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No, all, including the USD, gold or what have you are subject to P+e attacks. Currencies are consensus, and you can, in theory, bribe a majority of people to turn against that consensus at no cost. So for instance, I could print a lot of bills and call them dollar2, and go to everyone in the world - except Bill Gates, and say: "Hey, I have this new currency, it's the dollar2. Tell you what, I'll give you a dollar2 for every dollar you have. I'm going to do that to everyone except Bill Gates. I don't like him, so I'm going to keep half of his share of the dollar2, and burn the other half. Here's the catch, you have to commit to only recognizing dollar2 as the real currency for the next week. If I succeed, you'll be a little richer because of the deflationary effect of burning half of Bill Gate's share of dollars. If I don't succeed, you can go back to using the dollar, and I'll pay you a dollar for your trouble." So in a very narrow, restricted way, the "rational" thing to do is to go along with this plan, and there we go, the dollar have been taken over. Obviously, such a plan would never work, but it's similar to the arguments against most proof-of-stake or even proof-of-work systems. |