[arcticfox]

I have come to believe that this part of the value is absolutely enormous. It takes control of the money supply out of government's hands - which on balance, I believe is probably a bad thing in a democratic country.

On the other hand, it's incredibly powerful / valuable if it's allowed to exist, and I think the cat is already out of that bag.

[Nasrudith]

That is a popular narrative partially owing to some very ugly zombie tropes and the archaic understanding of wealth as shinies to be grabbed - but it simply isn't true. We had it already with various (bi)metallic standards and they had documented worse problems.

Fiat currency has yet to cause wars of conquest to prevent deflationary lock up that proceeded to crash the economy through inflation after causing untold personal suffering /on success/. The maligned federal reserve already takes care of the "try to hyperinflate our ways directly out of problems to get reelected".

If anything it could have the more "neutral" role of financial network independence but it still suffers the flaw of interchange chokepoint control putting them back to square one.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> It takes control of the money supply out of government's hands - which on balance, I believe is probably a bad thing in a democratic country.

Of course, no country, democratic or otherwise, will allow this to happen. The idea that you can have monetary policy exist outside of government control is a bit ludicrous. Government does still control the guns after all, and they can make anything they want illegal, as the US has done with gold in the past.