[pixie_]

Show me a fiat currency the appreciates over time and maybe I'll look at it differently. Have you ever thought of that the root of our over-consumption society might be caused by the need to keep our money always moving to prevent it from depreciating?

[Jd]

This is a very complicated and interesting topic. Many economists believe that inflation is necessary to keep people from hoarding. Spending, either in the form of acquisition or investment, is necessary to keep the economy juiced up.

In other words, your criticism would be considered a design feature by many economists. Some even considered adding a fee (demurrage) instead of facilitating inflation, encouraging you to use whatever money you had. This would be akin to a 1% asset tax instead of an income tax.

[stch2]

Why do you think a currency that naturally appreciates over time is desirable?

[tedunangst]

Sure. Bitcoin is a fiat currency that has, so far, generally appreciated.

[pixie_]

It's not fiat because you can't create Bitcoins from nothing. If you can then create one. I dare you to create a single Bitcoin.

[tedunangst]

ooo, I can play this game. I dare you to create a single US dollar. ha! proof that the US dollar isn't fiat.

[pixie_]

Not really, you missed the point which was the government can create new dollars at will. Nobody can create new Bitcoins on a whim.

[Retric]

The rate of bit-coin creation is only fixed over time, you can create a new bit-coin 'out of thin air' if you add enough computing power to the network at the right time and in the short term. The compensation is to slow the rate of bit-coins over the next cycle not shorten this cycle time. In theory you could crate more bitcoins than the 'long term cap' if you had enough computing power.

There is also a voting mechanism that can change the Bitcoin protocol, the NSA for one probably has enough computing power and bandwidth to flat out 'take over' the network and give themselves arbitrary bitcoin amounts.

PS: Voting is a basic problem with all network based protocols. If enough machines say this is what happened then that's what happened.

[pixie_]

I could 'create' dollars too if I had a lot of resources the forge bills and coins. The point is any government can fuck with a currency.. what's new? There are plenty of ways to defend against attacks.. I was around during the P2P client wars. I know all about it. Back when the RIAA was trying to disrupt file sharing networks there were trusted/signed black lists of bad hosts to exclude from the network.. and that is only one defense type, there are many.