I was wondering what viewpoints and opinions this community has when it comes to cryptocurrency.

Personally, I’m not against it, but I’m not for it either. I like the concept of bringing back cash anonymity, and also decentralization (obviously). Although I don’t think it will be viable for at least another decade.

  • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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    5 months ago

    imo i actually hate the idea of a public crypto currency

    people think that the government having their hands on the levers of a fiat currency is a bad thing, but it’s an incredibly useful property to make sure that we can stabilise things and push away from recession etc! without those levers we can end up in a spiral a lot easier

    i think though that where these problems don’t exist is behind the scenes: what if the whole world replaced SWIFT with a private blockchain? maybe a wire transfer wouldn’t take 5 days and cost like $20 (or maybe it would because it’s probably not the technology that makes these things slow)… in this case, you have a known group of semi-trusted actors (international banks), which is actually a perfect set of properties for a blockchain: they’re all able to cooperate but don’t implicitly trust, and can verify each other but mainly use blockchain so they can all automatically agree

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      I’m not saying government fiat currencies shouldn’t exist, just that they aren’t needed for regular transactions.

      Argument that monetary policy can be harmful

      The natural business cycle has booms and busts, and government interference in that cycle (i.e. attempts to prevent the busts) can instead delay the busts and result in more severe downturns.

      For example, look at the recent inflationary period. We had a huge bull run largely fueled by really low borrowing rates, so when things started to crash, we couldn’t lower rates to encourage expansion (or at least as refused to go negative), so we instead threw money at the problem, which is an inflationary policy. The result was rapid inflation, and we had to rush to raise rates to get that back under control, and the rapid rate hikes resulted in bank failures, layoffs, and high borrowing rates. If we had instead raised rates slowly from 2014 or so and on, we could’ve cut rates instead of throwing stimulus money at the problem.

      But the main problem with fiat currencies is that the issuing authority has a vested interest in tracking transactions. Cash isn’t really a thing for digital transactions, and if the government realizes it can discourage use of cash, it will.

      Fiat and cryptocurrencies can absolutely exist. Use fiat when interacting with the banking system (loans, savings, etc), and use cryptocurrencies like Monero for keeping transactions private (e.g. shopping). The government raising rates only really impacts borrowing, so companies and borrowers will use the local fiat currency and you’ll get the desired effects.

      what if the whole world replaced SWIFT with a private blockchain?

      I’m honestly not familiar enough with international transactions to really weigh in on this. Maybe it’s a good idea, IDK.

      • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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        5 months ago

        aren’t needed for regular transactions

        but that kinda defeats the point of a central authority having control: the value of any currency is entirely based on what you can use it for… unless you tied their value in a way that the government regulates - eg to have a banking license you must swap USD for eUSD and visa versa on a 1:1 basis without fees (perhaps they burn eUSD to get new USD; IDK - you can’t oversupply. it gets tricky)… anyway, beside the point: regular transactions is exactly what the government needs some control over