The reason why Bitcoin exists is because governments want control over money. Bitcoin gives people freedom. Period. Everything else is noise.
Of course. And for a good reason. People utter this line as if governments wanting control over money was somehow bad.
Money, within all human societies that exist or existed, is pretty much synonymous with power. It is the tool that allows an individual to incent, compel and coordinate other people to do what said individual wants. With $1 you can make someone cook you a hot dog. With $1K you can get someone to give you pretty advanced tech. With $1M you literally make other people build you a house.
State by its design is supposed to have monopoly on ultimate power. Since money is synonymous with power, the state needs to control money in order to fulfill its function (and to secure its ability to fulfill that function). So it's obvious that the state may not be happy about technologies that prevent them from controlling the money. It's threatening the state's ability to enforce rules. And despite the popular dystopian rhetoric, state being able to enforce rules is almost always a good thing for the society.
First of all, people tend to forget that government is not made of angels. It is made of humans, who are susceptible to the same flaws as the rest of us: greed, hunger for power, etc. Therefore we should try to limit the power government has over us to only basic necessities.
Second of all, historically, human societies functioned quite well with multiple competing currencies on the same area, some of them private, some state-governed. It might have been pain in the ass if some customers wanted to pay in French coins and others in Belgian ones, but that pain was eased by the fact that they were made of gold or silver, so to compare their worth it was enough to compare weight.
Lastly, control of currency allows goverment to increase it's spending beyond reasonable levels with debt. Which of course happens at the expense of citizens. This is the sole reason government enforces it's monopoly on currency.
Cryptocurrencies are unique oportunity to take control over the currency from governments and put it back in people's hands, exactly how God intended it to be :) We shouldn't give up that control to easily.
In the end money is just a commodity, same as bread, so we should let the market decide which currency to use, without any monopolies, state-owned or other.
A stable monetary climate is one of those that I am very happy to delegate.
>> In the end money is just a commodity, same as bread,
No, it's not, it's a method of exchange and follows different rules.
Is there some reason to believe that markets can exist without government intervention of some kind? At a minimum someone needs to ensure that the participants in the market are not killing each other. Even in prison economies there are de facto "governments" (inmates with power in the prison hierarchy) that keep the "market" orderly and decide the rules.
In the absence of government, trade tends to be limited to occasional encounters between groups of people and too infrequent for any kind of market to form as an emergent phenomenon. In the absence of government, an encounter between strangers can quickly turn into a deadly fight, and an offer to trade may just as easily be a pretext for killing someone to steal their possessions. Markets can only exist when the worst outcome of a bad deal is getting swindled.
The system creates trust.
Whether we can achieve this goal through cryptography and game theory remains to be seen.
You don't want a state with total centralized power over the economy because you end up with places like North Korea or the USSR with uncompetitive industry and shortages.
Such a state as described in the pithy phrase has never actually existed. Even the very strongest states have violence that the state was powerless to stop. That objection can only be resolved by reducing the strength of the term "monopoly" to something more like plurality control, but then it does apply to power in general.
Simply put, if some other coalition has more general power than the state, then it has the option to become the de-facto state. There are lots of terms for this, depending on the party with the power: from revolt and coup to occupation to ineffective government.
There's a discussion to be had about how to best allocate that plurality control to minimize abuse, and physical force is likely a component of such an allocation. It's far from clear, however, that an allocation of only physical force is viable even if it is desirable.
Also: control over money doesn't imply control over markets. As evidenced by pretty much all western countries.
Anyways, Bitcoin doesn't seem like much of a threat to the kind of power developed countries have over their currencies. The USD isn't going anywhere and nobody is using cryptos for day to day purchases or servicing debt so the fed will remain firmly in control of the money supply and interest rates.
It is much more of a threat as a method of capital flight to undeveloped countries (eg. China) who like robbing their citizens through inflation, currency manipulation, and capital controls.
I think that's a great thing.
Good. It is about time citizens controlled the gov't.
Now don't get me wrong - I'm not saying the present balance of power between individual and the state is perfectly placed. But thinking about ditching states altogether is, presently, a pretty dumb idea, that only signals a lack of awareness of how the society works.
Also, saying some people "are wrong" is not an argument.
That's an interesting claim. Is there a good Bitcoin use by country breakdown? Because my impression was, that with the notable exception of Brazil, Bitcoin is still mostly the techie-westerners thing.
> Also, saying some people "are wrong" is not an argument.
That's not an argument, just my current belief. It might be wrong.
No, because you can't effectively track wallets/usage. However, you can, for example, look at Google Trends: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...
> You think it's for good reason. Many people think it's for bad reason.
In reality, you are both right. There are both 'good' reasons and 'bad' reasons why the state wants control over monetary supply and flow. I feel that as electronic currency transactions has gained ground over cash, the 'bad' reasons have become stronger and more important.
The question really is to if degree that bitcoin undermines the good reasons for state monetary control balances with the degree that it undermines the bad reasons. I suspect that as electronic transfers become increasingly ubiquitous, we will see the importance of bitcoin in maintaining personal freedom increase.
But to pick something in big part economical, I'd say the war on drugs can be an example of a rule that's widely considered stupid, needlessly oppressive, and bad both economically and morally.
Governments will always be able to tax people and they can tax them in whatever currency they want. This requires people to use their currency. So I don't think that Bitcoin poses any real threat to the powers that be except in harsh circumstances like Venezuela. In some situations, Bitcoin and other cryptos can actually help the government gain power, like in Palestine's situation.