To put this in context, Varoufakis' idea plan of how to solve the greek crisis after closing the banks was as follows: His team would break into the central bank to steal the tax id archives and issue a new "parallel" currency of IoUs that might be on blockchain, but would be completely controlled by him. So obviously the idea of currency not controlled by a central authority is not one he would accept.
Long story short: Varoufakis dislikes the inflexibility of Bitcoin's supply. Varoufakis wants currencies with flexible supplies safely under the control of technocrats like him. This should come as no surprise. What is surprising is that anyone would think differently.<p>What Varoufakis doesn't get is that he has no control over the future direction of Bitcoin. It's in large part an escape hatch for those who are fed up with technocratic debasement of money. Neither Varoufakis nor anyone else will be able to prevent people from using Bitcoin. They'll try, but lose enormous credibility when they fail.
Are the long term goals of crypto-enthusiasts for crypto to completely replace fiat currency?<p>I can’t imagine a world without fiat currency, for the simple reason that governments operate in a deficit. A world without fiat currency would imply that all government workers are paid with crypto, all roads are funded with crypto, the military is funded with crypto, etc. And since this currency is limited and deflationary, this would imply that the only people who can fund these governments are the crypto whales. This sounds like a dystopian nightmare.<p>Further, it seems obvious to me that many of the decisions made by the Ethereum community are only intended to benefit wealth hoarders and early investors (PoS and the deflationary aspect). Their decisions don’t seem to have the larger global community in mind, at least in an authentic way. They seem to see it, simply, as a store of value.
I have read in a few places (example below) that Bitcoin hash power is highly concentrated. Given that Bitcoin is controlled by hash power it would be good to know who those people are.<p><a href="https://nypost.com/2021/10/26/bitcoin-ownership-concentrated-in-a-few-hands-new-study/" rel="nofollow">https://nypost.com/2021/10/26/bitcoin-ownership-concentrated...</a>
> Massive bubbles denominated in Bitcoin will build up and they will burst just as they did in the 19th century under the Gold Standard.<p>Does anyone know about bubbles under the gold standard? Seems interesting and is a piece of history I've never read about before.
Wait, isn't it obvious that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are:<p>fully unchecked capitalism<p>Socialism is (at least in theory) about regulating the market in a way which puts social aspects in the foreground to maximize benefits for the society as a whole even if it's at the cost a a few.<p>This requires regulation.<p>Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are all about avoiding regulation.<p>Also in cryptocurrencies in the end the wealthy have all the power, because they can use the wealth to dominate the mining and with this can control which changes are accepted by a blog-chain and which are not (this is a bit more obvious for PoS chains, but applies to PoW chains too).<p>Socialism is also about every natural <i>person</i> in society (theoretically) having the same power, which is in direct conflict with how modern crypto currencies work.<p>So IMHO crypto currencies are an aspect of hyper capitalism pretending to be something else.
The Decentralization Movement, in the Web3 sense (three Internet prongs: consensus, messaging, information persistence), is (or ought to be) ultimately a vehicle for fostering subsidiarity[+], working opposite to the efforts of socialism to subordinate the individual to the state, <i>and</i> opposite to the extremes of <i>laissez-faire</i> capitalism.<p>[+] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity_(Catholicism)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity_(Catholicism)</a>
varufakis should reade graeber's Debt. the most glaring problem of bitcoin (and the whole crypto world) is that it has this naive "scarcity view" of currency whereas it is an in-your-face reality that a most important role of currency is to boostrap a <i>credit system</i>.<p>cryptobros have an obsession with inflation and rates side of government regulation and they seem to be completely oblivious to the credit system side of regulation - the two-tier private/central bank etc. maybe because they actually have no clue how the current system works)<p>so besides the inflation/deflation challenge I have yet to see any proposal how one could have stable decentralized unregulated credit markets and would be quite interested if people have serious relevant references.
Oh wow this is the Syriza minister of finance.<p>>In other words, I shall argue that Bitcoin is not fit for purpose under capitalism, or as a vehicle toward transcending capitalism, but something like Bitcoin will characterise monetary systems in a future world free of private banks and share markets.<p>Wow the open letter he is responding to is a socialist who believes bitcoin is a good idea for socialism?<p>Bitcoin is literally the antithesis to socialism. It seems clear to me in this article that Yanis knows this. Greece didn't get control over the euro. They couldn't print lots of money to generate significant inflation to hide their debt. Socialist governments basically dont function without heavy inflation making their people poor.<p>Something that has never happened in history is a fiscally conservative balanced budget socialist government with fully controlled inflation.
In a way bitcoin is a socialist's dream since it allows tracking of all transactions and tracing of all assets so taxation and surveillance can be nearly perfect.
I'm Venezuelan. All I can say is: I know, and that's why I dedicated ten years of my life to help Bitcoin succeed, mostly in the form of Bitcoin Cash these days. I oppose socialism and understand how Bitcoin can help prevent elitists from gaining control over the economy.