Bitcoin is trust minimizing / decentralized despite the cartel of miners, because Bitcoin has a large number of protections against any actions the cartel could take.
Digital USD will be way more of a deal than Bitcoin.
The one thing about all this I do like is that some nerds figured out how to extract money from suckers to fund basic research. No one in crypto is making revenues the are greater than their costs, except the mining cartel
See how that played out with Bitcoin vs BCash (no I won't stop calling it that). Your hypothetical threat has happened several times before that, too. With the backing of a 'cartel' headed by the former 'chief scientist' of Bitcoin no less and it still failed to hijack the Network/protcol like you think would occur.
Fees are not determined by a single entity, but rather a priority based system determined by the allotted space in any given block and the desired time/fee between the next block being created from the txs in the mempool; so while it can raise the tx costs for a short while, which clog the mempool and slow low mining fee based tx, it cannot itself cause a hostile take over to take place--Jihan and Ver tried this very tactic and spammed the network, in hopes of making users migrate to the bigger block chain they created and it ended up costing them immensely in the end, causing the former to be ousted from his company and losing its dominate hashing power.
A record of a valid blockchain, and thus all of its transactions, exists throughout the entire network to self-validate in a decentralized consensus system between miners, nodes, users; forking it would require an adoption of not just miners magically adopting a new protocol/chain with the fork (Bitmain had a majority of the hashing power on BTC's network) but also the nodes that validate the txs and issue new coins.
The culmination of all of these events gave Nash's Game Theory an empirically proven usecase when those nodes refused to follow the majority hashing power, several big businesses/exchanges and formally reputable members of the community and instead remained with Bitcoin Core's original chain.
> Digital USD will be way more of a deal than Bitcoin.
This is exactly the only kind of mindset I would expect to ever be able to draw these type of erroneous conclusions... never mind the fact the USD is actually already technically digital. Physical cash accounts for such a small percentage of actual tx volume and total currency in circulation [1] most of it exists in ledgers as 1-0s on servers and databases.
A printing press is a mere relic of 19th/20th century's perception of what currency is and bares little to no relevance in the Modern World. And that is actually not a good thing, but I'll spare you the History lesson.
Its like you're truly incapable of understanding the paradigm shift that is occurring before your eyes, and instead you avert your eyes away to what you think you understand and make unsubstantiated claims that clearly reveal you don't have the slightest understanding of the topic at hand given such a statement(s).
> The one thing about all this I do like is that some nerds figured out how to extract money from suckers to fund basic research. No one in crypto is making revenues the are greater than their costs, except the mining cartel
Exchanges. Binance makes WAY more in fees than any single miner on the network ever since Bitmain failed in their coup. Again, stop and actually learn about the ecosystem you are trying, and failing miserably, to criticize.
I'd be way more understanding if you simply said you don't comprehend it, but to make these easily refutable arguments about the USD and its superiority, or any fiat currency in existence to date, doesn't instill any confidence in you even having the slightest grasp of what you are talking about.
I try my best not to be seen as hostile, as no one can understand everything, but this narrative is quicly repeated and accepted as truth around here that its startling to see (mainly) professional tech people make these simply mistakes and no one tries to correct the misinformation at all.
1: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-money-exi...
Sorry, forgot about the exchanges, you are right, they make a ton of money by allowing wash trades.
The fundamental reason public block chain will never gain mass adoption is because it fails to meet society's expectations for a financial system.
The FED is preferable to Bitcoin. Private block chain to public. Hyperledger may be the best platform out there.
Please spare me your version of history.
Precisely. It's not just "times like now," but is all of the time. The tool has not stopped being used, even in times of prosperity. The only conclusion we can draw is that the tool is not fit for humans to handle, because they're too self-interested.
The tool in question happens to benefit the early recipients of new money, who get to spend it at full value at time of printing before it gets devalued due to the increase in supply (without corresponding increase in demand, meaning it creates no new wealth). The later recipients of the new money have reduced purchasing power because they have to pay higher prices. This is the Cantillon Effect, which has been known about for centuries.
What governments should do "in times of crisis like now," is have a savings account that they can dig into to alleviate the problems, just like every individual should have too. The future is never certain and if you fail to account for the unexpected, it is nobody's fault but your own. The tool in place now is an unjust tax, because it is taxation without representation - nobody in the FED is elected.
As it happens, sound money is a great tool for planning for the unexpected because it allows people to save money in the long term for a rainy day without having to put that money into high risk investments, which don't provide the liquid money when it is needed in emergencies. Saving with fiat is not possible because the money is being constantly devalued (due to abuse of the tool you mentioned), and so they money isn't worth the labour one exerted to earn it once they come to spend it.
Thankfully, it doesn't matter whether you prefer this or not. All that matters is whether people who want to save money decide to do so with better money, and when they do, you can't stop them. Bitcoin leaves the market to operate freely, and we'll see whether this financial system can replace the one where the government keeps trying to intervene in the market.
Absolutely not, State's have never been able to be fiscally responsible and almost always scheme to devalue the currency for personal largess since at least the days of Rome.
What's worse is the US had a strong mistrust of not just Government in general, Washington's farewell speech is amazing, but Jefferson acutely understood that it could revert itself back to the despotism that they overthrew if a Central Bank model was set in place. He was right. In every iteration of the US' Central Bank (there have been 3) results in a massive devaluing of the currency the current USD has lost over 98% of its pre-1913 value; one could argue the script issued by the 13 colonies under the Articles of Confederation had the same flaws, making consolidation after the Constitutional Convention inevitable and ensuring that the union would have to share a common currency so many colonies engaged in reckless behaviour (again in the hands of local Governments).
So, no, based on 1000s years of History I'd say Government, large or small, cannot be trusted with currency due Man's inherit self-interest and ability to be corrupted.
> Yes the USD is mainly digital, I have been telling people this who ask about digital money since Bitcoin made it popular.
Ok. But then you say something like that and I have no idea how to respond it as your earlier comment suggests you think its not. Again, cognitive dissonance.
> Sorry, forgot about the exchanges, you are right, they make a ton of money by allowing wash trades.
Ok.
> The fundamental reason public block chain will never gain mass adoption is because it fails to meet society's expectations for a financial system.
Hence the paradigm shift part of my argument, People's expectations of a financial system is such that they see Bankers get bailed for reckless behaviour, collusion, corruption abound and they still operate that way because they have access to unlimited Central Bank issued money because 'too big to fail' narratives that makes us afraid of some scenario that has already happened: fiat currency has proven itself incapable of fulfilling this role.
I think you're suggesting most Society cannot comprehend or accept a World in which the entrenched Rich simply get richer by whatever means necessary, and the rest are left to fight for what's left. Not only do I entirely disagree with that premise, I'd say that kind of slave modeled behaviour system ensures another bloody revolution, which is partly why I got involved in Bitcoin in the first place as I want to avoid it all possible costs.
Look at my posts about Mars colonization, do you really think we can do that if we haven't figured this Monetary system out already? What you're advocating cannot scale to the need of a multi-planetary economy, Bitcoin might not be perfect but it has the potential to do that and there have been proposals to put nodes on Martian rovers, full nodes in LEO to pilot-test how that would work. BlockStream currently has a satellites they lease in orbit to help update nodes throughout the World with limited coverage and a low cost receiver setup for terrestrial use. That's the kind of People that are involved in Bitcoin's development.
Where as the financial system you are talking about doesn't even work on weekends, and closes and halts all tx on holidays or delays them if made after hours. Not to mention all the surveillance and confiscation for anyone the State deems unworthy of being able participate in its exclusionary system. This is such an archaic model, that only barely worked in the best case scenario and its precisely because they do not understand the very model they are coaxed into. They may feel ripped off, but don't truly understand the mechanics of how/why as an understanding, especially on Financial matters, its obfuscated it a litany of over-complications and jargon so confusing that no one would bother to try if not forced to do so--I was part of this contingent at one point, too. By contrast try to listen to Cristene Lagarde, or Ben Beranake, that's who you have trust in? Let alone the CCP and their travesty of a system to oppress, imprison and steal People's organs who they deem as traitors to the party.
> The FED is preferable to Bitcoin. Private block chain to public. Hyperledger may be the best platform out there.
I was at IBM and held Blockchain Developer and Consultant status; I can assure you it cannot for reasons I won't explain here.
> Please spare me your version of history.
Sure.
How does the blockchain satellite project developers relate to the people that develop Bitcoin? Are they the same people? Are you saying that blockchain developers are smarter or more enlightened?
Are you done with your opinionating?