[sonink]

Fundamentally, Bitcoin is software eating the Fed-Bank-Retail ecosystem. The Fed governance is replaced by code. The banking utility is replaced by miners.

I think the march of bitcoin is actually a better example of how AI is taking over the world. People in AI are fascinated by AGI - but the bitcoin ecosystem is actually a real world example of how AI will take over the world.

Specifically, the march of AI won't happen at 'edge' nodes, it won't be incremental, it won't happen by replacing humans with machines. The march of AI will start at the core, at a rethink of the fundamental infrastructure that powers an industry making it more amenable to machines and 'hostile' to most humans.

People underestimate the amount of resources required to articulate monetary policy by a central bank. Bitcoin can already do that much better than maybe 70% of the worlds central banks. India, China and US can think about banning/regulating bitcoin. But there are countries in Africa who can already do better by simply leapfrogging to bitcoin and ditching their national currencies.

Bitcoin is here to stay. And it cant be stopped.

[8973417983461]

> But there are countries in Africa who can already do better by simply leapfrogging to bitcoin and ditching their national currencies.

I doubt this would do any good for them.

* Their currency would be totally exposed to 3rd parties.

* They would loose the control over the rates, which are an important tool to attract investments, if are stable and controlled well.

* AFAIK some Chinese private companies control large part of the mining network. Basically the central bank would be in private, and foreign hands.

* The slow transactions would make it totally infeasable for use in everyday life, especially as people there have limited access to necessary technologies (stable network connections all round the countries, stable electric power everywhere), so daily transactions of the ordinary people would either fall back to barters, or use some fiat paper money, eg. USDs.

I totally don't get how could you reach tis conclusion, your whole post is a SV bubble wishful thinking with some trendy bullshit, eg. software eating the FED, fed is replaced by code. Bitcoin does better than centralbanks. If some currency looses 30% of its value a single day, that is not a sign of health, and this happended the very week with bitcoin. Actually Bitcoin does its job worse than an african dictatorship's currency, if its job is being a fiat currency, which is useful for the people in daily life.

I doubt its job is that, so it may do its job well, but for this task it is unsuitable.

[sonink]

Everything that you mentioned is most likely a shortcoming of the current version of Bitcoin. That being said, it is not a big leap of faith that each of these will be rectified in due course. If not with updates to Bitcoin, then with another coin.

My post wasnt just about Bitcoin specifically, but around the entire blockchain ecosystem.

[ryan_j_naughton]

>"People underestimate the amount of resources required to articulate monetary policy by a central bank. Bitcoin can already do that much better than maybe 70% of the worlds central banks."

Bitcoin only has totally clear monetary policy because it's increase of the money supply is entirely predetermined: It is created at an ever decreasing rate approaching a limit.

The result of this certainty in monetary policy is a currency that is naturally deflationary (literally by definition). This makes Bitcoin perfect as digital gold but shit as a functional unit of currency. You don't want to spend an asset that will naturally appreciate in value, discouraging using it.

You could have a cryptocurrency that generally trends at the same inflation rate as regular currencies: 2-3% annual and use that to pay the miners (or just give everyone a wealth endowment through giving any current owners a 1% increase in their current wallets and use the other 1-3% for the miners) and you would have a currency that could stay price stable with out Fiat currencies instead of always increasing in price like BTC has (at least over a sufficient moving average to reduce the volatility from speculation).

[meric]

That's like saying the decreasing price of hard disk space discourages people from purchasing it.

[option_greek]

I don't get why people are obsessed with inflation. It is not the only thing that is required to stimulate an economy. On the other hand for majority of developing nations, it is a sink hole that eats their earnings alive. You can still use a deflationary currency just like an inflationary one. Just use satoshis to track bitcoin increments. I'm sure if Zimbabwe was using bitcoin, they wouldn't have ended up in the shit hole they were a few years back.

Think about it: for every dollar you earn, the government can print its own one dollar to basically halve your earnings. Why would anyone want such a thing. With bitcoin, you don't need to invest in stocks/real estate and other inflation resistant things to beat inflation. You can hold your earnings in it and you are already beating inflation.

[beefield]

> People underestimate the amount of resources required to articulate monetary policy by a central bank. Bitcoin can already do that much better than maybe 70% of the worlds central banks. India, China and US can think about banning/regulating bitcoin. But there are countries in Africa who can already do better by simply leapfrogging to bitcoin and ditching their national currencies.

Could you elaborate how you think bitcoin monetary policy is better than 70% of world's central banks? To me, one of the most important tasks of monetary policy is to have a stable value of a currency (not against other currencies but against stuff people actually buy). And with that measure, I have difficulties identifying one single central banks that is worse than bitcoin within the last few years. (Maybe Zimbabwe or Venezuela?) But 70%? No way.

(Note that bitcoin also fundamentally lacks a mechanism for price stability, not that anyone actually owning bitcoin would that want.)

And Africa ditching national currencies for bitcoin? How do you propose that an illiterate farmer in rural nambia is going to use bitcoin? Even if you figure that out, do you think that the african governments - crappy as they may be - are that stupid that they don't figure out that instead of paying the seignorage to bunch of bitcoin nerds who currently own the currency, they can make their own fork and pocket the seignorage themselves?

Bitcoin has no future as an usable, official currency anywhere. That should be obvious.

[nordsieck]

> But there are countries in Africa who can already do better by simply leapfrogging to bitcoin and ditching their national currencies.

This may be technically true, but probably won't happen anyhow. There's a reason that those currencies are terrible, and that reason is that a person or people in power benefit from the seigniorage that is the cause of the currency inflation.

[vkou]

Nobody in Africa is seriously using bitcoin to do business.

None of the BTC startups, even the remittance ones, want to touch that market with a ten foot pole (Despite their slide decks shouting from the rooftops about banking the unbanked.)

Maybe it's because BTC doesn't actually solve any of their problems.

[b1daly]

Bitcoin can easily be stopped by governments, at least in countries that are not failed states. All they have to do is declare it illegal, and enforce the law.

It would be trivial for them to shut down exchanges. Without that, it would hard, and expensive, to convert to fiat.

Legit businesses would not accept Bitcoin. The only uses would be black market, and I doubt they would continue using bitcoin on the darknet markets. Without the ability to easily convert to the currency of the country you live in, Bitcoin would have little to no value.

[johndevor]

The black and grey markets represent nearly 1/3 of the world's economy. They cannot be shut down. The war on drugs is an excellent example of this.

[ozim]

Yes comrade we want to bring equality and low fees to poor nations which are oppresed by capitalistic banks! March of new era will bring better future for everyone. They want to stop our revolution, China with JP Morgan as they stand for old order. We have to get rid of those monopolistic pigs. /s

I hope those bitcoin guys won't get guns to actually execute people who are not buying.

[dzhiurgis]

> But there are countries in Africa who can already do better by simply leapfrogging to bitcoin and ditching their national currencies.

They already leapfrogged them a decade ago with m-pesa.

[girishso]

> making it more amenable to machines and 'hostile' to most humans.

Why AI takeover is always considered against humans? Why can't it co-exist with humans?

[chillydawg]

It's just that it's unlikely an AI will have the same goals as you or me. Their goals might be to make, say, paperclips: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer

[akvadrako]

I think it can, just like how we "co-exist" with wild cats. If they don't bother us too much we let them live, but humans always have priority.

[kk58]

I wonder if bitcoin with AI will give embed AI with survival function?

[danmaz74]

AI? Bitcoin has nothing even remotely to do with AI - on the contrary, most support for Bitcoin is based on the idea that a totally pre-determined algorithmic management of currencies would be beneficial to the economy. So, what AI are you talking about?

[glasz]

please don't focus only on technical details. digital currencies, btc in particular, are breaking the bank's monopoly of creating money. that's the real revolution. states and banks get into the topic of such technologies not because its better but because they see what may happen and they want to control the outcome.

there's high potential for people gaining freedom from the west's monetary system. but i'm very pessimistic about us getting this right and not loose "control" to state and corporate powers exactly like we did with the internet.

[kashkhan]

it's great that no government is doing the fiat. That by itself is reason enough.

[8973417983461]

Let me rephrase this for you: It's great that some Chinese private entrepreneurs (connected with the intelligence services or not) are doing the fiat. That by itself is reason enough.