I wish more people knew about Bitcoin's connection to the bank bailouts. Bitcoin unfortunately does not have the best brand ambassadors. This week is a great opportunity to tell your friends about it, because it matters.
The 2008 bank bailouts were a major motivator behind the creation of Bitcoin. The first block ever mined even contains a reference to it: The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks. During the bank bailouts, the government just printed a bunch of money and gave it to the banks, around 700 billion USD. They did this because it was politically expedient, well really because they had to or the whole damned system would collapse. And the 99% ended up paying for the mistakes of the 1%. All of us were made to pay for the mistakes of a very small, incredibly powerful and wealthy segment of society who made reckless investment decisions. People lost their homes, their jobs, their livelyhoods, their savings, and yet not a single one of those bankers went to jail. Instead, they took the bailout money and gave themselves extravagant bonuses. Yet the problem is not new, throughout history, every nation that has ever failed, has had their currency end in hyperinflation. The temptation to print money is too strong. Perhaps it is something that should not be entrusted to politicians or even humans at all.
Satoshi, in his wisdom, created a system by which no new money could ever be printed. No corruptible, tempted authority could use it to turn on the money printer and rob entire generations of their wealth or force them to pay for wars they did not support. He made a currency which cannot be corrupted and cannot be hacked, with 99.9% uptime, with instant transfers across borders. It is neutral technology open to anybody with a phone or a computer and access to the internet. Which is much less than you need to open a bank account. Bitcoin doesn't care about your credit history, or whether or not you can provide a reliable mailing address. Bitcoin doesn't close on weekends and will never charge you exorbitant fees to use your own money. You never have to wait days for a payment to clear. Bitcoin puts you in charge of your money and nobody else. And it makes sure nobody can print away its value.
But then a bunch of people came along selling get-rich-quick schemes based on crypto technology, and everybody goes "crypto bad". Satoshi gave a gift to the world. He didn't stick around to get rich off it, he didn't use it for celebrity, he just made Bitcoin and disappeared. Thank you Satoshi for your gift to the world.
i already wrote it once smh
spoiler
They could have nationalised the banks, had the bankers sent to jailed and prevent commercial banks from gambling with depositor's money yet they did not because the state under capitalism works on behalf of the monopolists.
Or could it be that the nations which had economic issues suffered from hyperinflation? Cause and effect etc.
You do know the Government knows about the consequences. I wonder why Federal Reserve is constantly on about controlling inflation like its their primary goal.
Is it though? Because there have been various forks of Bitcoin. I think you are not understanding what money is. Money is used its used to reward people for their labor. Capitalists take a part of the productivity of the labor for themselves. This means those with more control over production has a disproportionate control over the resources. Those with more resources can buy ASICs and GPUs to mine more crypto than a homeless person, this will create inequality and the resulting consequences.
Yeah I wonder why Bitcoin forks exist and why exchanges and rich coiners get hacked so often. Could it be that there is more to stealing crypto than not being able to manipulate blockchain? Its almost like humans are imperfect and make mistakes.
And those without a phone, computer or internet can get paid in cash.
Uptime ultimately depends on the reliability of those who run the internet. Lets say someone cut all the fiber links between NA and Europe/Asia, crypto will fail. Its reliability is dependent on real things like network switches, fiber optic cables and routers all of which are imperfect.
You know what else can do instant transfers? PayPal, Card transfers and thousands of instant money transfer systems which exist. Bitcoin meanwhile can take hours to confirm a tx.
You dont a phone or internet to open bank account. You go to a bank branch fill a form along with an ID, there you have a bank account. Don't have a bank account? You can get paid in cash
Neither does most banks. Credit history is for obtaining credit cards and loans, not for opening bank accounts. Its why even children can open their own bank accounts.
Neither does cash. You can also have virtual addresses provided to bank and there are digital banks which don't even ask for that.
As mentioned earlier, neither does paypal. In fact, paypal and cards are faster than crypto in many cases.
Neither does internet banking. Bitcoin does charge fees, if you do a tx with zero fees there is a good chance itll never clear.
And nobody can stop someone from accumulating value in your wonderful utopia.
Yes, ghg emissions, no banking insurance, can be stolen very easily, slow and fluctuating value, easy to do price manipulation etc etc
Doesn't he have like over a million bitcoin? Your definition of 'getting rich off it' is selling it for real money. If lets say real money didn't exist, wouldn't he be the richest person on the planet?
Finally I want to ask, what do you think of age of consent laws?