this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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Memes

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[–] [email protected] 97 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I'm sure if Bitcoin had the largest and most powerful military in the world it would have become the world reserve currency by now

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (4 children)

No because currency with built-in deflation is a bad idea. It would get scrapped very quickly.

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[–] idunnololz 14 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Alright who wants to start a new country with me

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (20 children)

Bitcoin: 4.7% believed to be in the hands of a single person, another 3.1% in the hands of four addresses. Deflatory so no incentive to use it to make transactions. Value depends on the network effect (i.e. a pyramid scheme). Small transactions now too expensive to be realistic. 24% of the supply was created in the first year, 35% over two years. Movement of funds takes too long to be useful. Those who got in early are guaranteed to be richer than those who got in late without having made any effort...

Crypto would be great as a replacement of the stockmarket but it's fighting to be cash instead and it's doing a bad job of it because it's cash as envisioned by tech bros, not actual economists.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Also wastes energy and hardware (which includes rare earth metals mined by slaves) to endlessly compute hashes. Great solution for a post climate change world let me tell ya!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Since nobody else responded to the stock market argument: it's how cash is envisioned to work by Austrian school economists, not the economists currently in charge. The average person needing to trust strangers with their money is not good.

It's an entirely different perspective on how money should work (that was de facto illegal for decades), and only now can we put our money where our mouths are.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Though great privacy when used offline, which is also pretty sick and the adoption levels defies reason, it's virtually usable globally both online and offline.

[–] Zithero 35 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's funny because thia just proves the metrics used to measure a Cryptos "Viability" apparently have nothing to do with its actual value.

What matters is it's trading power... Not it's circulation or 'Supoly Cap'

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

fully agree

[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Why is the US printing so much money?

[–] Astroturfed 34 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Paper money is flimsy and wears down quickly. It's being constantly printed and replaced. This meme is vague and intentionally misleading. Physical money in circulation is replaced and old money destroyed. Constantly. That's what these figures are about. The wealth inequality, solid point. The rest is just vague word use to make it sound alarming.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago

Simple answer: Because they can, because it's lucrative, and because it's not as obvious as raising taxes. Imagine you could legally print money, and when anyones asks about it, you can just dismiss it with: "I'm stimulating the economy"

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

Got to keep the printer people in business

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The US is printing a lot of money, but a lot of that money is theoretical and not really printed. Stocks are a way this happens, if you bought 10 shares at $10 and a week later they are worth $15, $50 got created. Loans are another way money gets created with a fractional reserve system, $1, 000 in savings can create $10,000 in loans.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm not an economist but I don't think money gets actually created in either of your examples, the money just changed hands in either case.

[–] Astroturfed 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

You are 100% correct and its amazing how accepting people are of that bullshit answer. Both the examples are transfers.

The value of stock is a reflection of value gained typically by capital investment and it's not just magic new money that comes from thin air. People have to get the money to buy the stock from somewhere. So they probably sold another asset and decreased it's value marginally.

Fractional reserve lending doesn't just make new money either. It lets the same money be spent over and over, which is not new money being created. If I loan you $100, and you loan Bob $90, Bob loans sue $81, so on and so forth, they're just lending smaller amounts of the same $100. You're still owed $100 and the entire chain is based on just that $100. This money moving through the economy more times is a term usually referred to as velocity and can have a massive effect on inflation or deflation, but it is most definitely not creating money out of thin air. For every dollar "created" someone owes the dollar, so their net worth does not change.

There's some dum shit going on with central banks these days and things like quantitative easing, but spreading silly nonsense doesn't help anyone. If the numbers in the meme are accurate it's like just talking about new dollar bills being printed. BECAUSE PAPER MONEY WEARS DOWN FAST AND NEEDS TO BE REPLACED CONSTANTLY.

I'm sure this meme is brought to you by crypto bro TM. All money is fake and made up crazy stuff, so buy my new money. It's the best money, cuz it's a scam like all money.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Fractional reserve banking literally creates money. If you have the only $100 in existence and put it in a bank, they can then lend $100 to someone else, now $200 exists. You still have that $100, and so does the person that got the loan.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (4 children)

A good answer! Thank you! Geez, econ 101 boggles my mind

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (19 children)

Surely it's collapsed since this meme was made 10 years ago.

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[–] LEDZeppelin 21 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago

Hmm, perhaps both are but symptoms of the greatest scam: capitalism.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] Noodle07 4 points 10 months ago

It really is one of the society of all time

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