Alternate headline: How Iran manages to maintain some semblance of an economy despite immoral sanctions.
Not a crypto person at all but I do remember when the last US president ripped up the Iran deal which afforded the International Atomic Energy Agency the right to inspect their operations and replaced it with... nothing. I think this is proof enough that all of the talk about Iran being a threat (to the US? to the world?) is vastly over hyped.
Now we’ve got warhawks, oil companies & the finance industry all working together with Iran as the bogeyman driving all their policies. Watch for Yellen or congress to drop some “bitcoin supports Iran” talking points any minute now.
I think what's actually interesting about it is that Iran actually forbids crypto for local currency transactions, because they don't want people to bypass the local currency. So it's one rule for the government and another for the people.
But yes, I agree with most of what you said, also what Jellen said about global corp tax is kind of messed up. They don't want to go after their own big corps, but rather control the rest of the world. As long as the fiscal years start at different times, they can still shuffle money around as they please, but nobody actually dares touching the US corps in the US.
> So it's one rule for the government and another for the people.
Of course it is, otherwise it wouldn't be a government. People get really silly with this. Governments can define laws, enforce them and so on. They have many rules that apply to them and not to everyone else. That's the whole point.
I agree with you on how governments often work. I can’t agree that’s the whole point, though. Why would it be? I’d be curious to understand why you think so.
The whole point is to enforce rules that benefit the whole, at the cost of individual benefit.
Say you have 100 rials or 1M. Converting it to BTC might be good for you individually if you believe the local currency is going to lose value, but it’s not good for the collective as there will now be less demand and more supply of it. So the individual benefits at the cost of the group. Stopping that is the gov’s job.
This is a general comment, I am not familiar with Iran as a country and might be missing context.
this is a really unconvincing example, at least to me. despite the name, bitcoin doesn't function much like a currency. that is to say, someone who would otherwise hold $1mm cash would probably not want to convert that to bitcoin, at least not for legal transactions. so if a meaningful amount of people would rather use BTC than fiat, the problem is not that people are allowed to buy BTC. the problem is that the government has failed spectacularly at issuing a stable currency, which is one of its main jobs.
> So it's one rule for the government and another for the people.
You cannot imprison other people, but your government sure can. There are many cases where the government has special jurisdiction as compared to citizens and it is clearly recognized as a moral thing to have in democracies around the world.
There is a strong philosophical argument in favour of governments following different rules from people.
However, in this practical case, the government is forcing people to make bad choices (to use a second rate fiat currency). It understands it is forcing people to make a bad choice, because it doesn't want to make that choice itself.
This is the thing I don't get about more tin-pot dictatorships. It is obvious why the States force people to use their first-rate fiat currency - the US benefits hugely from people using the dollar.
It is obvious why Iran might force its citizens to use the US dollar - if they didn't they probably get invaded by the US on some flimsy pretext.
But why force people to use a local fiat currency? It just makes their country poorer. Why are there all these idiots who look at their own economy and think "gee, this thing might work to well if we let people save in a liquid asset"?
How do people think they are going to generate wealth if not incentivising people to consume less than they produce? It is the only reliable path. Why do all these governments find it so scary?
I think this is a bit different. They’re exporting something that’s illegal to use locally. It’s like if the government of a dry county was distilling liquor.
In the absence of a state, personally jailing someone who violated your rights would be morally just. With the establishment of the state, we still maintain this right. We just delegate its exercise to the state, to ensure it is subject to due process.
It is unjust to delegate moral rights we do not have, and could no not legitimately exercise on our own in the absence of a state, like jailing peaceful people, to the state.
People who aren’t the government do, in fact, do that.
With a strong and effective government, there is a high probability that they eventually face significant adverse consequences for doing so, which may deter those who are deterrable, but even then it still happens.
Honestly it's very disappointing I have to explain this but I NEVER ARGUED THE LEGALITY STATUS of these activities.
I argue the fact Bitcoin and other coins enables crime.
I'll make it really simple for you: would you hire a hitman with a briefcase full of cash, or you'd do a bank wire with subject "for the murder, thanks"?
Think why we don't use bank wires for this.
Now think why anonymous cash transfers are hard internationally.
Now think what Bitcoin is. It's anonymous cash over the Internet.
It's a huge enabler for illegal activities because it's anonymous and decentralized and happens over Internet.
You can spin it any way you wish, but the fact speak if you're a criminal, Bitcoin is automatically the most attractive way for making transactions to you, aside from person to person cash briefcases.
Law is centralized by nature. Because law has to be enforced in a centralized nature. Decentralization and anonymity means you can't apply the law. "Illegal" means therefore NOTHING to Bitcoin.
It can't be decentralized to begin with, because whoever has more money can run more mining and whoever mines more has more power in the network. It's still more about rich hording power. On the flipside it may just be a little bit more distributed and accessible than the current prevalent system.
But mining doesn't grant you any power (unless you manage to accumulate 51% of it, which is in this day and age pretty much impossible for a single individual or organization). Mining is just a service that you provide (to secure the network), and you get rewarded for it.
Compare that to how monetary inflation works in the fiat world: they just press a button, et voi-la, they got their funding.
Sanctions seem like the least harmful way to deal with bad actors at the nation state level like Iran, North Korea, and Russia. This is the equivalent of not playing with the kid who can't play fair or follow the rules. Replace playing with trading.
You might say Iran is not a bad actor, but that's not a winnable position to take.
Would you prefer military intervention over sanctions? What else can you do in these kinds of situations?
Even if you grant that Iran is a bad actor (which is kind of rich considering how much western countries deal with Saudi Arabia)...
It's still very fucked up that the US signed a treaty with Iran saying "we'll lift sanctions if you do X", Iran did X... and the first thing the US did after the next administration change was to say "Fuck the treaty we signed, we're putting sanctions back".
What's the message being sent to Iran? "It doesn't matter if you try to play nice, we're going to destroy your economy unless you submit as a vassal state to the US"?
Also, I don't see how the US has any sort of moral legitimacy to unilaterally decide which country is a "good actor" and which country is a "bad actor", even against the wishes of its allies (including western democraties). In a fair process the US would only be one of several countries deciding together, and would only act with common backing.
If your answer is "moral legitimacy doesn't matter, because the US has the power to enforce its decisions", sure, that's true. Enjoy it while it lasts.
But don't act surprised when other countries start banding against US hegemony.
> It's still very fucked up that the US signed a treaty with Iran saying "we'll lift sanctions if you do X", Iran did X... and the first thing the US did after the next administration change was to say "Fuck the treaty we signed, we're putting sanctions back".
Yeah it is fucked up. What is the word of the US worth if it's going to flip flop every time the party in power switches. That's going to have ramifications.
> Also, I don't see how the US has any sort of moral legitimacy to unilaterally decide which country is a "good actor" and which country is a "bad actor", even against the wishes of its allies (including western democraties). In a fair process the US would only be one of several countries deciding together, and would only act with common backing.
Every country can decide for themselves who are good and bad countries, and they're free to take whatever action they feel is appropriate, including war. That's how nations work. Now some actions have consequences, and some nations have more or less power and influence. The US does have some moral authority in that it sometimes stands up for what's right rather than what's in their best interests. For example, bans on buying conflict minerals.
The UN is supposed to function like you're saying, but in reality it's quite dysfunctional. Because of the veto system the default action is no action so it's hard to agree on anything.
> But don't act surprised when other countries start banding against US hegemony.
They can and they will, but such is the nature of things. Nations rise and fall.
"The US does have some moral authority in that it sometimes stands up for what's right rather than what's in their best interests. For example, bans on buying conflict minerals."
Yes, it makes sense for them to ban buying conflict minerals since they want to hold a monopoly over that ability themselves. Bolivia is one of the top suppliers of lithium to the US and has suffered dictatorships, election interference, and ongoing far-right paramilitaries financed and trained by the US and it's allies.
The US has NEVER done something to "stand up for what's right", every action they do is calculated to help themselves. If they are condemning or condoning anything, it is for their own self interest. This is how they can simultaneously call out the ethnic cleansing of the Uyghurs by the CCP while simultaneously not being able to even condemn the killing of Palestinian children on record when being asked repeatedly by journalists. That's because China is a rival but Israel is an Ally.
They'e only recently publicly recognised the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire because relationships between the US and Turkey have grown increasingly strained. If they had any moral authority, they wouldn't coddle their friend's war crimes and hold them to the same standards as their enemies.
You have a very extreme, no nuances opinion. Categorically, whenever you have an opinion like that you're almost surely wrong.
With something like the foreign policy history of the United States - that's a very rich area that doesn't permit a simple black and white position like yours. I want to downvote your comment twice. We could use less of that kind of thinking in the world.
Says the country which organised a coup in Iran to install a dictator, financed another local dictator to attack it, then waged war twice against him leaving a country in ruins, supports and arms a religious absolute monarchy and its wars, supports an apartheid regime, paid jihadists in Syria to keep a civil war running...
They're not an American client state, bit they're no worse than America, China, or Saudi Arabia
You can argue that they're a threat to american interests and an embarrassment to the American intelligence agencies, but that's not exactly the same as being a bad actor.
Really? You don't think the US selling billions in arms to both Saudi Arabia and Israel makes them complicit in those ally's crimes against humanity?
What about the fact that the US has been sponsoring military and paramilitary organisations in central and Southern America for decades to fight against attempts at unionisation or socialisation efforts to help ensure their control over the rare earth metals and oil there? There are death squads that have mowed down entire villages after being informed of talk about unionisation as well as driving away indigenous tribes who happen to live in areas that are inconvenient to the interest of US multinational companies.
Are you also somehow forgetting the war in Afghanistan and Iraq that was perpetuated for decades after the given reason for invasion were dealt with for the transparent motivation to plunder the resources there? More than 200,000 civilians dead (and that's on the optimistic side of projections) as a direct result of actions from the US army.
All of these examples I gave are crimes that the US are currently engaging in and even with that restriction, this is far from a complete list. If I expanded it out to what they have been up to in the last 5 decades, then it would be a lot longer still.
If you don't see the US as dirty, then I don't know what standards you are operating under.
> Really? You don't think the US selling billions in arms to both Saudi Arabia and Israel makes them complicit in those ally's crimes against humanity?
Crimes against humanity? How am I supposed to take you seriously. I'm no fan of Saudi Arabia, but they're a necessary evil. But Israel? I don't know what standards you're operating under...
This is so full of false equivalency I don't really know where to start. I'll just say supporting a theocratic dictatorship that sponsors terrorists all over the world (no doubt partially through bitcoin). Also China who is currently committing genocide on a large scale as well as trying to take over commerce by building artificial islands in the strait. You can't "build" an island and expect to take over shipping lanes.
>>I'll just say supporting a theocratic dictatorship that sponsors terrorists all over the world
Which country are you talking about? The Western foreign policy elite and Gulf Arab states funded a massive influx of Islamic militants into Syria to try change that country's regime:
The largest insurgent faction, and the one receiving the bulk of this material support, was effectively led by al-Qaeda's Syrian franchise, the al Nusra Front.
Unfortunately, every state has the blood of innocent people on their hands.
Sanctions on Iran are indiscriminate, and mostly harm civilians. It's collective punishment. To put into perspective the damage done to non-combatants: one study found the sanctions the Trump administration placed on Venezuela led to 40,000 deaths:
The issue isn't that Iran is doing bad things directly, it's their proxies forces. You can Google and find a source you may trust more, but here's two[0][1]. Iran was taking much of the money the US was paying them to not build nukes, and funneling it into proxy forces to further their interests in the region. You can dig deeper to understand what those proxies have been doing in the region.
Doesn’t the US use it’s money and influence to further its interests? many heinous and hurtful outcomes are facilitated by such funding around the world. That would include overturning a democracy in Iran and putting it on a course for the governance it has today.
So we should just be OK with that when Iran is the one doing it? You can object to US foreign policy and also be opposed to Iran's attempts to destabilize an entire region causing immense suffering in the process
US had three motives for entering the Middle East. The first was originally the attack on 9/11, the second being trying to maintain one friendly government (Israel), and third was access to oil.
The problem with the first is that the US never came up with a good exit strategy, so we are just kind of lingering over there now. It's not even clear what our objective was from the start (it's all sorta all over the place). There has been an appetite to get the US out, but when Obama got us out, ISIS took charge in the region and Obama had to send troops back in.
Supporting Israel can be done through money and arm sales, so you don't really need forces over there.
Oil has become less of an issue since the US went through. Its fracking boom and generated an oil surplus.
It's definitely a careful balance, while many people don't want to be there, if the US does not have troops there, it could become a breeding ground for anti-American organizations that then want to attack the US. It's a hard problem.
Iran has a shit regime (corollary: all countries' regimes are shit, just some more than others).
To your question, it's a matter of emphasis. You have a fundamentally greater moral imperative to criticize your own government (I assume you're not Iranian living in Iran) and its dealings/shortcomings simply because you can, in principle, actually have some relatively significant impact on its actions. So no, there is no need to ignore the conduct of the Iranian government, but if you place emphasis on it disproportional to what you actually have influence over, your moral priorities are fundamentally misplaced.
I’m not sure I would characterize Iran’s efforts as destabilizing the region, certainly not more than the US injecting billions of dollars of arms into the region.
Really we’re in the endgame of fossil fuels, and arguably control of access to those resources that was the main reason that the US was so heavily involved in that region for decades. But with the green revolution needed and pragmatically quite close in reach, the US needs to fundamentally rethink its involvement.
All Iran has to do is stop supporting terrorists around the world and threatening international commerce through the gulf then the pressure will be relieved. It's actually pretty simple. this is their own doing.
I fail to see how an economic sanction towards an authoritarian regime that ends up having a greater impact upon its people than on the regime itself will somehow fix said regime's mistreatment of minorities.
I come from Venezuela, I have family in Cuba. I know what economic sanctions look like and what they do against dictatorships. Hint: they do nothing, because they're not going to abide by your rules or meet you in the middle.
That's a very practical way of putting it, thanks.
This was mostly a knee-jerk reaction on my part because it often seems to me that in the rush to (rightly) denounce bad policies by the U.S. or other countries against Muslim majority nations/groups, the fact of extremely barbaric practices by some of these groups is just swept aside, like it's okay because they're being victimized. It's still not okay.
Regardless, I concede the point. I'll leave my prior comment up, though, because I can't be alone in these feelings and your response provides more nuance to the issue.
Do you think attitudes towards homosexuality are any more progressive in Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc? No, but they’re “good” US client states and help further US interests in the region so it’s okay when they dismember a journalist inside an embassy and whatever else besides.
Since you are in a conciliatory mood, you might also want to reconsider the whole "throwing gays off buildings" thing, because that doesn't happen in Iran. LGBT rights are by no means great in Iran, but this kind of hyperbole does not help anyone.
I decided to check on this, and it would appear that it was more of an ISIS thing that anti-Muslim Americans falsely projected out across the entire group. However, there have been at least a few hundred state-facilitated executions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Iran).
One thing I was not aware of before today is that Iran is second only to Thailand in sex reassignment surgeries, which I found very surprising. Apparently it may be done in some cases to avoid persecution of same-sex relationships, but the fact that it's not only tolerated but partly paid for by the state is pretty mind blowing. There's always more detail when you look closer at issues like this. Thanks for prompting me to look it up.
Look also at the sanctions we imposed on Iraq after the first gulf war. Conservative estimates put the death toll at a quarter to half a million CHILDREN alone. I guess those kids should have risen up and overthrown Saddam, because that’s what the sanctions were conditional on - his removal from power.
I don't think harming all Iranians via sanctions for the actions of the regime is the right way to deal with this, especially because the sanctions do nothing to stop persecution of LGBT.
What kind of argument is that? LGBT rights in Saudi Arabia is almost equally non-existent [1] yet US happily sells them arms used in a horrific war in Yemen. SA's prince can even get away from blatant murder.
Besides, it was ISIS throwing gay people off roofs and filming for propaganda. Iran has an authoritarian system with it's (many many) own sins, but it's no different than any other country in the Middle East. All are terrible, but some receive love from the west and some don't.
It wasn’t replaced by “nothing”. The information that intelligence agencies are able to gather about Iran’s nuclear weapons programs is more detailed and accurate than what the IAEI could or would gather under JCPOA. The Iranian regime faces internal dissent, and western intelligence agencies working with dissenters to retard the Iranian nuclear program directly (see last month’s cyber attack on Natal for instance) may handle the threat better than the state department and the UN.
For me as a member of the general public it's actually "nothing'. Intelligence agencies are opaque, have no incentive to tell the truth and have a track record of lies.
An international body has at least some checks and balances to keep it close to the truth.
The UN inspectors said there are no WMDs in Iraq. The US intelligence agencies said the opposite and provided made up proof taking the US into a quagmire of a war. In the end there where no WMDs in Iraq.
So I am saying the US intelligence agencies are useless and are used for political purposes to re-enforce what ever the current administration wants to do for foreign policy.
While there sure was lots of cherry picking and hyperbole of the evidence going on, the situation was more interesting.
The US intelligence agencies were not uncritical about the wmd case but the administration pushed hard. There were lots of dissenting leaks in the press. The interesting aspect tough is that the whole situation was made much harder because there was so much lies and deceptions going on in the iraqi buerocracy. SH bragged on the phone to underlings about his wmds to secure and shore up his position and other players did the same. Now the intelligence agencies did tap into that communications which made it harder to make a correct assessment than just standing on the outside looking in.
That you’re pulling up a 20 year old example might suggest that it’s the exception that proves the rule. It doesn’t sound like either of us really knows enough to be making sweeping claims, and my objections are to that sort of thinking as much as anything.
I’d also suggest that there are many examples of UN agencies being less than objective, and swayed by political expediency and unstated loyalty. It’s dangerous to assume that corruption of purpose doesn’t extend beyond the nation state.
Prior to the re-imposition of US sanctions, Iran was producing around 1400 million barrels of oil per year and exporting around 800 [1]. The article says that Iranian Bitcoin mining is currently consuming the equivalent of around 10 million barrels per year.
At a consumption rate of ~1% of the potential exportable amount, this doesn't seem like a particularly significant evasion of sanctions.
If only we could all get along and sing Kumbaya together, we could solve all the world problems. In this context of human conflict and geopolitical power struggles, does bitcoin make any sense to you?
I remember reading somewhere a few years back that they have to keep pumping it in their antiquated infrastructure otherwise it causes problems to the infrastructure/wells. I tried to google it but it's hard to find.
It isn't unique to Iran, in general stopping oil wells is a risky thing. There's no guarantee it will start back up, and even when stopped it can leak combustibles.
What has the network produced in the real economy?
It’s possible bitcoin may produce something someday. But look at it from an outside perspective: a bunch of people, motivated by an idea, have got together and commissioned the burning of coal and oil on a vast scale.
Bitcoin more or less operates as “proof of carbon”. Imagine if a crypto network operated by “proof of art burned” or “proof of buildings destroyed”. And people got together and directed capital towards buying up art and burning it, or buying real estate and knocking this down.
And this secured their currency network. You’d have to have some very good output from the network to justify such waste.
Because proof of work is proof of waste. That’s how it’s set up and secures the network. Unlike existing systems it is antiefficient. And currently it is setup to waste carbon and GPUs.
> What has the network produced in the real economy?
Well according to this article it has allowed a nation state to avoid international controls and restrictions. Satoshi himself would be proud, it pretty much what he was imagining.
> What has the network produced in the real economy?
It has lessened the impact of economic sanctions imposed on a nation. I think that's direct proof of how valuable cryptocurrency is. People should be free to trade without some country imposing bullshit sanctions on them.
The petro dollar is enforced by might and invasions.
Nixon created it when he decided to leave the gold standard after France demanded physical gold as payments.
Iran and other countries under US sanctions use alternatives including barter. Bitcoin can just be one of those tools. But bitcoin mining is more a function of cheap electricity and high bitcoin prices. Electricity is cheap in Iran. 4.5 percent of bitcoin mining is negligible given the context of the sanctions. One would expect it to be at say 20 percent as their is an American embargo on the country.
This just seems to be more of a click bait article for self promotion or company promotion.
> The petro dollar is enforced by might and invasions. Nixon created it when he decided to leave the gold standard after France demanded physical gold as payments.
This aspect was not clear to me until I read The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous, the first two thirds of which is more of a history of money than pro-Bitcoin propaganda. There he argues that moving off the gold standard was a bad idea in many ways apparently unrelated to money.
And of course there's this famous website: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/. For reference, 1971 was when Nixon decoupled the US dollar from gold.
From what I've read on the topic, gold (and 'hard money' in general) is generally not a good in most circumstances. Yes, if your mint/central bank takes orders from the government to create more money it can lead to bad things, but generally that disaster only needs to happen once before everyone realizes how bad an idea it is and probably never does it again.
Recommend the book. Debt: The First 5,000 Years is also worth checking out:
Did you read the link the person you're replying to posted? The empirical evidence there suggests that moving away from hard money has been terrible for the average American, and the shrinking middle class is exactly what's predicted by proponents of sound money.
>but generally that disaster only needs to happen once before everyone realizes how bad an idea it is and probably never does it again.
That clearly isn't the case or else no country would have experienced hyperinflation after the fall of Rome.
It's one of these situations where the correlation seems obvious, but the causation seems very hard to establish. How world changed so drastically over the past century that it always seems a bit strange to pin our current woes on one single factor, "empirical evidence" be damned.
It's good to keep an open mind, but just look at the sheer number of different metrics on that website that show some kind of change at or soon after 1971. With enough correlation you can make a hypothesis, hopefully a testable one. Unfortunately there are no countries that use a gold-backed currency left where you could perform an experiment.
> The empirical evidence there suggests that moving away from hard money has been terrible for the average American, and the shrinking middle class is exactly what's predicted by proponents of sound money.
The shrinking middle class, especially in the US, has mostly occurred post-1980s (see Reagan and Thatcher). This can be stopped and probably reversed with redistributive tax policy. See Piketty:
> That clearly isn't the case or else no country would have experienced hyperinflation after the fall of Rome.
How may countries have actually experienced this?
> Re-arranging the Hanke-Krus list highlights something however: barring three outliers (France, 1795-1796, North Korea 2012, and Venezuela 2016-) there have actually been only five hyperinflation “events”, each associated with particular large, long-term global processes (involving war, decolonization, regime change, foreign denominated debt/currency pegs). The spatial and temporal clustering of these events is perhaps best expressed visually (Chile and Zimbabwe are temporal outliers within their cluster)
Hyperinflation is generally not caused by printing money, rather the printing of money is the effect of something else:
> In this paper I will argue why the common misconception that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon” cannot be used to explain most historical hyperinflations. I will argue that “money printing” is often the response to exogenous and unusual events and not the direct cause of the hyperinflation.
China ran on paper for a century or two without issues, and only went back to hard money because the Imperial Court wanted more centralized control; this is covered in a chapter of Goldstein's Money.
What's so great about Debt: The first 5000 Years? I've tried to read it but had to abandon it after first two chapters as it seemed way too emotionally pushy for my tastes. It gives many examples of poor indebted countries and demonizes money lenders, but nowhere in these lines does author elaborate how would those countries fare if they weren't offered credit in first place. OK, I get it that lenders impose harsh conditions, but why is it in any way OK to not repay the debt, and in turn not receive any credit offer in future as it becomes clear that you won't repay? People keeps recommending the book but I found its arguments overly populist and ignoring obvious counterarguments.
> but nowhere in these lines does author elaborate how would those countries fare if they weren't offered credit in first place.
For one, in many/most economics textbooks you have the story (fairy tale?) of cultures going from barter to currency (special rocks, shells, etc). There is no sociological or historical record of a culture doing this. The point is reiterated in Money.
My impression is that usury actually inhibits economic development because you’re stuck paying the interest instead of investing in your future. Lower interest rates encourages more risk taking economic activities. Sometimes those risks don’t pan out, but, if you believe that overall your economy will prosper, lower interest rates ensure that proceeds from risks stay more with those generating the activity rather than the lenders themselves. Liquidity is important but not as much value creating (if everyone loans the other person $5, there’s a lot of “economic activity”, but nothing of value has been created in that fake scenario). That’s simplistic of course and liquidity itself can be value-generating if there’s intention behind it (ie vetting that the liquidity generated is going to an enterprise that will likely yield net returns overall for some reason).
That’s also why there’s bankruptcy protection. Sucks for the lenders that their gamble didn’t pay off but generally they’re able to take a loss and their other investments can balance them out. Plus bankruptcy protections apply to them to if they overextended themselves or didn’t manage the investments.
The point is that anyone can suffer an economic hardship but that doesn’t mean society should strive to create punishing conditions if you are unlucky (or, in most payday scenarios, just start off poor). Of course some people will abuse the system. There are abuses happening by lenders too. Economic policies around this though can only work at the macro scale, so you find other ways to mitigate the problems through legal structures.
I think there’s this unhealthy association between lendees not paying and it somehow being a moral failing on their part. No. It’s the fault of the lender for not vetting their investment properly. Sure they should be allowed some attempt at recollection but there need to be strong usury protections too (if you want to allow high interest rates in your economic region, then high usury rates should be pared with much easier ability to limit recovery after some limit is collected. If you think about it, in payday scenarios, the successful “investments” on the part of the lenders (ie the people actually making good on the payments) are subsidizing the lenders loans to those that can’t pay. It’s a vicious cycle frequently for those involved because the loans aren’t actually generating economic value and are really being used just to help people get by. High interest loans really need to be restricted to risky economic investments (starting a business of some kind) or those with the resources that they could pay it back and just have a short liquidity issue. This $500 @ 30% interest to fix your car that’s your only mode of transportation to/from work or $1000 to go to the doctor seems seems like not a useful application. It’s a non-economic need that person has and there’s not really any likely realistic scenario where those loans would have a net positive impact on the economy. Forcing the area to invest in useful public transportation solutions and safety net for medical care would return far more value to the economic prosperity and social stability/welfare of the area.
Thanks for long reply. But you mostly just summarized what I felt about the first 2 chapters in your own words.
You say
> I think there’s this unhealthy association between lendees not paying and it somehow being a moral failing on their part. No. It’s the fault of the lender for not vetting their investment properly.
You know what? If that's how I'm going to be treated as money lender then screw it, I'm not lending anybody. They need money to jump start their economy? Screw them. If I'm supposed to invest in detailed research with zero return, I'll be at loss in the end even if the huge risk turns out in my favor. I'm keeping my money safe, let them starve! Now obviously I'm not seriously that evil, but you get the point. When there's no protection for money lenders, when society treats them as evil (as this book does), they're not going to lend anybody, and poor economy won't have the capital to build from in first place. And then money owners will be vilified for hoarding money! You can't really win this game unless you give away money for free, can you?
EIDT: I agree that usury is evil. Obviously investor protection should go only so far, but shifting all blame for failed projects on money lenders is just wrong. Contracts should be obeyed.
In "The Economics of Belonging" Martin Sandbu makes the argument that it should be more like venture capitalism. You provide a loan and get some of the upside if it works out but if it doesn't then you share the loss. It would at least keep people more honest.
What gold is good for is a neutral settlement asset between nations with imbalanced trade. But not at a fixed currency price by weight, rather floating in fiat price, which forces nations to re-balance to more consumption or more production depending on if they have large trade surpluses or large trade deficits. Thus the pitfalls of either extreme can be re-balanced by covering trade imbalances with gold reserves which also devalue currencies and force domestic production, or increase them and force consumption.
Keynes's Bancor[1] was essentially this idea, but Bretton Woods conference rejected this proposal. Oil exporting and general surplus nations, like Russia and China, have been moving in this direction by reserving more gold in recent years (look up various European nation increasing gold purchases since 2008) likely to move towards a more multilateral system of settling trade imbalances with a neutral settlement asset, rather than stockpiling fiat currency or fiat currency debt "assets" created in unrestricted supply by one nation, who forces world to then use this inflating currency to purchase energy... which equals future inflation for these nations that can't print it themselves.
It is also useful as a personal "store of value" to avoid "saving" in a depreciating fiat currency, along with other "hard" assets.
But gold or hard money cannot be the unit of account or medium of exchange for national commerce. Credit/fiat is better for this.
This is why some have argued that there's always been and probably always will be a need for "two monies". Bimetallism was an embodiment of this principle. Here is a very thorough discussion of this concept[0]. Ctrl+F "two monies" for specifics, but the whole article is insightful.
This dynamic also presents itself in debates about crypto currencies purpose to function as a high throughput transaction currency or a more inert store of value. Because of the inefficiencies of blockchain and Bitcoin's finite quantity, it cannot function as a unit of account or high volume transactions currency; fiat and fiat derivative platforms (Cash App, Paypal, credit cards, etc) are much better at serving this function. Trying to shoe-horn hard money into soft money use cases (or vice versa, saving in fiat) doesn't work. One form of "money" can't satisfy these two distinct functions.
This is a very astute point and it's how I've always thought about Bitcoin and other crypto assets. I never understood why people have to debate whether it will take over currencies like the USD or EUR, which it will probably never do. Crypto assets can have utily for trading among enemies or situations where normal fiat currency cannot be used. Think about places with dysfunctional institutions, escaping inflation in places like Venezuela or fleeing war. And then there's the programability aspect which is a totally novel use case which I'm not going to go into.
> Crypto assets can have utily for trading among enemies or situations where normal fiat currency cannot be used.
Maybe crypto will get there eventually, like tech crashed in 2000-2001 (AMZN down 90%) and things have 'stabilized' now, but it's been over ten years already since Satoshi published and this is where we are:
> So. Bitcoin fell 53% in five weeks, and then it rallied 35% in four hours. Two observations for now: 1) Nobody in their [right] mind would enter into a transaction denominated in bitcoin; 2) It's too early to say the bubble's burst (or to say this is a new bull market).
When your currency (?) is more volatile than the goods/services you're using to it buy, I'm not sure how useful of a 'currency' it is. Or a store of value, or a unit of account.
Is Bitcoin or other crypto more or less volatile than the price of a barrel of oil or frozen concentrated orange juice futures?
For reference, 1971 was when Nixon first coined the term “war on drugs” (after passing the Controlled Substances Act and related legislation a year prior). People love to bring up that website when the gold standard is mentioned, but it’s actually showing a broader trend of the government apparatus being weaponized against the middle and lower classes.
Here’s a quote that summarizes the effect of the time period nicely:
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
— John Ehrlichman, to Dan Baum for Harper's Magazine in 1994, about President Richard Nixon's war on drugs, declared in 1971.
That’s what the fuck happened in 1971. Then, notice how many graphs actually show an inflection point around 1981 when Reagan started as president, employing Nixon’s Southern Strategy to get elected and then serving those voters with policies that attacked the lower and middle classes (slashing spending on federal aid programs, raising income taxes while lowering capital gains taxes, freezing the minimum wage, raising military spending which is essentially a cash transfer to rich arms dealers, etc). Then throw the Cold War in there, and you have a US government that is in an adversarial position with everyone but the 1%.
Indeed, the petro dollar has had all kinds of side effects, good and bad. Like any imperial rule, some get crushed by it, but peace and prosperity can be a direct outcome of it as well, and I think this was the case with the American "empire" after the WW2. You can google for "Pax Americana" for more info about the concept.
I've always wanted to understand the geopolitics of oil and gas. Despite much interested reading, I can never quite figure out what's going on.
One of the more interesting quote's I've encountered along the way, "The foreign tax rates of U.S. oil multinationals fell significantly after the first Gulf War, during which the United States intervened to protect Kuwait, a major oil producer. Although it is not possible to know for sure what caused this decline, a possible interpretation of the fall in taxes collected by oil-producing countries is that they reflect a return on military protection granted by the United States to oil-producing States."
I think that is an important point but tangential IMO. The question here is geopolitics of the dollar. Notice, when the us had deep music-gonna-stop level problems in its economy it prints a shit-ton of dollars. Which other country in the world can do this? Nobody. And it will stay this way until someone has a navy as powerful as the US.
I think this is backwards. The USSR had a navy toe-to-toe competitive with the US, but never had a fraction of the economic weight. The economic power of the US isn't a product of it's navy, rather it's economic power is just another weapon it uses alongside military force.
Let's look at how the petrodollar came about. The first step with the run on gold in 1971 which broke the Breton Woods system. The value of the dollar went through the floor. Having a big navy didn't make any difference. This hurt oil exporters because now their dollar earning weren't worth as much, but they didn't abandon dollars. There was no credible alternative, and there was no military dimension to that fact.
Then in 1973 US support for Israel lead to the OPEC oil embargo. Oil prices quadrupled. You could say it was American military aid that caused this, well maybe but no actual projection of force by the US was involved. Military aid to Israel was no different in character from Soviet aid to Arab regimes. The reasons the embargo mattered and had an effect were economic reasons, not military ones.
When the United States-Saudi Arabian Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation was established in 1979 the US hadn't invaded any Middle Eastern nation, hadn't blockaded any Middle Eastern ports, hadn't established any bases in the Middle East. The total of their interference was support for Israel, a small state a long way from any of the actual oil.
All three of those milestones were entirely economic in character. Military power projection played no part in them. The US has and uses economic power anyway, regardless of how effective it's navy or army is. It was a military midget, but economic powerhouse in 1941 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour. It parlayed that economic power into military might, not the other way around. By the end of the war the US was launching 2 aircraft carriers per month due to sheer economic muscle.
US military intervention in the Middle East long post-dates the establishment of the petro-dollar. Those claiming the petro-dollar is a result of military power have it exactly the wrong way around.
I was very clearly referring to the situation in 1979 when the petrodollar system was formalised, which itself was long after dollars became the standard currency for trading oil.
That base was exclusively a Saudi air force base until the first Gulf War, which occurred long after the dollar became the standard currency for trading oil.
> And it will stay this way until someone has a navy as powerful as the US.
Armed force superiority is a requisite for maintaining order, which is a valuable good in and of itself, but the country also needs to produce goods themselves (such as research, medicines, technology, media) which is greatly enabled by a large population that has a higher than average level of trust between each other.
I would even assume the latter is far more difficult to create than the armed forces, and only arises from a perfect storm situation. And it feels like it’s in a downward trajectory, but hopefully that is not true or will reverse.
>Notice, when the us had deep music-gonna-stop level problems in its economy it prints a shit-ton of dollars. Which other country in the world can do this? Nobody. And it will stay this way until someone has a navy as powerful as the US.
The Eurozone can do so as well. Actually, it must do so to prevent the collapse of the euro. It's the same with the USD, foreign nations keep "stealing" USD and take them out of the US and therefore the US must replace the lost USD just to stay still.
Also, the fact that no money is being printed is one of the biggest problems. Yes, you can increase the money supply without printing. For every USD you create, you also create an obligation to return it which is called debt. When the newly created USD are allocated to otherwise idle resources you may unlock value equivalent or higher than the debt you took on. The excess value you have created in the process is called economic growth. It turns out, fiat creation is highly deflationary and deflationary forces from other sources are extremely high as well. However, debt is inaccessible to the vast majority of the population. I personally still get 4% interest rates on private loans. The borrowed money never ends up in the real economy indicated by low inflation rates.
We are basically experiencing the great depression again but to a milder degree, therefore we should do our best to prevent it from becoming a problem in the first place. The fact that the US hit inflation goals because of a pandemic is pathetic. What if they were not blessed with a natural disaster that spurred politicians to act (it wasn't enough to get trump to act)?
Hitting inflation goals and moderate interest rates quickly is absolutely necessary to keep the economy stable. With every year of low interest and low inflation the imbalance keeps growing but the correction will happen in a flash, therefore we must ensure that any imbalance is as small as possible before we run into the crash.
It's like extinguishing wild fires as soon as they happen while the fire is still under control. At some point you can no longer contain the fire but the consequences have become unbearable.
It's better to crash small today, than crash big tomorrow. Unfortunately, today is many years too late.
And their housing price increases are even more absurd than the US. The middle class is trying to hold on to anything they can to protect their savings from inflation and there are very few options remaining for the average person.
The US’es navy is arguably much more of a result of our economy than the other way around. Of course there are synchronistic effects. The petro-dollar is what let’s the Fed print money with abandon beyond what other nations could. The petro-dollar is protected by American naval power. So it’s a feedback cycle.
In a fashion, the US printing dollars lowers the value of a dollar which effectively taxes the rest of the world by lowering the value of their dollar denominated assets. Particularly oil. Still it’s an odd system as the US is ultimately on the hook for that debt, to US federal debt holders who are still majority Americans.
It’ll be interesting to see how post-oil world economy will handle it. Possibly more serious large scale wars between regional powers.
>In a fashion, the US printing dollars lowers the value of a dollar which effectively taxes the rest of the world by lowering the value of their dollar denominated assets.
Those foreign nations take USD out of circulation and buy US treasuries. They are expressing a desire that the US invests the USD they spend on the bonds. When you buy US treasures you do so because you think the US government can spend your money better than you can spend it yourself. If the US decides to not borrow your money it is basically saying you should put your money elsewhere but these foreign nations refuse to do so.
Because the US government doesn't spend the money inside the US the obvious result is unemployment. There is no way to increase the investment rate to account for the increased savings rate. Instead, the domestic savings rate of US citizens must go down to compensate for the increased foreign savings rate. How does it go down? Someone who is unemployed or underemployed must consume more than they earn. Income inequality becomes mandatory to just keep the economy alive. It's increasingly unsustainable for everyone including foreign owners of treasuries.
Of course the US has a nice president right now that wants to let the damn savers save by increasing the investment rate through infrastructure spending. It's a win-win for everyone. The underemployed get jobs, the savers get a nice investment that will not suddenly collapse one day.
The first link on Google says the 2021 interest payments will be $378 billion on $27 trillion in debt. That’s about a 1.4% rate. Not a bad rate, but still it’s interest.
This article explains the link between Saudi Arabia and the US. It explains a lot about the relationship that exists despite so much chaos and turmoil. As they say, money talks and bullshit walks.
> For example, blockchain analytics solutions such as those provided by Elliptic can be used by regulated financial institutions to detect and block cryptoasset deposits from Iran-based entities including miners. Techniques can also be employed to ensure that transaction fees are not paid to miners in high risk jurisdictions.
Interesting. It seems like they're basically saying that mined blocks should be accepted based on the location of the one submitting it. This whole article seems to be a sales pitch. Lets see how decentralized and unregulated Bitcoin really is.
>This level of Bitcoin mining would currently bring in annualised revenues of close to $1 billion.
I wondered how they came up with that number. Miners currently seem to earn around $30 million per day[0]. 30*365*0.045 = ~500 mil. Seems like they conveniently used the highest recent rewards of $60mil per day. The statement just seems sensationalist at best, all things considered.
> It seems like they're basically saying that mined blocks should be accepted based on the location of the one submitting it.
That's silly. Mining doesn't use a lot of bandwidth, so setting up a tunnel to mask the origin of the block would be trivial. The moment Iran's blocked, why wouldn't miners do that?
> Interesting. It seems like they're basically saying that mined blocks should be accepted based on the location of the one submitting it. This whole article seems to be a sales pitch. Lets see how decentralized and unregulated Bitcoin really is.
This implies forking the blockchain. So some clients will use "curated" blockchain. I don't think that this fork will be popular.
> can be used by regulated financial institutions to detect and block cryptoasset deposits
They're not talking about censoring/forking/manipulating the chain. They're talking about centralized financial services built on top of bitcoin blocking coin that is linked to Iran.
What is your definition of "Legitimate"? Is it just what the US lawmakers define as lawful? In such case, we've witnessed many instances where the US imposes sanctions on various entities with no relevant excuses but to oppress those who disagree with it. One recent example that I can think of is when the US imposed sanctions on members of the ICC [1].
“Legitimate” in this case refers to any miner who is mining honestly and is simply motivated by profits from the block reward and fees. If we ignore potential price increases and inefficiencies, an ideal mining market should see block production costs increase until the profit margin for such miners is close to zero. But miners with “ulterior motives” can extract more benefit from mining, and so can mine profitably even when production costs are very close to rewards. This means in theory such parties are likely to dominate the mining network.
“Ulterior motives” includes a lot of things. It definitely includes money laundering (see Iran and China) but it also includes people who mine so they can conduct 51% and MEV attacks on the network. On the positive side it may include pseudo-altruistic types such as major currency holders, who are willing to mine at a loss in order to support the currency’s value. The thing all of these parties have in common is that none of them are incentivized to mine honestly solely because of the intrinsic profits involved in mining: your hope is that their ulterior motive is compatible with honest behavior. When that isn’t born out, your network runs into trouble.
* Obviously in the real world there are tons of capital expenses and prices fluctuate wildly, so this model is loaded with inefficiency that can allow some folks to make money on mining as a business in and of itself. But PoS systems will have fewer such inefficiencies.
I'm not trying to make a moral point here. For the purposes of trying to predict the outcome of the interaction of governments and bitcoin, what governments consider legitimate is an appropriate thing to consider. That doesn't mean I agree or disagree with individual US laws.
[Edit: Actually matthewdgreen is right in a sibling comment, that the argument can be made without considering laws as such]
Even if laundering is the whole point of bitcoin - a view I'm sympathetic to - it needs to be at least semi-legitimate for laundering to work. If market forces mean that the fraction of miners who are launderers increases over time, then eventually governments will consider it all tainted and it will no longer be useful for laundering.
What's wrong with Iran exporting oil? Why can't Iran export oil? The level of economic strangulation the US can achieve over countries is unprecedented. And they're often just arbitrarily punishing countries.
The sanctions from the US are not arbitrary, it's for a very specific purpose: to force oil-exporting countries to sell their oil in US dollars only. Think about when Iraq decided to sell their oil in euros back in 2000, they got invaded by the US and then quickly switched back to dollars.
I think that aiding in the death of a couple hundred thousand Syrians, having militias in at least 4 ME states, and chanting eternal hostility to US and Israel plays a role. Also putting women in jail for 20 years for refusing to wear hijab is unpopular.
I thought you were talking about the US until I got to “hostility towards US [...]”. Funny.
The US cares about the Syrian deaths about as much as they do about those in Yemen. Morals play absolutely no role here. And when a politician howls something about humanitarian reasons you can be sure it’s a farce.
What matters is giving head to the right person. Do that, and anything is fair game.
It is always bizarre to me that people think of international relations as a sphere in which normal morality operates or should operate. The US does what it thinks is in its strategic interests within the constraints of its power. Iran does the same.
Whether one side or the other has in the past acted immorally is irrelevant. You don't win the argument by saying "America has done bad things too", as if that should persuade it to change its behavior. It's a category error; nothing but ineffectual emotive fluff. You'd have more traction arguing that sanctions are, in fact, not in America's long term best interests.
Indeed. A lot of people tend to have a quite naive view of international relations - and I don’t blame them as media reporting tends to simplify things to a extreme, often trying to identify who is right and who is wrong.
In reality, beneath the surface, is a complex web of relationships and competing/aligned interests.
A good example is the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It may seem like an Israel-Arab conflict, but many Arab countries are aligning with Israel to counter the Shiite threat from Iran. But those same Arab countries can’t abandon the Palestinian cause either. So they walk a tightrope of tacitly supporting Palestine, often hollow public statements about the “on-going fight for a Palestinian state” all the while strategizing with Israel on how to contain Iranian influence. They can’t support Palestine 100% because that would mean severely weakening themselves with regards to Iran.
One can argue that’s two faced and they should be ashamed of partnering with the enemy of a group they support, but in reality every country does it. It’s about practically protecting your interests. And sure you might seem like you flip flop in your statements, but alliances and enemies are created and disappear all the time.
One would hope they'd learned from Iraq and Afghanistan why military invasions aren't the strategically optimal way to deal with these problems. Although that may be a forlorn hope.
This is what the US does with countries when they won't play ball. Perhaps Iran should've been more grateful when they were freed from the tyranny of Democracy. The US had a lovely dictator picked out just for them.
Iran is not a democracy, candidates at the presidential election in the coming weeks must be approved by a counsel.
The latter doesn't allow liberal candidates, and iranians have lost interest in the coming election because it will keep the Theocracy currently ruling in power.
Also, the supreme leader is at the top of Iran's power structure and is not elected by the iranian population.
The US had no problem with the Shah and have no problem with Saudi Arabia, despite the war in Yemen and the murder of Khashoggi.
The only have a problem if they can't get the oil, ask Mohammad Mosaddegh.
I am not american, and I wish iranians to have the freedom to chose their government. Most of them hate the islamic regime, this is a country with so much potential, ruined by a Theocracy.
The petrodollar depends on it. When we went off the gold standard we "backed" our currency by enforcing that all oil sales be done in USD. This created global demand for dollars and allowed us to maintain our position as the primary reserve currency.
I don't know the history super well but I would speculate that either Iran wanted to sell oil in another currency, or the other oil exporting countries we got in bed with (OPEC) didn't like Iran, or another one of our allies (Israel) didn't like Iran.
To be fair they have kidnapped quite a few British/Iranian citizens including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, they are effectively a religious dictatorship and a majority of their own people hate their government who I think have banned dancing in public and have arrested people for making TikTok videos, amongst more serious crimes. I’m not exactly sure the Iranian government are particularly nice people.
Keep in mind that there is a huge Western media and government bias against Iran, in the US in particular.
I'm not saying the Iranian government doesn't do bad things - it absolutely does, though you could (easily) argue that the US has done far worse. Hell, you can also (again, easily) argue that the US and UK are largely responsible for many of the past wrongs of Iranian governments.
As a singular anecdote from 21 years back, I spent a couple of weeks in Iran way back in 2000 (my father was working there as a geologist for an oil company and I joined him during the summer holidays) - things seemed very different than I'd been led to believe. I felt completely safe wandering Tehran alone, and everyone I came across seemed extremely friendly and curious. They seemed to know how their country was portrayed outside of Iran, and wanted to show me otherwise. People talked freely about politics too, expressing likes and dislikes just like any western nation. And the food, my word the food...
Don’t make the mistake of confusing the position of the people of a country with the position and views of a government/regime.
Iran is a remarkable place with a highly educated population. Of course they’re nice and friendly and curious, most people in most countries are. The Iranian people aren’t the enemy (re: prevailing paradigm of thought from the US), it is the regime. And let’s face it both governments severely dislike each other, the destruction of the US is literally a rallying cry of the Iranian regime
> the destruction of the US is literally a rallying cry of the Iranian regime
Not quite. What they chant is roughly equivalent to "down with". On the other hand, the US has damaged Iran so much that you can't blame them for being very angry at it.
No, US keeps their "special friends" in Guantanamo, keeping US soil clean. That's democracy in action and respect for the constitution, unlike lesser countries.
When the US kidnaps people they call it "extraordinary rendition" so you don't think it's just a simple kidnapping + torture. It's extraordinary somehow.
This article by Nazanin's husband, Richard Ratcliffe, is worth a read. The UK's role is rarely discussed:
"As Iran sentences Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to a further two years in Iran, her husband outlines why the UK’s secretive, unaccountable arms trade is a danger to British citizens and why his family remains haunted by an unkept promise made by the UK government."
But why are they a religious dictatorship in the first place?
Khomeini was the reaction to the support of the Shah by western governments.
They replaced one evil with another.
Before reading the article, keep in mind that Elliptic makes money by scaring governments: either selling their software to them directly, or through regulation that is passed forcing companies to hire them.
Comments this morning seem very aggressive-defensive. How about a different takeway: cryptocurrency defeats current international sanction tools.
Whatever your feelings about US/Iran or your feelings about
Bitcoin/Climate Change, sanctions have been an effective peace-time tool for the UN to bring countries to the negotiating table. Perfectly effective? No. Security Council politically motivated? Yes.
Better than war for the citizens of all countries? Yes.
Will Bitcoin lead to more war as a result of weakening the power of sanctions? I wouldn't hazard a guess. But I didn't see this possibility coming.
>cryptocurrency defeats current international sanction tools.
If one values international law, or the, "international order" (as Secretary of State Blinken put it, without irony), then a bright line needs be drawn between, "international sanction tools" that are used by the UN and the unilateral sanctions issued by the US.
>Will Bitcoin lead to more war as a result of weakening the power of sanctions?
Bellicose nations have always issued demands to other sovereign nations backed by the threat of illegal wars of aggression. Will the ability of targeted nations to avoid being starved to death via the use of bitcoin lead to more war? Possibly, but is the problem there really bitcoin, or rogue nations who consider themselves above international law?
> cryptocurrency defeats current international sanction tools
Yes, exactly. They (in part) defeat an act of unilateral violence, one that is very cheap for the perpetrator, from one country against another. Which seems a very good thing.
When people say "Bitcoin uses so much energy, it must be shut down!" I like to remind them of a simple fact: the amount of energy and military resources used to ensure the petrodollar's global dominance. It's not even a comparison.
That military protects more than the dollar. It also protects all the real resources that give the USD value.
From a practical perspective Bitcoin is effectively a virtual, self declared nation state but the only thing that exists within that nation is Bitcoin itself. Thus military expenses in the form of Bitcoin mining only cover a small subset of protection offered by conventional military.
Because of this, most Bitcoin proponents are extremely narrow minded, they think the currency equates the entire nation, therefore the USD is equivalent to the entire US and only protecting the USD is equivalent to protecting the entire nation.
Every day people run into the same problem with rent control. They believe there are no real resource constraints represented by the price, therefore they believe changing the price alone is enough to solve the problem. Yet they never realize that prices are just information used to allocate scarce real resources. If information is manipulated and no longer reflects reality then it has become a lie and therefore serves nobody except the one who told the lie.
Okay now that we have established that currencies are information that reflect the allocation of real resources, then what real resources does Bitcoin allocate? It allocates a share of real resources around the world based on the people who bought and sold it. The irony is that these real resources are being protected by their respective governments, thus the existence of the US military (and all other militaries) is an essential part of Bitcoin's current valuation.
> The irony is that these real resources are being protected by their respective governments, thus the existence of the US military (and all other militaries) is an essential part of Bitcoin's current valuation.
Sadly this is true, but not for long. Bitcoin adoption is still very small but it will grow. Once it grows to cover the vast majority of merchants in the world, the next flip of a switch will be in people's minds: they will start valueing things in bitcoin (or bits, or satoshis), instead of USD, EUR, etc. (In pretty much the same way people switched from drachmas to euros recently...)
And once that happens, people will stop thinking of the fiat monetary value of one bitcoin (or bit, or satoshi), and then your statement will not be true anymore.
I think your scenario requires that governments not influence the monetary policy of their countries, which is far removed from reality. We already see china cracking down on it, and the subsequent reaction in the market.
No country is going to give up its control of monetary policy in exchange for cryptocurrency - there will simply be digital currencies also controlled by governments. We already see this happening. The result will be even more traceable, controllable transactions - not this anarcho currency you're envisioning.
Actually thanks to the creation of CBDCs, the switch to bitcoin will even be faster IMO, because thanks to CBDCs people will get used to paying things with crypto, but they will see that using CBDCs instead of bitcoin is a bad decision that hinders the purchasing power of their savings. But exchanging CBDCs with bitcoin is much easier to do than exchanging fiat with bitcoin, so the switch will happen faster!
All CBDC transactions will be centralized and tracked, allowing perfect understanding of what they're used for. When the government disallows bitcoin/etc because of constant scams, changes to its structure, or just to various cryptos from manipulating monetary policy, all of the transactions will be tracked and the government will know who spent what on bitcoin.
CBDCs are literally just government currencies with a million times better tracking than the current banking scheme.
It isn't going to make bitcoin easier, it's a direct threat to every advantage bitcoin has, while still having the utility of being exchangeable for actual goods and services, something bitcoin lacks except maybe on the dark web.
CBDC are what is going to kill the wild west of crypto, the way the centralization of everything on the internet has killed much of the wild west of the internet.
Imagining that centralizing and improving tracking will somehow make the wild west come faster is not paying attention to how things have gone so far, and the actual aims of making a CBDC. It's not to give up control of monetary policy, it's to get it back.
> That military protects more than the dollar. It also protects all the real resources that give the USD value.
That's really no different than bitcoin. With USD a ton of energy is used to protect what backs it, which is physical resources. With BTC a ton of energy is used to protect what backs it, which is the chain.
Military also protects against external threats (like other countries). Mining also protects against external threats (like bad actors).
I think this is far removed from reality - if you have rockets incoming would you prefer crypto or iron dome? Pretending building real world military capability is the same as crypto is a word game, not reality.
If you live in a country with hyperinflation or an oppressive government, would you prefer to succumb to that or to live beyond those means? They each serve their purpose.
I agree with your criticism on the current petrodollar system, but I still don't understand how Bitcoin could replace it. I've yet to see a crypto enthusiast who seems to really think about the implications about world trade purely done in Bitcoin. And the "there was the gold standard back then, it's going to be similar" argument doesn't work, it has historically ended in total disaster and countries which abandoned the system sooner has recovered from the Great Depression more quickly. Right now a Bancor system that's designed to balance imports and exports between countries seems like the more convincing route to achieve peace while continuing global trade. Any ideas?
>And the "there was the gold standard back then, it's going to be similar" argument doesn't work, it has historically ended in total disaster and countries which abandoned the system sooner has recovered from the Great Depression more quickly.
Historically prior to the 1900s pretty much everywhere was on a gold or silver standard of some sort.
Bitcoin enthusiasts often say this because they know the energy question is one that Bitcoin can never answer but that doesn't mean it's a good one.
The US has national interests economic and strategic that exist independently of the reserve status of the US dollar. The sprawling US military infrastructure does not exist to preserve the status of the dollar, it exists to protect these interests. The US doesn't operate bases in Germany and Japan for the dollar. Or do you really believe that should Bitcoin replace the dollar as the international reserve asset, these military bases around the world would be closed down?
The importance of the petrodollar is vastly overstated and the reserve status of the dollar has far more to do with the liberal attitude the US takes to foreign capital flows and the size and depth of US economy and consequently its capital markets. Mercantilist economies such as Japan and China would be unwilling to accept foreign capital flows appreciating their currencies and making their exports more expensive largely because of the domestic political issues this would cause.
> The electricity being used by miners in Iran would require the equivalent of approximately 10 million barrels of crude oil each year to generate - around 4% of total Iranian oil exports in 2020.
4% of the post-sanction exports. It seems that the sanctions "evasion" does not have an impact on the efficacy of the sanction.
Instead of seeing Iranian mining boom as some tech-enabled sanction workaround, I see it as just that -- a boom just because electricity is cheap.
Chinese government is clamping down on their domestic miners.
Given how Iran and China are quiet close maybe those miners can get some good energy deals.
Also means the Russia, Iran and China(coalition, partnership?) crypto hashing power is also more decentralized.
This must be a riff on the article I read a couple of months ago that described Iceland's aluminum industry as a means of exporting its geothermal energy. It's the only plausible argument I have seen for Bitcoin's intrinsic value.
Elliptic is a cryptocurrency surveillance firm. It stands to see significantly more client contracts if cryptocurrency exchanges are forced by governments to engage in extreme transaction filtering. That the harm this would do to cryptocurrency fungibility/utility would vastly outweigh any benefit from being able to more effectively starve Iran and Venezuela of funds - if this can even be called beneficial - is incidental to the impact on Elliptic's bottom line.
I have been waiting for the media to start to spin bitcoin as something only terrorists and criminals use. Wait for them to start pushing the FED coins as "safe alternatives".
I bet this is why Bitcoin is taking a big hit at the moment. Yes, there are many good reasons for that to happen and maybe it's for the better. But I would put my mouth where the money is that this is the actual reason. It's probably an attack organized by US/Israel against an income source of Iran.
Not a crypto person at all but I do remember when the last US president ripped up the Iran deal which afforded the International Atomic Energy Agency the right to inspect their operations and replaced it with... nothing. I think this is proof enough that all of the talk about Iran being a threat (to the US? to the world?) is vastly over hyped.
Now we’ve got warhawks, oil companies & the finance industry all working together with Iran as the bogeyman driving all their policies. Watch for Yellen or congress to drop some “bitcoin supports Iran” talking points any minute now.