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

Juan juan.g71 at gmail.com
Tue Jul 7 16:22:32 PDT 2015


On Tue, 07 Jul 2015 22:27:01 +0000
Sean Lynch <seanl at literati.org> wrote:

> 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?


	It seems kinda obvious that virtually all bitcoin developers
	and users *in the west* are richer than people in Africa and
	India.

	That's what I was getting at. Bitcoin devs  - *already
	rich by 'third world' standards* - are richer now. Millionaires
	even (notice that grarpamp was talking about impoverished
	wages...and people)



> 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.


	So what amount of btc is being used to make payments between
	Botswana and Mumbai? 

	What amount of btc is being used to speculate/gamble in a few
	big, centralized and fully NSA-AML-monitored exchanges? 


> 
> 
> >         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. 


	But I said *cash* not fiat.  And the collapse of relatively
	untraceable *cash* is *bad*.

	What we may end up with is FIAT currencies and 	NO CASH
	option* for those fiat currencies. Bad. Pretty bad.


	*aka credit cards.


> 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

	Do you know where I live? Of course you don't have to know
	where I live. But you'll know it in a second anyway. I live in
	argentina - and let me tell you, bitcoin isnt exactly 'popular'
	here. 


> and Venezuela, the US dollar remains by far the more
> popular alternative currency in those places. 

	Yep, that's quite correct as far as argentina goes. I suspect
	it's true regarding venezuela as well.



> 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?


	The evidence is called 'history'. That, and the nature of
	government and its business 'partners' - or accomplices.


> 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; 

	You seem to be assuming that an uncontrollable and untraceable
	crypto-currency exist? I'm not seeing anything of the sort. 


> they're not going to have a choice. Cryptocurrencies
> don't have to be legal to be disruptive. 

	And yet there seems to be a fair amount of people in the bitcoin
	'community' who are quite eager (or desperate) to have bitcoin
	'regulated' so that it becomes 'respectable', 'legal'...and
	usable. 

	Of course, this isn't a shortcoming that only affects btc.
	Anything that the government 'outlaws' becomes harder to
	transact. 



> 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.


	I do wish that was actually the case, but I think that view
	doesn't fully take into account the capabilities of the
	'enemy'.



J.






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