web3 is a recycled 5 year old meme from the ico craze. it worked back then to separate the ignorant from bitcoin. try not to let web3 memes distract you from understanding how the emergence of peer to peer electronic cash and a new base layer money will actually affect you moving forward
I've been using Bitcoin as money(store of value, unit of account, means of payment) as much as possible for the last 5 years.
From the perspective of a "pioneering early adopter", Bitcoin does not seem volatile. Instead, it seems like prices across the board are going down and everything is getting cheaper.
The effect on me is that since my saving is rewarded, I'm now way better at saving. I've stopped making irrational, impulse purchases. I'm far more in tune with my spending.
I'm also able to keep the purchasing power I earn from working. This beats the hell out of losing it slowly.
Power like what you've described comes from control of the money supply. If I have billions of dollars worth of BTC I may start paying men with guns to defend me from the other men with guns, well then we have a power struggle.
> Power like what you've described comes from control of the money supply
So Ecuador [1] and every member of the Eurozone are powerless? As well as practically every revolutionary force in history? What about governments when we were on the gold standard?
> If I have billions of dollars worth of BTC I may start paying men with guns to defend me from the other men with guns, well then we have a power struggle
This works equally well with your holding Bitcoins or dollars or renmimbi. Wealth conveys power. Whether it is held in gold or Bitcoin or Amazon stock is irrelevant.
Do you think revolutionary armies didn't pay their soldiers?
Gold standard reflected sound monetary policy and kept government misallocations in check. Since moving to the fiat standard, governments have unleashed record spending. Bitcoin is exposing what happens to the money as a result of the monetary expansion.
Bitcoin has replaced gold, and those of us who have adopted a BTC standard will have separated in prosperity levels from our fiat based peers within a generation or two.
> those of us who have adopted a BTC standard will have separated in prosperity levels from our fiat based peers within a generation or two
What you’re describing is true of any asset that appreciates in value. The wealth confers power. That it is a currency is irrelevant.
If the U.S. switched its legal tender to Bitcoin tomorrow, it would change how we borrow and spend. But it would be no more of a shock to the system than a balanced budget amendment on the Treasury and the Fed. (Less, in fact, since the U.S. on Bitcoin could still deficit spend.)
Readers, you are discussing Bitcoin before the 4th of 32 halvenings. Things aren't so clear to most and dust has not settled. One thing is certain, it is not too late to read the whitepaper and learn what the emergence of the first new base layer money in 5000 years truly means and get your head around the significance.
Now, to the article. This is a write up response to a comment one of the world's richest men said on the app, Clubhouse. These are the articles worth discussing with this audience? Look at the final sentence of the article. Seriously? "This currency is not good for Green Planet." Yikes.
We're all on our own journey an in time all roads lead to Bitcoin. This is not a technology story, or an energy story, but a human story. The story of Bitcoin tells about people working with machines to accomplish something that seems impossible to most of us.
Bitcoin frees the slaves. Literally, not figuratively. If you have to sell your time, sweat, and blood to earn money, it is unacceptable to allow corruptible central planners to create that same money out of nothing. This is a power that no group of people should have over others, and certainly one that future generations will look back on find it laughable that a society would entrust people with control over the money supply after time and time again history has shown what happens.
Bitcoin is ending the monetary enslavement that central banks have been desperately clinging to. Issues around central banking, inflation, and money supply manipulation are not new in the story of human history. The current chapter is unfolding to see Bitcoin demonstrating an incorruptible money and it is growing up rapidly.
How much energy do you feel is appropriate to put toward abolishing central banking and freeing humanity? Personally, I feel blessed to have discovered Bitcoin while it still consumes less energy than small countries. What a time to be here!
Don't give the HN crowd any insight on what Bitcoin really is.
They have been bashing Bitcoin for a long time, and they still don't get it. They downvote and fight whoever tries to bring some different perspectives to the discussion.
HN people are the types who believe they're "saving the planet", and they're fixated on the idea that Bitcoin is evil due to its energy consumption.
Let them learn the hard way. If they get any clue on what Bitcoin is, there's the risk they may get rich and attain some power in the future, which will only make matters worse.
Taler might repeat the atrocities of others before them who manipulate the supply of "money". Author glazed over the point of separating state and money is a return to sound money. Authorities have never stayed trustworthy and always give in to political pressures to expand monetary supply, until BTC emerged as money.
I didn't go into the idea of "sound money" because I don't consider it a valid concept. If you use gold, you favor the miners, if you use shells, you favor the fisherman. If you use the wax tablet, you favor the accountants, and if you use cryptography, you favor the nerds. But most people just don't care that there were people who profited from the segnorage, or who those people are. With money, what you are interested in is buying goods and services, because then you can eat, shelter and move around. As long as you can do those things with reasonable predictability, empirically, that's what people will accept as money. Everything else is just arbitrary complication.
