This is so sad. Crypto (including Bitcoin) serves as a money funnel while takes from economically insecure middle class retail investors and pours it into the pockets of the tremendously wealthy.
Not exactly the same. Fiat currency like the USD redistribute a lot of wealth from users into the pockets of the central bank/government through unlimited base inflation, which they control. Bitcoin does not have that, its inflation rate is fixed by the protocol and only ever falling. In April this year it will fall to 0.875%.
Monetary inflation (i.e. in it's purest form increasing the monetary base by "printing" more) is not necessarily the same as what you probably mean by 'inflation rate'. You're probably talking about price inflation, using CPI. Those are linked but not the same.
Bitcoin "prints" around 1.74% currently and it's going to drop below 1% in April. The USD, although one of the more stable fiat currencies, is worlds apart from that. Looking at official Fed data you can see the base has been inflated by massive amounts just in the past 3 years alone! An increase of way over 60%!
Exactly. "Inflation rate" usually denotes price inflation not change in monetary base or similar measures. More money in circulation can mean price inflation, but it doesn't need to.
Sure. It's just that it generally does since the market as a whole understands scarcity value. The fact that having a much larger supply of something decreases the value of the individual unit is intuitively understood by most. The general public tends to price everything in relation to their home country's currency. They don't see the value of the currency falling, they view it as goods getting "more expensive". They do not usually think of fiat currency as a thing that's traded globally against other currencies and goods, but traders and businesses understand this.
Of course, the fact that the recent spike in monetary inflation coincided with a large hike in consumer prices over the past three years (which working class people have definitely noticed) as well as an asset price explosion, could have just been coincidence ;)
That assumes that in increase in monetary base is not matched by an increase in goods and services - you cannot just ignore that part. Also, scarcity as such has no value whatsoever.
FX rate evolution is linked to many things (and sort of a random walk anyway) - I'd say you typically need quite high inflation/rates to see devaluation in line with uncovered interest rate parity type views, short-term it could also work the other way around at times.
I think they suck just like crypto, these are all mechanisms rigging the economy in favor of the already wealthy. If we don't unrig it we will eventually get civil war. Popular immiseration eventually leads to upheaval.
Checkout the book - End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin
I don't really want to start a debate on how HFT produces real-world value, but just consider that if these things you talk about are really useful and valuable, they might also provide competitive salaries to attract people?
What pays the most only loosely correlates with what produces the most value for society. It's easy to skim a percent here and there off hundreds of billions in volume shuffling around without the owners of those billions caring much, but it's much more difficult to see how that, on the whole, actually improves the condition of your neighborhood.
What if the work these folks do to increase market efficiency does produce real-world value, as slower verifiable economic information would increase periods of uncertainty and price slippages?
Or the HFT engineers producing research and products that speed up general compute, such as accelerating SHA and ED25519 signature verification, so that their trading shops get information faster?
I wonder if there are actually a lot of third-order, downstream effects that society gets by paying engineers to just make computers and telecommunications faster.
Slippage in the price of cabbages at my corner market? I don't think so.
There's very good evidence that as the finance sector grows to be a larger portion of the economy (which it very much is compared to 50 years ago) that increasing inequality goes along with it, as the profits made in the finance sector are mostly rent seeking from the rest of the economy. You could also interpret it as a private tax on all other economic activity.
Just look at UK... Largely based on finance sector and it does look pretty bleak for those outside... And I am not even sure if that is yet the end state...
There is some value there, but the cut they get is likely too large already. Then again it is all just fake numbers...
Crypto is one of many. Just like SPACs, crowdfunding and the entire VC landscape are always finding millions of ways to dump on retail after they made their 100x on unprofitable startups (90% of them have failed) founded by their friends racing to the IPO finishing line.
This is why they have to continuously raise money and breathlessly celebrate it on social media and even on this site as if "raising capital" into the Series H is a good thing.
Sorry to disappoint you but it isn't going to stop.
At least with SPACs, they're securities and you can see their finances before you invest. They're also regulated by the SECs and audited.
With the vast majority of crypto, people who start them don't intend for them to be useful. People who start them intend to scam retailers. That's it. They make up a shitcoin, throw flashy parties, spend on marketing, and then sell their shitcoin on retail. Retail knows it's all a scam too but it's a game of musical chair.
How does bitcoin "take" money from anybody? How would you classify an economically insecure investor? If they are economically insecure, where do they get the money to invest?
Food for thought, when there is currency inflation where do you suppose all the wealth goes and who is it taken from? Here I think we can use the word "take".
I agree with your point, but I do think he raised something you're not addressing. Because i'm paid, bank, etc. in USD inflation means someone else (whoever is given the first access to the new money) is in effect stealing some of my wealth. I don't really see how this is true with Bitcoin. Nobody is forced to engage with it
I think nobodyn is forced to engage with it precisely because it's not the popular currency. If it were, than the same would be true of bitcoin: its inflation would mean someone is stealing from you (your boss, for adjusting your wage too slowly).
You just described the current fiat system, where the top gets to benefit from the money printer while the middle class loses its purchasing power over time
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