Oddbean new post about login | logout Monero is also Fiat. Democratic and private, but still fiat
Fiat: issuance centralized, arbitrary, and unpredictable (also not private if digital) Monero: issuance decentralized, requires PoW, and predictable ? Exact opposites
Actually Fiat is Money by decree. All the other adjectives that you added are properties of government fiat, but don't define fiat. Monero is Fiat since it has no intrinsic value and it became money by deceleration. All the other adjectives that you added are indeed properties of Monero, but don't make it any less Fiat.
Fiat is an authoritative order or command No one is commanding or ordering anyone to make Monero money. It's all voluntary and emergent so I'm still not following what you're saying.
Actually Monero was an authoritive order. The creator of Monero (whomever that be) said "let this be the genesis block!". He did not have power to force his order to be accepted, so he used other means to make his order accepted.
I think I see what you're saying now. But when people are normally talking about fiat in this space this is not what they mean. They're talking about government issued legal tender.
I know. It's important to point out that this way of thinking is wrong to insure people understand that Blockchain is not a full fix for gov. issued currency. Since they are both Fiat the share a lot of defects
I think the major difference (in addition to everything I first listed) is governments have a captive populace and can force acceptance of their fiat. Monero/crypto devs can't force anyone to use it. And if enough users don't like what devs are doing it will be forked and take most of the network with them (You can't fork government fiat). This was Moneros origin story to begin with.
Monero is not Fiat "Fiat money is a government-issued currency that's not backed by a physical commodity such as gold or silver. It's backed by the government that issues it." Investopedia
Sure. But the root of the definition is "issued currency that is not blacked by a physical commodity". The fact that the governing body that issues Monero is a collective of developers just make it a more democratic fiat, but fiat non the less
you forget 1 word: "government" Fiat is "government-issued" not simply "issued" (by anyone) that means it's from the people who control the country, I understand what you are trying to tell, but Fiat can't be issued by random people, it should be included in the country's jurisdiction and approved by the president etc etc that's a huge difference
Why can't Fiat be issued by random people? It's of course easier for government to force people to accept their fiat, but that is a technical issue. There are other ways to make people accept Fiat. Religious belief, popularity of the issuer, fear of exclusion (which is kind of force). And what is a government? If a town creates it's own currency, is it not fiat? What about if the GNOME foundation votes on a new currency? Fiat is Money by decree. It's easier for government to create Fiat. But it's not the only way
I see what you mean, FIAT was created by governments during the history, but not only, for example in WW2, in some ghettos a FIAT currency was created by ghettos authorities. In the strict sens, you have right, any community can create a FIAT currency by decree, but it's not the general concept of FIAT currency, we are talking about a nation's government not the GNOME foundation or random civilians
I am pointing this out because Fiat has innate defects regardless of the issuer. Which means that Monero, and certainly centralized Bitcoin, have these defects. Monero is not the golden bullet. Gold is not the golden bullet. Some sort of combination would be superior to both.