There may not be enough gold to go around, but there’s enough gold for me :)
Comment on Trump’s Crypto Reserve Is Really Happening
jarfil@beehaw.org 4 days ago
Same misunderstandings as usual:
crypto transactions can be done anonymously
Except for a couple “anonymouse coins”, no they can’t.
KYC+Blockchain = full traceability.
asset with little proven real-world application that regular old U.S. dollars can’t already account for
Close. Consider the following scenario:
- USD is a US government IOU, same as every other fiat currency.
- Fiat money’s value depends on the trust in the credit it represents.
- Trump&co are destroying USA’s trust worldwide.
- External countries like China, have huge amounts of US credit… have given a lot to the US in exchange for a pinky swear.
- The US keeps emitting USD credit by manipulating interest rates, hoping to attract investors and greed/trust.
But what if the US were to default on its obligations instead, break trade agreements, break defense agreements… what would be a safe store of value then?
- Gold, will say some… but there is not enough gold to go around to represent all the credit currently tied in money, that was the reason to abandon the gold standard in the first place.
- Others will pick the Yuan, after all it’s the second largest economy GDP PPP… but really? Does anyone trust China? I doubt so.
- Euro seems much more trustworthy, but it will take long after Trump has utterly trashed the US economy, for the US to recognize defeat.
That leaves little more than fantasy money, with the stablest of them being: Bitcoin.
artificialfish@programming.dev 3 days ago
LukeZaz@beehaw.org 3 days ago
I don’t think Bitcoin qualifies as a “safe store of value” when it fluctuates like hell on a day-to-day basis and transferring it anywhere for any reason costs exorbitant amounts of money. Much as you or I don’t trust China, I think the powerhouse of an economy that it has will make it awfully enticing for investment purposes, and I don’t think the U.S. will have to “recognize defeat” for the Euro to replace the dollar, either.
jarfil@beehaw.org 3 days ago
There is no “safe” store of value, it always depends on demand; there is no single item with a constant demand. One would think that air, water, food, housing, etc. should be always in demand… but reality is showing how people are willing to sacrifice those for something else all the time.
Bitcoin transfers cost pennies on the Lightning Network. An argument can be made, that SEPA transfers cost exactly 0… also an argument can be made, that SEPA didn’t go all the way down to 0, until cheap crypto transfers became a thing. But SEPA is an Euro thing.
China has a 100% intervened market, there is exactly 0% security that any investment won’t go to 0 in an instant, by decree. There is a reason why Chinese people invested 30% of GDP in the housing market, allowing scammers to build ghost towns they never planned on completing… and then it all went crashing down.
The US sees the Euro as a competitor of the Dollar; for the US to buy a strategic reserve of EUR, it would definitely mean recognizing defeat.
LukeZaz@beehaw.org 1 day ago
If you don’t think “safe stores of value” exist, why did you pontificate on what you thought would become one?
Press X to Doubt. Defending Bitcoin in 2025 is certainly a choice.
You realize this happens everywhere, right? Housing is an extremely common investment choice, and ghost towns (or at least, a lot of chronically vacant homes) appear frequently as a result. I am once again left asking why problems like this only seem to get noticed when Chinese people do it.
Regardless, none of this changes what I’ve said; China is a superpower with a gargantuan economy that can’t be ignored. And it isn’t! Were it that the dollar died, China would be an enticing replacement for a lot of investors whether we like it or not. Many of whom would happily stomach the risk of government intervention in exchange.
I didn’t realize we were still talking about the U.S. government’s choice in investment alone! I had figured your initial comment had shifted this to being about the dollar’s power writ large, given that the U.S. government’s tactics as of late have been questionable on a good day and therefore not really worth speculating on.
But sure, the federal government is unlikely to give up on the dollar. That won’t stop it from imploding if they keep fucking up, and it wasn’t what I was talking about anyway.
jarfil@beehaw.org 1 day ago
Not sure where you get your propaganda from, but I refuse to engage with that whole twisted argumental line. I stand by what I said, I think it was pretty straightforward.