[wallace_f]

Bitcoin might turn out to be one of the markets where free market dynamics work well.

Whose job is it? Anyone who has a stake in trusting and maintaining bitcoin's value. So the rich are incentivized to safeguard the poor in some sense here.

[bluetwo]

Rubbish

[wallace_f]

Well so far it has none of the taxpayer-subsidized funding as the US currency and banks have--which are very expensive to fund. The 2008 crisis was estimated to cost around $9,000-35,000 per US citizen, even by the Fed itself! For just that one incident...

[bluetwo]

Exactly. Who is going to bail out the first big BTC crisis? No one.

[wallace_f]

Think about what bailing out means. It was a transfer of wealth from taxpayers and money-balance holders to Wall St banks, the US gov't and a few select private corporations.

Now I don't mean to be patronizing, but it is useful for us to ask ourselves, "how were we convinced that this was desirable?"

[bluetwo]

No amount of debate over the validity of the 2008-2009 financial crisis and resolution makes bitcoin any less of a fiat currency.

[zxcmx]

Fiat means by decree, or order. Typically we mean by government when we use this word.

Essentially, the government creates it by law and then forces you to use it.

I'm struggling to see how this applies to bitcoin.

[wallace_f]

What? It seems like you are just changing the subject here? I thought you disagreed with the idea of my grandparent post, but it seems that now you want to say that bitcoin is a fiat currency?