Here is another economics/policy question that I was asked to address at Quora.
The US used quantitative easing to deal with one monetary crisis, and a bailout of the automotive and banking industry to deal with another. If nations, economies or individuals begin to embrace a decentralized currency, they will inevitably shift away from government issued money. Won’t this hinder a nation’s ability to intervene in a crisis?
Answering this question goes to the very heart of the ethics and politics of cryptocurrency.
Yes. Without centralized control over monetary policy, government options for intervention in a money crisis would be severely limited. But this fact may lead to a false impression…
First, most money crises begin with government, and so there are likely to be far fewer monetary emergencies.
Here’s how the options would be limited:
- Governments would have fewer ways to manipulate a public resource. They will still have the ability to budget, tax, borrow, build infrastructure and even wage war. But…
- Governments could no longer amass debts that outstrip their ability to be accountable. That’s because they can no longer covertly tax via rampant printing of money.
- They could not “raise the debt ceiling” without demonstrating fiscal responsibility, because they no longer control what everyone uses as money.
- Government spending (and intervention, such as quantitative easing) would have to be balanced by revenue. Borrowing would be limited to creditors who truly believe in their will and ability to repay debt.
All of these “limitations” are good things—even for the governments and banks involved. It only seems limiting, because our understanding of what is money is tainted by millennia of authoritarian systems.
A capped, open source, transparent, traceable, immutable, decentralized, distributed and permissionless money supply is both fair and more robust than Fiat paper, promises or credit.
Let’s explore that last bullet, above. The point is subtle—yet, it is the key to answering your question…
Every individual, household, business, state and NGO must balance its books. If one cannot cover bills, they must find a creditor who believes in their ability to get back to fiscal health. Even nations are eventually forced to balance their books or seek a bail-out from neighbors.
But, this is not the case for the United States. We have had an ability whitewash our largess and declining industrial productivity by printing more money. How has this been possible while retaining a strong dollar?
The US dollar has been the world’s reserve currency for 47 years. This development was one of the most clever, yet potentially damaging developments of the post war order. It led other nations and consumers to treat it like gold (even though the link to any underlying asset or promise was severed by Richard Nixon in 1972).
Now that other nations are shifting this special status away from the US, we are gradually becoming just as susceptible to a house-of-cards collapse as Venezuela, Argentina, Zimbabwe, or Germany between the wars. Our massive consumer market cannot protect us. Eventually, we must ship the fruit of our sweat and intellectual bounty to serve others. After all, for more than a half century, we have been giving them pieces of paper (dollars or treasury bonds) for their TVs, underwear, sneakers, toys and sheet rock.
This unbalanced trade must be reversed. Building walls at the boarder and stiff tariffs are desperate acts that fail to recognize cause or containment. They are certainly not the way to restore a robust economy. There must be a better way for nations to get their houses in order. Fortunately, there is.
A distributed currency built on math, trust and transparency—rather than the integrity of transient elected officials from one nation is far less susceptible to manipulation, inflation or any form of shock. It won’t solve all problems immediately, be it will prevent us from getting further mired in a debt that blows up like a balloon.
The decoupling of a money supply from government will yield benefits that are difficult to imagine today. Money doesn’t need authoritarian oversight like airline safety. The situation is more analogous to the deregulation telephone and package delivery services. Without those blockbuster decisions of the 1980s, we would not have Smartphones or the internet today.
Ellery Davies co-chairs CRYPSA, hosts the New York Bitcoin Event and is keynote speaker at Cryptocurrency Conferences. He sits on the New Money Systems board of Lifeboat Foundation. Book a presentation or blockchain consulting.
I can think of at least three methods for logging the websites that people on your network visit. In the explanation below, we will focus on #2. For more information, dig into the notes at the bottom of this answer.
At first, this demand was driven by clever marketing and crying children in the week before Christmas. Demand was driven by a parent’s love. But at the peak of frenzy, demand shifted to buyers without children who felt certain that they could profit from selling the dolls that they snatched up first.
A share of stock represents ownership in a corporation. A municipal bond represents a lien against a city—or the fees generated by an infrastructure project.
Like cars, homes require ongoing maintenance. But, most people weigh the maintenance cost against the benefit of having shelter, rather than comparing it to their gain or loss in value.
So, if we can also make it fungible, divisible, portable and difficult to counterfeit, then it meets most of Aristotle’s requirements for a functional currency. Theoretically, this can lead to widespread demand.
With the rise of the automobile and power plants that burn fossil fuel, oil became a reserve currency of the 19th and 20th centuries. But there are two problems with it holding value over the long haul.
This perfect asset would derive trust from mathematics and crowd-sourced consensus. It would not require that anyone believe in a government, a bank, a land mass, or the uncertain supply of precious objects. Authenticity could tested easily and its value transmitted instantly. The history of each unit would be completely transparent. With free tools, anyone, anywhere could trace its history of moving from one owner to the next.
I was wrong. Most crypto wallets have not sufficiently evolved to counter the risks and complexities of everyday scenarios —not even for expert users. The problem isn’t the fault of any one vendor or hosted online service. It is that all of these gadgets, apps and services have not gotten together behind a single set of risk standards to a point where they become simple, standardized and compliant-friendly in the real world.
Choose an exchange that is compliant (fully licensed and follows regulations for all activities). They must be well capitalized by reputable investors and subject to random, outside audit. The two mentioned above belong to this very small class of exchange-wallet services.
A hardware wallet, like the Trezor Model T (left) or Nano Ledger is the safest way to keep your private keys. A hardware wallet offers enhanced security, privacy, control. But it surrenders the advantages of a custodial relationship listed in the bullets above.
It has nothing to do with how many individuals can own bitcoin or its useful applications. It simply means that—if widely adopted as a payment instrument or as cash itself—the number of total units is capped at 21 million. But each unit can subdivided into very tiny pieces, and we can even give the tiny pieces a new name (like 
With Bitcoin, we will never face that problem. Will adopting Bitcoin as legal tender interfere with a government’s ability to tax, spend or enforce tax collection? Not at all! But one day, it will decouple governments from control of their money supply. And that will be a marvelous thing—for both individuals, organizations and governments. It will force nations to balance their books—just like every household, business, NGO and municipality.
Online trading is easier and safer than via ATM. Even user anonymity is better online than standing in a public place and using a kiosk equipped with a camera.
Pundits point to Facebook’s release of a whitepaper and framework for Libra, a proprietary coin. They speculate that the Libra announcement legitimizes crypto. It’s possible, but Libra is a very different animal. It’s neither decentralized nor permissionless. In fact, it is 
In his 
For now, I don’t get frustrated about accepting a low fraction of speaking gigs. Interest in Bitcoin, altcoins and especially the blockchain is growing rapidly. Although I can only flip a fraction of show producers, there are four or five big shows in my field-somewhere in world-every week. For now, I am happy to land just a few.
For example, in addition to my nephew, 
Persepolis was far across a desert from Tehran and other modern cities. So, the army created a fortified highway caravan with rest-stops for bathroom breaks, refreshment and communication. This may seem like our highway rest stops, but there were no highways in this region. It was all created for the one party.
All bitcoin wallets are all digital—even a paper wallet, whether a character string or a QR code. Conversely, an exchange may use “physical” wallets to host client assets, individual application wallets, or they may simply keep records of client assets that are stored, collectively, in their own master wallet.
2. Deciding Factor
In the 1980s and early 90s, many Colombians fled to Venezuela. At the time, the Venezuelan economy was booming. But now, the country is a poverty stricken dog, due to the colossal mismanagement of strong man, 
The US and Brazil have taken in 75,000 Venezuelans each. Peru has taken in far more than most countries with 414,000 immigrants. Yet, Columbia has taken in one million so far—and they are granting border crossers legal status. Many Columbian citizens are opening their homes, taking in whole families. Surprisingly, even the overcrowded border town (with massive migration at the port), enjoys booming economic activity.
Republican friends, I identify with you. We don’t agree on every issue of the day, but I have been a registered Republican—cut from the Reagan mold. I believe in conservative economics, draining swamps & limited government. We share these goals.
But one-wheel power lacks traction and skid control. And it becomes dangerous whenever one wheel has less grip on the terrain. That’s where a differential comes into play. Furthermore, rear-wheel drive tends to shove a vehicle into each bump and hill rather than pulling it up and over obstacles. In the past 40 years, most cars have been redesigned to power the front wheels rather than the rear wheels. This not only improves handling, it helps in snow and on uneven terrain.