Quote from: traincarswreck on February 09, 2015, 02:31:47 AM

You don't come in a thread, and not read any literature and tell Nash or Satoshi how economics, cryptography, math, gold etc. works.

Quoted for future ironic value.

Look, my point was that ultimately the symbiosis is not between currencies in different geographic areas, or of different states, or between a fiat currency and an index like the CPI, or between a fiat currency and rationing coupons, or between a fiat currency and tax liabilities, even though it is clear that any of these schemes (each attempted at one point or another) is capable of *approximating* what Nash termed "ideal" money.

The real symbiosis is between current value and future value.

That is the reason gold failed. Paper is a better currency than metals, so gold no longer has current value. Even though it once was close, gold is no longer "ideal" money.

This is, then, the reason that Bitcoin was designed to have both current value and future value. Bitcoin ultimately doesn't work when future value (the 21m coin limit) is hampered. It equally doesn't work when current value (the ability to transact) is hampered.

All you have to do is rotate your argument, or John Nash's argument or whatever, around a little bit and see that it's the same thing -- it's just time instead of space. And Bitcoin works better, in theory.

Now, the problem, in this debate, is that we are no longer really arguing about the properties of "ideal" money. Bitcoin no longer exists in theory, in some academic journal. It exists in the real world, where arguing about the properties of "ideal" money gets you labelled a crackpot. Where promoting it gets you labelled a criminal. Where actually implementing it gets you labelled a pedophile. And, in most cases, in the case of Hal Finney and probably Satoshi as well, it eventually gets you hunted down and murdered by the people who would really rather not see anything close to "ideal" money ever emerge again.

So, you know, "welcome to Bitcoin" and all, "we're glad to have you," but we're a little beyond the point of arguing about "ideal" money here. What we're arguing about, instead, is the difference between "slightly-less-than ideal" money with a "58,000 transaction per second" limit, and "far-less-than-ideal" money with a much lower transaction rate.

The only reason to choose "slightly-less-than-ideal" money is because "ideal" money doesn't seem to be technically feasible at the moment. And the only reason to choose "far-less-than-ideal" money is because there's a good chance that even "slightly-less-than-ideal" money could end up not being politically feasible.