Quote from: NotATether on Today at 03:34:35 AM

Quote from: Snowshow on May 11, 2022, 12:05:13 PM

Quote from: NotATether on May 11, 2022, 11:47:18 AM

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False. Quantity is valid electronically as it is physically. Take your bank account for example. It *only* exists in numbers - your money is not backed by an appropriate amount of bank notes, because that's how bnks work. Your money is backed by debts - which are statements of amount owed to you, and are hence also numbers.

Debt in crypto is the appropriate amount of US Dollars (or whatever other fiat currency) that was used to buy the bitcoins in the first place. This is what backs the quantity of BTC.

Cheap philosophy. Tell me, what is the institution, organization, person or entity that ows you something when you hold a number next to your address? Well, none. Debt is in the banking system, recorded in the balance sheet of the banks, backed by mortgages and other liens, and paid by borrowers in goods, services or labour to holders of banknotes or deposits prior to every loan repayment.

Then you clearly have not studdied how foreign currency exchange works. How about educating yourself before misinforming others.

I have, because I've been in other countries.

Now when one person exchanges one currency for another that is technically buying the first currency using the second currency, or selling the second currency to buy the first currency. The value of the currency being bought is backed by the currency that is being sold, on the basis that it has value.

That's why all governments in the world (except for one*) are holding US Dollars in their central bank reserves, in addition to other priceless items such as gold. Because thy are giving a value to the US Dollar, and thus ts value backs the value of their own cryptocurrency.

*The eception is the US government itself, whose dollars are backed by, well, nothing, ever since they abandoned the gold standard in the 70s.

You, as a person who seems very knowledgeable in how economies work (otherwise it would make your essay sound ridiculous), must already know something about how modern banking works, and that is Banks do not keep adequate reserves of their own cash to back the numbers in their bank accounts.

This is called fractional bannking (and it has taken more than one bank to bankruptcy)

Now, it would be absurd to say that the money you have in the bank is written off just because the bank has no assets to back your bank accoount balance with[/b]

But this is not the case, instead your money is backed by the mere assurance from the bank that they will pay you back your money on a later date (It is similar to the US government's dollars being backed by nothing, when some country wants to buy dollars for their central bank).

How this relates to cryptocurrencies: All cryptos are a form of currency (otherwise you would not be launching this rant). that can be bought with foreign currency and other types of cryptos. However, the value of this crypto can be confidently be stated as being backed by the foreign currency used to buy it. Why? because the foreign currency stored as a profit in crypto exchanges (most of it) is the culmunative value of all the crypto currency that has been bought on that exxchange.

Add this culmunative value of exch exchange, and you get the total value for exch cryptocurrency.

That's why crypto goes up one day and down another day ("like numbers", because behind those "numbers" - i.e. electronic money which you believe (like bank accounts) to be zero). Because behind those "numbers" [actually units of currency] are traders on some exchange selling or buying it on some exchange.

Ok, this is how you, or generally people who educate themselves by reading conspiracy theories, view banks and how they rationalize their participation in this scam. That what you described is a classic misconception about banks. Now I am going to explain to you what the facts are.

Banks are in the business of granting loans to borrowers, that is, creating debt. When debt is created this must be evidenced somehow. For that purpose deposits or banknotes are used. As you can see, no debt - no deposis or banknotes. The latter are just record of something that exists, like when Tesla products a car and then evidence its existence with record in the accounting books. Once the debt is in existence, people invest in. They invest by exchanging goods, services and labor with the borrowers for the deposits or banknotes. Finally, debt needs to be paid. That's why banks use mortgages and other liens to force the borrowers to repay the loans. In that way the borrowers return goods, services and labor to people and settle the debt. So, this is a legitimate business of creating debt, investing in debt, and setting debt. Debt is asset because people(holders of deposits or banknotes) benefit at the debt settlement. Asset means that people benefit from it, either today, tomorrow or in the future.

In the Satoshi's system on the other hand, there's no asset. All you have is protocols and database that use name BTC and a numbers to create the illusion of asset and in that way trick people out of their assets. Once they are tricked, they can benefit only if new investors voluntarily enter the system. Which is a textbook definition of a scam. So, there's no currency in the system. Currency is money and money is asset. Saying that there's currency in the system is spreading disinformation.

Now, you can accept the facts I just described. Or you can use misconceptions about banks to try to rationalize the scam you're participating in.