48 karma · joined January 10, 2021
Large breadth of content with lots of esoteric and domain specific knowledge sprinkled throughout. The higher level abstractions available are very limited in scope in comparison to say GUI toolkits, most of the success has come from people drilling down and putting in a ton of work.
That's an entirely political question that has nothing to do with efficacy of a financial system or cryptocurrency.
While Mackay's account held that a wide array of society was involved in the tulip trade, Goldgar's study of archived contracts found that even at its peak the trade in tulips was conducted almost exclusively by merchants and skilled craftsmen who were wealthy, but not members of the nobility.[53] Any economic fallout from the bubble was very limited. Goldgar, who identified many prominent buyers and sellers in the market, found fewer than half a dozen who experienced financial troubles in the time period, and even of these cases it is not clear that tulips were to blame.[54] This is not altogether surprising. Although prices had risen, money had not changed hands between buyers and sellers. Thus profits were never realized for sellers; unless sellers had made other purchases on credit in expectation of the profits, the collapse in prices did not cause anyone to lose money.[55]
You wouldn't have to monkey around with hardware freedom and even if a person decides to re-sell it at least it had the chance of being used by a "real gamer" first.
USD is fiat currency. Fiat simply means by decree. USD is a currency by decree of the US Govt.
It's highly unlikely Bitcoin would ever become a fiat currency by the US Govt. It's also highly unlikely the US Govt would allow a free banking system and allow a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin to fill the void naturally.
Also, Bitcoin can evolve overtime through consensus of it's users. So it is highly unlikely it would be surpassed by a cryptocurrency that is like Bitcoin but marginally different, it would have to be something radically different.
>Then once we're sure the people still sleeping on Main Street are doing it because they genuinely enjoy being outdoors, you can talk about active policing and the justice system on whoever is left.
There are classes of people who have the means to be helped but choose not to. Which are still going to be there regardless of how much resources you throw at the issue, unless you think the future is a dystopian society where people no longer have free will.
Not to deride from the rest of your comment which I thought was solid commentary but this particular line is not true. Yes it is true the over whelming majority of people have no intention of doing this. But it only takes one or a few people to transform a space. Stuff like boondocking, stealth camping, vagrancy, and alternative living is relatively speaking more popular than people would think and really only kept in check by the threat of the justice system and active policing.
Prices work in the opposite manner, it's the sum interactions of market participants that drive the price equilibrium. Something being related to a "real-world asset" doesn't make it any easier to price. See "Economic calculation problem" for further discussion.