On 22 September 2017 at 10:53, Kim Holburn <[email protected]> wrote:
> I'm not sure this is the case. The rising value of bitcoin has pretty > much matched its uses in China as a way for Chinese to get around > government restrictions on moving RMB to foreign currencies. This is a factor but it isn't the full story. Bitcoin is not locked to anything much except buyer sentiment. > But any currency that has major influxes of other currencies flowing into > it will have similar volatility. > Currencies experience fluctuation in value but the fluctuations of bitcoin are in a different league to virtually any other currency fluctuation. BUT THIS IS NOT AN ARGUMENT FOR BITCOIN! This is an argument for judicious currency management and controls that armour currencies against speculators. The Asian currency crisis in 1997 involved large swings in currency value - though way less than the range of bitcoin - and resulted in massive economic loss and hardship. It might be easy to "whatever" this sitting in a country with a robustly managed currency but there was enormous and widespread loss of wealth and livelihood in affected Asian countries. For example (Wikipedia): "Thailand's booming economy came to a halt amid massive layoffs in finance, real estate, and construction that resulted in huge numbers of workers returning to their villages in the countryside and 600,000 foreign workers being sent back to their home countries. The baht devalued swiftly and lost more than half of its value. The baht reached its lowest point of 56 units to the U.S. dollar in January 1998. The Thai stock market dropped 75%. Finance One, the largest Thai finance company until then, collapsed." Zimbabwe? > If you're hoping that Bitcoin allows us to match Zimbabwe in just about anything I don't want it. It's not something we should be trying to emulate, or accidentally emulating. > Except it seems that ethereum is moving to a different, much less energy > intensive system of "mining". > This is a fundamental problem with computation based mining. Basically, if there is no effort obtaining something, there is no scarcity. It's also a problem with metal currency mining :) It is not a problem for an issued virtual currency. They are just the mythologies and fantasies we know. This is all just a > religious argument. Which mythologies and fantasies we prefer. > No it is not. These mythologies have real world impacts. If we are smart, I expect we would minimise the number of crazy mythologies we believe and take a consequentialist approach. > Or just buying online without having to go through the current gatekeepers. > I'm totally in favour of frictionless transfers that minimise rentseekers. If that means we must have economic chaos, tax evasion, or enable a bunch of nasty criminal activities, I might change my mind on that. Jim _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
