Oddbean

What a load of bull. Historically, merchant-issued credit was the primary solution. Each merchant generated their own currency and maintained their own ledger. You know, decentralized, not a central issuer with a central ledger like Bitcoin.

ShiShi21m The closest electronic solution to the merchant-issued decentralized credit notes I've seen is Pear Credit, which is blockchain-free like Nostr and doesn't require maintenance or fees because they're not trying to maintain a single authoritative global state like Bitcoin. Free audio book "Debt: The First 5000 Years" by David Graeber here. A study of how people akshully traded before centrally issued brand name currencies, like USD or Bitcoin. http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/64160

it’s been a while since i read it, but doesn’t graeber argue that early credit based systems worked well in small networks where trust was high but didn’t work so well when transacting outside those networks?

Bitcoin maxipads are monopolists. You want a mono-polar financial instrument. Just one instrument that is also one Store of Value that is also one Medium of Exchange that is also one Fantastic Investment Opportunity. You also want One Grand Unified Ledger, not multiple ledgers.

Except, you know, that a thing's volatility retards it's use case as a dispassionate means of exchange. Worst of all, expecting a unit to be worth more next month makes you less likely to hire Johnny to mow your lawn this month, making everyone poorer on net. Since, as the Austrian school shows, prosperity does not excrete from a printing press, a mining rig, or a fixed-pie token gambling pool. Prosperity excretes from the felt improvement in standard of living for each party to a voluntary exchange. This is where seeing 'medium of exchange' as 'fantastic investment opportunity' work at cross-purposes. One facilitates exchanging. The other penalizes exchanging and rewards declining to exchange (hoarding aka hodling aka the opposite of making a voluntary, prosperity-generating exchange). Maximalism is a synonym for monopolistic fanaticism, right or wrong. Nothing to do with a plurality of decentralized solutions. One grand unified eternal immutable global ledger or bust.

That's not the thesis at all. Since youre incapable of having an honest conversation, read the sovereign individual, it was written in 1996 - so pre btc. Read the book, or dont & keep spewing nonsense.

I've have read swaths of it. I saw nothing 'sovereign' about what's now better called 'the network state'. I see it along the lines of The Zeitgeist who were openly pushing post-state blockchain based Communism. - There's nothing 'sovereign' about taking the choice of ledger (or none at all) out of the hands of the trading parties themselves and logging it all in one grand unified public blockchain. - There's nothing 'sovereign' about depending on a centrally issued fiat (yes, 21M is an arbitrary number, proving it's fiat nature -- could have just as easily been 42M cos it was decreed into existence) token. - There's nothing 'sovereign' about being unable to buy or sell bananas without a electricity and an Internet connection. Here's a book I highly recommend for you -- "Debt: The First 5000 Years" by David Graeber is a study of actually decentralized currency; how people traded before centrally issued fiat wannabe-monopoly brands like USD and BTC: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/64160 Free audiobook version. The 2nd chapter is called "The Myth of Barter". It wasn't that. Each merchant generated their own credit, on their own private ledger, which was destroyed without a trace when they 'broke even'. Your grand unified global public ledger knows nothing of decentralization.

So your reading comprehension is nill, this isnt an ad hominem - just a conclusion im forced to make if this what youre focused on, rather than the actual thesis of why a cryptographoc currency is not only viable, but will allow people to more readily vote with their feet.

This is one of the most retarded take I've ever seen. Money is not an asset per se, how can it be monopolistic, oligopolistic or whatever. It's a tool and tools are neutral. You're talking about securities, that's where your logic comes in action. Cryptos are securities because they're issued by central entities. Guess who is behind bitcoin? No-fucking-body.

Yeah, the perfectly mysterious Creation myth! :p I bet the 'who' is behind Bitcoin looks like a large cube in the desert covered in black glass. No-fucking-body? Who arbitrarily chose the 21M in digital fiat tokens? It's nowhere in the whitepaper. Who centrally planned and artificially fixed the rate of supply in advance, removing the price stabilizing Austrian mechanism of a market-determined rate of supply which can naturally adapt to counterbalance price swings due to changes in demand? Guaranteeing volatility into perpetuity. Who was that central planner? No-fucking-body? You sure about that? Of all the weird things blockheads say, calling a human agent or a human agency 'No-fucking-body' is right up there with calling a grand unified blockchain 'decentralized' instead of distributed.