Which is not necessarily a good thing.
But not necessarily a bad thing either.
If everything else fails, I know I can still have two things to pay with: cash and crypto.
This is a strange viewpoint considering that crypto is 100% reliant on some of the most complicated and high-maintenance infrastructure ever built by man: the internet.
If "everything else fails" the internet has failed, and crypto will be worthless. Gold will probably still have some value, unless shit really hits the fan.
We’re talking about different “everything else fails” scenarios. Basically, I’m concerned about my bank accounts being frozen (happened with my Revolut account for example).
The solution for that is to have redundancy via multiple bank accounts, ideally in multiple countries.
Then nothing short of planning a serious terrorist act can get you kicked out of all accounts.
Ah, yes, the classic 3-2-1 method: three accounts in two different countries, one of them being an offshore. Yeah, I’m doing all that (not the offshore part... at least not yet).
Is that really the case? Per https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-and-... you can be pretty much completely debanked for only a couple of SARs/STRs, and it doesn't seem particularly hard to have one filed against you.
Gold being the ultimate. Cash can be diluted and crypto has unlimited supply (via alt coins). Gold is backed by physics and minted in neutron stars!
Strictly speaking, directed energy is the ultimate. Both crypto and gold are both just embodiments of energy, gold being the physical embodiment (via mining and refinement) and crypto being the virtual embodiment.
Not really. Gold has no more energy than carbon per gram. E=MC^2. And total energy is unavailable. Carbon had more available chemical energy. (Why we can burn coal not gold).
Bitcoin doesn't store any energy.
Bitcoin is like a F1 car going around a track forever, with your name scribbled on it.
Both gold and bitcoin are a variant of "proof of wasted energy" or more euphemistically "proof of work". Why that makes it valuable is beyond me, but it isn't really a new thing considering the historic value of gold being much more than its utility as a material.
The 'value' in them is that they demonstrate that energy is currently so cheap and abundant to Us that we can waste it frivolously.
It's a sort-of flex, showing off, a demonstration of (energy) wealth. Humanities's peacock feathers.
Maybe I didn't explain it well, gold and bitcoin are the 'memory' of used energy, they are not energy sources themselves.
I think of them as representations of the idea that energy is (currently) so abundant and cheap that we can waste it on mining things like gold and crypto, a fundamentally ridiculous concept in terms of real actual human needs.
Once that stops being the case (when fossil fuel starts running out globally), the whole thing - cash, gold, crypto, stocks, bonds, property - everything falls apart.
Bitcoin isn’t valuable because of used energy. The energy here is just a way to limit the rate Bitcoin is produced, and to help prevent double spending.
Bitcoin is valuable because people accept that it’s valuable, same as with cash, gold, crypto, stocks, bonds, property. The price of an apple is $2 is because I offered it to you for $2 and you bought it.
Almost. Bitcoin energy use is a way to have a decentralised trust less network. If bitcoin was free to mine the most money would go to the most nodes. It would be proof of DDOS in a sense and would probably seize up pretty quick.
Gold is a bit different. You could stop mining it today entirely and you could still have a gold currency. Stop mining bitcoin and it all effectively disappears!
The people appreciate the value exactly because of used energy (entropy), if you want to rewrite Bitcoin history you are going to spend no less then it has boon spent. The limit of producing of bitcoins is not related to energy.
Yeah. I mean, people value the utility of it: it can be used to transfer value over the Internet, and you can’t steal it by changing values in the DB. PoW is just a means to an end here. I think we largely agree on that.
You could make eimrineCoin that's an exact clone of bitcoin, but it'd be extremely unlikely to reach a fraction of BTC's market cap, because others won't consider it valuable although it's mined with energy.
A currency has to be accepted in order to perform its role.
Good luck buying groceries or paying the mortgage with Crypto.
Which is why I have a couple bank accounts. If these banks decide they don’t want to work with me anymore (happened a couple times already), or if they decide they don’t want to send money to, say, a particular country (hint hint), I’ll have crypto as a last resort.
(You conveniently left out “cash” from your reply. Cash. I’ll buy groceries with cash, if I can’t use my card.)
There are some stores that do accept BTC, but it is not widespread. It is mostly coffee shops though, not grocery stores.
And it varies from country to country. (In any case, I wouldn’t use BTC for everyday purchases – it’s too volatile, and transfers are too expensive. As long as we’re stuck with fiat-based economy, stablecoins are the way to go, IMO.)
there is invariably a vantage point at which non-fiat payments are accepted. this may be crypto, given that there is still infrastructure available for it to operate, but that's unlikely imo.
It's like a kitchen knife. Can be good or bad.
Correct in principle but not all that insightful because it's something almost universally true. "Fentanyl! Ads! Widespread surveillance! Can be good or bad".
You have to look at the reality. Crypto has been used overwhelmingly for scams and crime.
> Crypto has been used overwhelmingly for scams and crime.
So has regular currency.
The overwhelming use of regular currency is crime? Where?
Wherever any consumer-level illegal drug transaction has happened, which is everywhere.
The overwhelming use of fiat in my town does not consist of buying and selling street pharmaceuticals.
There are transactions happening all the time in regular cash for weapons, drugs etc. Large banks have been found to be knowingly processing funds from terrorists, drugs dealers and have got fines. If you anti-war, you would also include the wars that are financed partly by the ability to print money.
These transactions while not the majority of transactions I would wager is far larger in terms of dollar value that the whole crypto ecosystem.
The reality is that criminals will find loop holes in a system and they will exploit it if it is worth exploiting. Many of the checks done in banks now impede transactions. I was buying a car (private seller) and I couldn't transfer the cash without going through a fraud check, even though I had signed the transaction with a card reader in the app. It turned a 30 minutes of test driving the vehicle and checking docs into 3 hours of wrangling on the phone. BTW I am not the only person having these problems with banks in the UK.
As for what crime we are referring to as well in this scenario needs clarifying as well. I suspect that most of crypto transactions are through darknet drug markets. These markets reduce the risk of violence to basically zero when purchasing drugs. While I am not one of these people that is pro-legalising all drugs, the reality is that people are going to buying them.