Bitcoin is a super way for frictionless transactions and for disassociating ourselves from the fraud, waste, and centralised control of commercial credit and legal tender monies. Most techies working on monetary solutions seem to think that the ideal currency is a globally uniform, frictionless unit in which transactions are quickly settled, with anonymity an arguably desirable trait.
However this thinking comes from the widely held assumption that money is a just a specialised, or abstracted commodity. Bitcoin itself is modeled on gold to be scarce and slowly discovered. We should remember though that commodity money is the money of the rich, and those that would be rich, because it bestows power on those who accumulate it.
And before we jump head first into the bitcoin economy, we should consider other designs of money also have a role to play in addressing the global crisis.
- Bitcoin has done very well so far running its program and supported by enthusiasts, but usually currencies need governance in order to respond to real world situations. one day there will be a heist and the technology will exists to revert it, but the decision making structures do not exist, and are not planned, as far as I know.
- The message of transition is that we need to relocalising our lives and our economies, but the implication of a frictionless uniform currency is that global trade can become ever more efficient.
- Within communities and in longstanding relationships, and amongst the poor, settlement of debts by transferal of a commodity is needed very rarely, free accounting money is much more useful.
- Bitcoin is a single system, which is very efficient, but diversity the opposite of efficiency is critical if we are to build a resilient economy, which means monetary innovation continues to be no less important.
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