> What's exciting is that it is the first digital, global money that isn't protected by the proof of violence of the state.
I completely agree that the US govt and all super powers before it have made many mistakes, and shed much blood.
But the world isn't a utopian bubble free of conflict. The US military doesn't bestow value to the dollar because it goes around nuking every country in sight...it bestows value because it this huge potential of force keeps more peace than we would otherwise have. It's the same rationale for why a 51% attack on bitcoin is so unlikely: those with the ability to attack, also have the most to lose. Mutually assured destruction was not a new concept that started and ended with the cold war. It's fundamentally game theoretic and is why cooperative strategies are so powerful.
If you take into consideration all of the atrocities of the past 50 years, even the truly horrific scars on the US military industrial complex, this has been the most peaceful and prosperous period in all of humanity by a large margin. Could it be better? Of course, and we should strive for that.
But the same underlying reasons that the dollar is considered safe are the same forces that allow bitcoin to be successful. The fact that the world has come together and cooperated on a massive information sharing network called the internet is an example of something that, ignoring the tech advancements, would have been unfathomable mere centuries ago.
I completely agree that the US govt and all super powers before it have made many mistakes, and shed much blood.
But the world isn't a utopian bubble free of conflict. The US military doesn't bestow value to the dollar because it goes around nuking every country in sight...it bestows value because it this huge potential of force keeps more peace than we would otherwise have. It's the same rationale for why a 51% attack on bitcoin is so unlikely: those with the ability to attack, also have the most to lose. Mutually assured destruction was not a new concept that started and ended with the cold war. It's fundamentally game theoretic and is why cooperative strategies are so powerful.
If you take into consideration all of the atrocities of the past 50 years, even the truly horrific scars on the US military industrial complex, this has been the most peaceful and prosperous period in all of humanity by a large margin. Could it be better? Of course, and we should strive for that.
But the same underlying reasons that the dollar is considered safe are the same forces that allow bitcoin to be successful. The fact that the world has come together and cooperated on a massive information sharing network called the internet is an example of something that, ignoring the tech advancements, would have been unfathomable mere centuries ago.