"They very fact that powerful, rich fat-cats want to eradicate disease[1] and provide eduction[2] is reason enough for me to support spreading disease and remaining ignorant."
While a lot of people repeat the proverb that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", extrapolation like that is not deduction and can often be incorrect. A better phrase may be "the enemy of my enemy is a possibleally".
Unfortunately, the fact that those who currently abuse our economy want to kill Bitcoin doesn't remove Bitcoin's deflationary[3] nature. Support by certain enemies doesn't necessarily make this a political struggle, either.
[1] Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, many others
[2] Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, many others
[3] I suggest that anybody wishing to demonstrate their ignorance of basic economics by asserting that deflation is "good", should instead spend their time contacting a organization like those in [2], who may be able to provide financial assistance, because something must be limiting their assess to a freshman-level macroeconomics class.
Why rant about deflation and throw insults about "freshman-level macroeconomics"?
Those topics have nothing to do with powerful defenders of the status quo attempting to smother innovation before it has a chance to work out the bugs.
Because the those "defenders of the status quo" are RIGHT in this case, even though the idea of an uncontrolled crypto-currency is something that would do society a lot of good right now.
Just not bitcoin.
The travesty of all this is that the bitcoin True Believers - so desperate to make it work - are making such a target of themselves, we now have people trying to ban all crypto-currency[1]. That might be a worthwhile fight if bitcoin actually stood a chance of becoming any sort of competitor to the dollar, but because an idiot guaranteed it would deflate, that goal can never be achieved. Instead of disrupting government-based currencies, locking in deflation made bitcoin dependent[2] on external, stable money.
This is a failure to understand this basic econ, not a "bug". In fact, many bitcoin evangelists try and use deflation as a selling point, placing them only a hair above "intelligent design" on a scale of stupidity.
Listen, I want as much as anybody to see something break the status quo where banksters get to run everything. Do you want to guarantee they keep the dollar? Do you want to scare those banksters into cracking down on not only on bitcoin but future alternatives as well? The fight them.
Or do you want support the larger goal of a non-government currency? If so, you need to realize that they are partly right in this case, and bitcoin needs to be left to die, so we can focus on some new currency that learns from these mistakes, and isn't tied to the dollar.
I agree. It was already pretty obvious that Bitcoin and other such crypto-currencies are disruptive to central banks. But now the world's 3 largest powers wanting to ban it, is very similar to how the largest incumbents react to disruption - they try to fight against it as long as possible instead of adopting it. And they lose everytime.
>But now the world's 3 largest powers wanting to ban it, is very similar to how the largest incumbents react to disruption - they try to fight against it as long as possible instead of adopting it. And they lose everytime.
Actually they've managed to suppress tons of things.
In fact, there are tons of disruptions that never made it. Except if, in hindsight, one calls disruption only the things that actually won in the end (in which case it's a tautology -- of course all disruption wins in the end, if disruption is only what wins in the end).
So the "they lose everytime" is a little too optimistic.
A tsunami is highly disruptive to central banks as well; it can happen with no warning, and it usually causes so many simultaneous insurance payouts that the entire financial industry is impacted. So banks should adopt the resulting floods?
If we're talking dubious similarities in behavior, I will point out that the people passionately supporting Bitcon seem to have a very cult-like behavior, where they defend the cause even to the point of justifying away its obvious flaws. As a True Believer, they fail to see how absurd their justifications have become.
Thank you, Senator Manchin, for reminding the world that this is a political struggle, not a get-rich-quick scheme.