6 years ago
3
Why you can’t cash out pt 1: Why Bitcoin’s “price” is largely fictional
I’m looking at the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index, and at this moment it says $19699.46. Whoops, it’s $19691.76! Now it’s $19690.70! And so on. This number is marketing for Bitcoin. It’s meant to give the impression that Bitcoin is a solid tradeable object with an orderly market structure, that you can meaningfully price it down to the cent, and that all this is fine and sensible. But this is an illusion.
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This just kind of reads like a "this is what's wrong with a completely free market", i.e. regulation of some sort is needed. Which is true.
Besides that the volume/speed thing makes BTC not usable at all as a currency. Maybe other cryptocurrencies will be able to fix this part of the problem, but the non-regulation thing will plague most, if not all of them. I wonder if there's any theories in fixing those that doesn't just end up circling back around to 'use a bank'.
Regulations exist for exactly for this kind of thing. But you're right, how can it be done right? Catch 22 any way you look at it.
Accidentally downvoted you at first, whoops. Catch 22 indeed! You develop an alternate currency because you want freedom from {government, bad actors, censorship, institutions} but any way you look at it you end up replacing it by something that runs into many of the same issues. I guess it's just inherent in trading things for value - people will want to twist it to their own gain, overruling the freedoms of others.