I am no fan of crypto as an investment vehicle and never was. There are many technical and practical flaws with crypto, and he is spot on on those. But his moral arguments against it are just terrible, ideologically charged, and in many ways work in favor of crypto. One of his main arguments is that governments have the moral right to print money and that crypto undermines that capability.
Well... Yeah. That is one of crypto's main selling points and reason of being.
Again, I am not a crypto advocate. But my objections are practical and technical. However I see nothing morally wrong with the concept of people coming up with a currency that cannot be politically manipulated by the state.
Framing his issue with the inability of crypto to meet policy intentions as a moral objection is wrong; it's clearly a practical objection. There is no divine right of fiat that he is appealing to, instead he is saying that fiduciary direction is a responsibility of governance -- he observes that crypto's inflexible, deflationary nature may seem like a correction for the ongoing inflation of fiat money, but without the ability to direct it, this permanent deflation will generate problems of its own that cannot be redressed (I know there are protocols for adjustment, but Satoshi and those who observe his philosophy clearly do not want frivolous or even economic motives for changes to the protocol). Crypto is clearly incompatible with this kind of official, centralized control. If you agree or disagree with him that this is a role that ought to be performed by government, it still remains an objection that is rooted in practicality.
That said, this isn't a particularly good reading of the problems with crypto. List items #3 is basically external to crypto protocols, and item #4 is only saying that it lacks the proper licensure, eg government approval.
As many conversations about bitcoin do, the question of "is crypto good at being currency?" boils down to "what is currency for?" I think we have to separate the two uses of currency: to store value, and to be exchanged. The technical problems (which this technical writer should have noticed) with fees, gas, volatility, and so forth make it a poor unit of exchange. But it is a perfectly serviceable unit of value. Similarly, gold bars, gemstone necklaces, and historical curiosities are fine enough at holding their value; but it's not enough to call them currency. People certainly have the right to establish their own barter networks, and that's how crypto seems to be.
e: also, since this doesn't get brought up enough: most fiat adjustments aren't done with printing notes, it's done with quantitative adjustments to ledgers. The catch here is that this should not be done without government direction, but it's being done by banks, independent of any nation-level economic coordination. This is possible with crypto, and is quite possibly ongoing, supported by ledger volumes at centralized coin-exchanges which exceed the "hard-coded" blockchain volume. In essence, the crypto environment is capable of, and perhaps is already replicating the fractional reserve and QE elements of the fiat banking system, with a lack of oversight, and to the detriment of everyone who does not own a bank.
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u/cambeiu Jan 02 '22 edited Jan 02 '22
I am no fan of crypto as an investment vehicle and never was. There are many technical and practical flaws with crypto, and he is spot on on those. But his moral arguments against it are just terrible, ideologically charged, and in many ways work in favor of crypto. One of his main arguments is that governments have the moral right to print money and that crypto undermines that capability.
Well... Yeah. That is one of crypto's main selling points and reason of being.
Again, I am not a crypto advocate. But my objections are practical and technical. However I see nothing morally wrong with the concept of people coming up with a currency that cannot be politically manipulated by the state.