[Mertax]

I also have no horse in this race, never owned any BTC/crypto, but I feel like the wastefulness is made to be too big of an issue. Seems like it can be solved eventually.

So if it wasn’t wasteful, my question is, does a decentralized currency provide any real value? From my limited perspective it seems like it would solve some problems with things like inflation, free market transactions — but it also probably creates new problems. I guess my question is, would the world ultimately be better off or worse off if a decentralized currency was the predominant world currency?

[peyton]

Probably better—one nation wouldn’t need to maintain its currency as the world’s reserve currency. Demand would drop, increasing that nation’s export competitiveness and reducing inequality.

[Mertax]

I know that’s what bitcoin proponents would say, and this appears true to me on the surface. I also see huge incentives for governments, banks, payment companies, tax companies etc. to NOT want this to happen. Some for self preservation and immoral reasons and some for legitimate humanitarian reasons and to prevent anarchy. It’d be nice if someone could paint the unbiased vision of what the future world would look like in that scenario.