@G raham . Interesting ideas, but I'm not so sure.
In terms of people with smart phones but without bank accounts.
BTC is one of many solutions. There might be better solutions. Mobile Money Apps appear to be working well for Kenyans without bank accounts.
See:
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21420357/kenya-mobile-banking-unbanked-cellphone-moneyBuilding on the issue of lack of banking... lost passwords are a part of life. In BTC land, you're fucked if you lose your password. With a traditional bank account you can get that back. I'm out about 70 XRP cause my ex would break/lose her phone every 6 months and the app was on her account (and the password we wrote down isn't recovering the money). This is a huge issue.
As for cold-storage... everything is going to have issues. Although,
I agree it currently seems pretty safe from hackers. However, it still has other issues.
https://enterprise.ledger.com/blog/cold-storage-isn-t-flawless.don-t-learn-it-the-hard-wayI think your El Salvador example is incorrect.
As for moving money into corrupt countries, yeah, I agree with that. It is one way to do this.
@RCB3 These are interesting ideas, but I'm not convinced and there are a few things that I need to you explain a bit more.
BTC has incentive to find the cheapest energy, not necessarily the greenest energy (see
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/09/old-coal-plant-is-now-mining-bitcoin-for-a-utility-company/). What percent of BTC mining is done via green electricity?
In terms of comparing BTC to WellsFargo (a company I have disdain for since the Maloofs own a huge portion of the bank and a lot of private prison stock), you've simplified the role of the bank to just transferring and storing money. It ignores the business loans, personal loans, financial consulting/advice (not that I'd trust it), and so on. Not to mention, the benefit of direct interaction with customers while they are banking. And, in your example, we've ignored all the extra BTC equipment being manufactured, shipped around the world, and so on. If you have a broader calculation on the environmental effects of both that'd be interesting. I've presented the data that 100K Visa transactions use far less energy than a single BTC transaction. This is a huge difference, especially as BTC does so much less than a traditional bank.
In terms of gold, I haven't argued gold was good. It, like BTC, might be good as an irrational place to store value, but neither work as a currency. Why would I ever give you a loan in BTC or gold when I know it'll be worth more tomorrow? How does our current economy operate and continue to expand without people loans? How hard would it be to pay a BTC loan back when it is constantly worth more than you borrowed?
My question to you, is why is some inflation bad? What would actually happen if currency didn't change in value? The whole point of capitalism is to turn money into a commodity/service/whatever and then back in more money... why bother with the commodity part, if I have more wealth by doing
nothing? How much would this completely fuck poor people in terms of power in society?
This argument about just printing money... How do things work if our economy goes from 10 trillion to 20 trillion and we don't increase the amount of money in circulation? You pointed out, we've printed a lot of money recently. Ok, our economy has also expanded dramatically as well.
Also, when did Keynes fall out of fashion? As someone on the left, who sees the benefits of government intervention in the market to protect individuals, to keep the economy moving, and so on, why would I want the "market" to be completely unregulated?
Do you have stats for the BTC wealth being spread out? This would be super interesting, but I'm doubtful.
G raham's example is probably incorrect. El Salvador seems to have negative inflation, which is something BTC supporters seem to like. And, "very fiat (government backed) currency in the history of civilization has failed. " What exactly do you mean? As far as I can tell there isn't a single country in the world that has money backed by gold. And, what civilization in the history of the world hasn't failed?
Afghan. This is false dichotomy between traditional banking and BTC. There are other options. The argument doesn't have to be pro traditional banking vs BTC. There are other options that may be far better for the world.
And, why exactly are the Afghan people fucked? Is it their shitty gov? Or the American Gov freezing its assets and no longer pouring money into its economy? Also, what if the Taliban or some authoritarian gov were immune to sanctions or freezing of their money in the global economy? Would that be ideal? Do we want the govs of say, N. Korea to be able to spend on anything anywhere outside of the traditional flow of money? (A counter point here would be to allow Cuba to trade without worry of the US embargo on them and whoever is fool-hearty enough to trade with them.)