Saifedean Ammous explains why he believes Bitcoin is not only a better reserve currency but a superior currency in every respect, in line with the philosophy of Austrian economics ("the adult way of looking at it").
Reading his book, The Bitcoin standard Was one of the most important things I have ever done It gave me a sense of urgency like nothing else. Bitcoin is the hardest money ever And the economic incentives engraved into the system mean we are all running out of time before this blows up and takes over everything. This is the final and most important 'If you snooze you lose'
There's a hell of a lot of Bitcoin/crypto bloggers, youtubers, influencers, and such that evangelize Bitcoin without going into deep economic analysis. Saifedean Ammous is the one and only!
He nails it! So now knowing that money should be made with the most difficult thing to create, realize the entire Western world has embraced the idea of trying to create money with the easiest and cheapest they can find. Canada, for example, stopped minting pennies because it "cost" more to mint them than what "they were worth". But in the US only 1% of "money" is even worthless paper and the other 99% is merely digital entries in computer databases. It has zero cost to produce and to infinite amounts.
Robert Lefebvre except you can have more than one money. He fails to recognize that during much of the gold standard we were also on a silver standard. Gold was a store and silver a means of exchange. More than two crypto’s will succeed. The reason bitcoin wins is that which ever crypto’s do win will be dealing with each other in bitcoin. It’s a central bank currency for the crypto worlds reserves.
@@dhagos yes, so true. In fact, I say we were never on a gold standard. It was always a "dollar" standard which, legally, is a one oz. silver coin. And the fraudulent Federal Reserve Notes were promises to pay dollars (silver coins) so could never become the very things they promised to pay (to say nothing of the "dollars" created digitally with a mouseclick). And regarding dealing with each other with crypto, am totally on board there. I've got a startup aiming to enable people to earn Bitcoin with their web traffic manna-network.com
removal of pennies is debasement (like in roman times)we were a solid copper penny then it went to zinc copper plating now its gone if you can find pennies half with pickup with a magnet and the copper wont
Good question. Let me remind you of the situation in Soviet Union and East Germany. The countries had strict monetary controls. As a turist you were required by law, to exchange a certain amount of your local currency, at inflated, official exchange rates, supposedly to cover your expenses while visiting the country. Yet in a country where the Communist regime had informers everywhere, you could still find illegal money exchangers in dark alleys who would offer much more realistic exchange rates. You think a western democracy would be able to stop a similar trade, exchanging cryptocurrencies for state-sponsored fiat currencies?
The same way as today. Every time you make a Bitcoin transaction, you add a tiny fee or a slightly large fee to the transaction. Miners select the transactions with the higher fees first and verifies them before going for the lower, cheap transactions. In short, you, the sender, pays for a swifter service.
I own Bitcoin. However, one malicious person or group could, theoretically, stand up enough nodes (i.e. control a sufficient percentage of the network) to effectively destroy Bitcoin. The defense seems to be “That would be unreasonable. Too difficult and too expensive.” One man just bought Twitter. That was unreasonable and expensive…. Does anyone have an answer to the question of security of Bitcoin besides - it would be “difficult” to mess with? “Difficult” just invites someone to try.
Plot twist: Musk didn't buy Twitter. There is always a potential risk of everything. You would still need more than 51% consenus to make any changes on the network, with fullnodes. Yes, you can potential reverse a block but how likely is that?
The economic incentive is in favor of keeping the network alive, that's it's main security feature. Why destroy it when you can just buy in and see the value increase in a few years? The miners could've taken control of the network if they really wanted to back when they all advocated for larger block size. However, they simply maintained their role as miners and tried to convince everyone they were right, because forcing their vision onto the network would've destroyed the entire economic incentive of using the network.
Game theory was the reason One man decided to buy Tweeter. Game theory is the reason why even an entire nation will NOT go against the Bitcoin network. Incentives are an important aspect of any action.
The hashrate is so large today that you would need 3.5x the entire computing power of earth to launch a short lived 51% attack to accomplish 1 double spend. The cost of this attack would be in the billions before those computers are kicked off the network. Cost vs Benefit says that if you had that power you could make more money by just mining Bitcoin. Game theory.
How can you argue innovation was better previously while arguing we created the perfect money in a decade 🤷🏾♂️. The internet, the computer, Amazon these things have raised our standard of living very rapidly. China on a fiat currency has delivered 10% for multiple decades where on hard money was that done? Don’t get me wrong it’s a great store of value but should be more like gold than money.
He's is talking of 1870-1914, during which period, light, airplanes, telephone, ford/cars were first made. it was an age of innovation. He does not mean humans haven't produced anything else outside of that time.
He's wrong in his assessment that Bitcoin doesn't need to replace credit cards. I started with BTC when it was$10 and watched it go to $1100 and back down to $250. During that time I always used it as money which meant it was simultaneously used as a store of value and for payments. He is right on on so many other points its too bad he misses this one. perhaps if he tried using it as cash he might understand. The best way I can liken it is to imagine having a gold coin (store of value) that you could easily, cheaply and infinitely shave as small a piece off (down to an atom at a time) and spend also. That is what Bitcoin is like. The fact that it is like gold but also digital means it does replace credit cards.
I would like to have someone explain how a currency can work that has a static total amount. Pretend we have a world of 1000 people and the number of bitcoin was limited to 1000, instead of the 21million. Those 1000 bitcoins will be distributed to the 1000 people in some definitely uneven distribution. Anyone who has enough coins to survive will be able to spend what they need and keep the rest. The ones that don't have enough coins to survive will have to do something to earn more and the only source of those coins is from those people who already have enough. Two of these needy people go to the guy with the coins and offer to do some work for coins. The guy offering to work for the lowest amount of coins will get the job, assuming equal quality of work. The guy with the coins knows that if he doesn't give you any coin today, you will be hungrier tomorrow and you will work for even less. So he will tend to hoard his coins for as long as possible to get the best leverage over those without the needed coins. Eventually, you will have people with coins and slaves. Doesn't sound too much like Switzerland.
Btc is divisible into 100 million pieces. Each one could be as large as a dollar. So the inequality argument is dumb. Risk needs to be rewarded or punished. People will sell btc when they want to deleverage their risk on run ups. Again another non-issue.
Every day from may 2020 til may 2024 there will be 900 new bitcoins in circulation. The amount will be halved every 210 000 block. It's not static before in year 2141. How the world will look in 2041 nobody knows. Bitcoin can still be a store of value at that time.
Under the current monetary policy, the reasonable man is the one who does everything possible to outpace inflation. That's why you see so much corruption in the world. Remove the need to outpace inflation and suddenly a those psychos will have a far more difficult time imposing their will when they have to risk hard assets in order to achieve their twisted goals.
