I agree with the conclusion, and to a lesser degree, the argument.<p>The newish book Money (Jacob Goldstein) presents a compelling argument for why Bitcoin won't succeed as a currency; in the history of humanity, not once has a fundamentally new kind of currency been created intentionally. Specific currencies (for example, the US Dollar) were created intentionally as a currency, but when we're discussing new kinds of trading liquid wealth, its never intentional. It was always something that we (as a species/community) look back on and say "oh shit, I guess that's been a currency all along".<p>The book doesn't present a strong argument for why this is always the case, except to say that it always has been the case.<p>More tangibly; I think modern money theory (MMT) has proven itself to be a startlingly powerful tool in keeping our fragile society going. Many people are discussing cryptocurrencies in the vein of "we don't trust the Fed, they've been fucking with the US Dollar for too long". I tend to think that the world would look <i>very</i> different today if the Fed hadn't spent the past 100 years fucking with the US Dollar. Its very likely you wouldn't be alive, and that HackerNews wouldn't exist, and society as a whole would be significantly more "wild west".<p>Bitcoin, and other cryptos, are interesting as an analogue to Gold. They're horribly uninteresting as an analogue to the US Dollar, for the exact reason why people mistakenly and, frankly, stupidly, believe they <i>are</i> interesting; they're difficult/impossible to manipulate.<p>Additionally, I think the Electricity and Silicon arguments are profound. If Bitcoin reaches a similar level of money velocity to the US Dollar today, the network would consume more electricity than the entire planet produces. Land area the size of US states would have to be converted into power plants and silicon manufacturing facilities. The Bitcoin community attempted to enact technical changes which would make its transaction processing more efficient; it failed the vote. Because Bitcoin Monetary Policy is a democracy (of the people who can afford mining machines, which has coalesced to a handful of rich organizations, most of which are in China), even Fundamentally Good Changes can fail, because of misguided ethics, greed, etc.<p>And that, at the core of the argument, is why this "down with the Fed, down with centralization, up with Bitcoin" position is so insane. Bitcoin has monetary policy. This monetary policy is implemented as a pure, technical democracy. That's fantastic, except, 99% of people don't get to vote, and will never be able to, because votes effectively come down to "hashing power", which is expensive and only going up in price. Bitcoin was designed as a democracy, but in effect, it will create the most pure, cryptographically secure, cyberpunk corporate future. Like communism; looks great on paper, but that's only because the papers always fail to account for the most basic human motivation: Greed.