencies is an unintended consequence. Any fiat currency that is so bad
that its users prefer to use Bitcoin deserves to collapse. Of course, so
far, while Bitcoin has become popular in places like Argentina and
Venezuela, the US dollar remains by far the more popular alternative
currency in those places. And if Greece exits the Euro and starts printing
Drachmas there, they will have to worry about people trading their Drachmas
for Euros, not for Bitcoin.


>         A likely scenario exists in which there wouldn't be any
>         independent crypto-currency. There would be fully 'traceable'
>         electronic currencies controlled as always by the state and the
>         banking mafia.
>

 By what evidence do you estimate that this is a "likely" scenario? You may
be right that many nation-states and banks will be loathe to accept an
untraceable and uncontrollable crypto-currency, but that's the whole point;
they're not going to have a choice. Cryptocurrencies don't have to be legal
to be disruptive. The main problem that they've run up against before now
is the lack of healthy underground markets to take advantage of them. Given
time, governments' and banks' opinions and policies about cryptocurrencies
will become irrelevant.
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