this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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No government backing, and I can't use it anywhere. The only way for me to use Cryptocurrency as money in 99.9% of the places I shop is to exchange said crypto for real money.
money predates governments, and there are vendors who will sell goods for bitcoin.
Money doesn't predate governments, governments have been around since the earliest tribes, and bartering was the most common way to exchange goods until large governments started issuing currency.
And no, there aren't. I can't walk into any store anywhere I have been and buy goods with bitcoin, nor can I use bitcoin on any of the online shops I have ever been to.
you clearly haven't been keeping up with anthropology in the last 20 years. i recommend reading Debt: The First 5,000 Years. i also suggest pirating it if you can: the author is dead. he won't mind.
You think that governments didn't exist thousands of years ago? Governments predate debt and money, by a long shot because guess what, ever since we've been tribes we've had governments. A tribe is a government.
can you cite a source for any of your claims?
That tribes have governments? Yes, it's called tribal governance. Literally any power structure dictating the lives of a group of people is their government.
I asked for a source. not more rhetoric.
Here you go, government evolved with agriculture, and predates currency:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/government
Also your book doesn't say currency predates government.
do you know how I know you didn't read David graber's book?
Do you know how I know you didn't?
knowledge, being defined as a justified true belief, cannot be what you have about my state of having read that book. you have no justification for any belief about it because you haven't read it. further you certainly can't know that I haven't unless that were true.
Well if you read it you failed to understand it, because it clearly discusses barter systems relating to debt, not currency.
debt is a currency.
Nope, not the same thing.
stay in school.
Go to school.
How you've deluded yourself into thinking bartering and money are the same thing is beyond me.
If I pay off my debt to a friend with a bottle of whiskey, is whiskey now money?
No, it's called bartering, and it's an entirely different concept.
you didn't even bother to read your own source. it clearly says that the earliest humans didn't need government.
They also didn't have currency.
any tribe may have a government but a tribe is not the same as a government.
Why do you think modern governments are the only type of government there has ever been? Tribal governments, elder councils, feudal governments, republics, pharoahs, god-kings, etc... Ever since people have lived in groups they have followed some sort of governance.
I never said that.
Yet you keep acting like it. Currency came well after governments, because you need a government to regulate the value of currency and give it stability.
Bartering existed before currency, perhaps you're thinking of bartering and confusing it with the idea of money. They are not the same thing in case you weren't aware.
I've given you everything that you need to learn about why you're wrong. Your refusal to give up on your wrong-headed notions and assumptions indicates that you're not actually interested in having a conversation about this or learning when you are wrong. have a nice day.
Your refusal to understand the difference between bartering and money is making it impossible to educate you on why you are wrong. Debt is not money, bartering is not money, they are different concepts.
That's not true. plenty of anarchist societies have existed. can you cite a source for your claim that people have always been governed?
Anarchist societies didn't have currency. They used bartering.
have a nice day.
the impression i'm getting is that bitcoin isn't money to you, but bitcoin is money to some people, so it's real money.
Yeah, drug dealers. But even they convert it back to real money when they need to buy things.
you haven't been to every store on earth, nor visited every online vendor.
Yet I have been to thousands, and not a one has taken bitcoin.
Just because some drug dealers like to use it, does not make it real money.
actually, anybody using it as currency makes it money.
Ah, cool. So weed is money. Understood.