I don't really know either. Maybe you're right, but as a (maybe ridiculous) counterpoint, what benefit does it give a government to have their own currency? I think the main benefit is not having to rely on another government to keep it stable... or to avoid the subservience that follows from having to rely on acquiring said currency from another government. For most countries now practically I think this means 'not giving the US complete control over our politics and not having to buy USD from them'.
Are there any other benefits? If not, wouldn't adopting bitcoin be an easy solution to monetary policy while avoiding this issue? Or am I missing something?
It's a big risk. But, to answer your second question, its a public ledger. Its significantly more conducive to surveillance than cash. Just punish people if they send money to an unverified address.
I think that's a gross possibility, and I hope no governments take this measure, but I don't think it would be difficult.
I conceded the point that he hasn't looked into it with 'fair enough' lol. Regardless, informed is relative. I don't think Bill Gates knows more on bitcoin than I do. His status as an authority figure is uninteresting, because we can find many authority figures that disagree with him.
I doubt they would just roll over yeah. If you consider the dollar as a weapon/tool for US hegemony, bitcoin functions as almost like a terrorist entity. Not clear what to do with this information
Yeah but good luck convincing people to move next to sources of energy so cheap it would be wasted otherwise (rural west texas, rural china). If bitcoin becomes the dominant global financial system, securing it will be a worthy use of energy.
Fair enough. But for every bill gates we can find a mark cuban, michael saylor etc who are extremely excited about bitcoin. So I still think it is uninteresting.
Maybe true depending on the energy source. I've heard it argued also that bitcoin will become the 'purchaser of last resort' for energy. For example, fracking companies often just burn off natural gas they find while looking for oil... instead, this gas could be used to mine btc. Also well documented that a lot of bitcoin operations in china are fueled by hydroelectric sources.
The promise of violence is free until realized though.
I don't want to hash them out, plenty of arguments from the leftists or linux people for example. Free software, exploitation of workers. Whatever. The argument itself is arbitrary, I'm just saying that he's a controversial figure