Control? Surveillance? Continued deprivation of wealth for the majority of the population?
Who exactly would benefit of that and how? "The elites" is not enough. (These things need to be discussed in depth or not at all.) As an example why I don't believe in a simpllistic "the elites want to keep us poor!" assumption: Increasing wealth of the middle classes creates also market demand for the products of the corporations run by the elites, so the elites should be happy with wealth "trickling down".
IMO the reasons and mechanisms behind the "deprivation of wealth" (which IMO exists, as inequalities are rising in many countries) are very complex and not even the elites understand them well. Inflation is one mechanism of those, but there are many other mechanisms too, which would be something for an entirely different thread.
Do you think that it is just a historical coincidence that we have extremely high taxes and high monetary inflation? The system is designed to prevent you from making big achievements, it is not designed to enable people to make huge jumps in wealth and status.
Taxes go up and down depending on the color of the current ruling party. I don't see any "system" behind that. Inefficient tax spending is of course a problem, and sometimes corruption is a driver behind that.
There is a war on privacy and freedom going on in Europe, and because of this I can't assume that their intentions are honest or benevolent.
The problem is that "they" (those wanting to restrict privacy) include parts of the middle class and even of lower classes. The social media KYC stuff has really scary levels of approbation in the general public. And that's why this kind of thing is scaring me much more than a CBDC. I could downplay it as an "European problem", but the more countries adoption such stuff, the more popular it becomes in the rest of the world.
Towards CBDCs, in contrast, people are indifferent or skeptical and thus there will be no public pressure to politicians to implement it. And that's a good thing, even if I don't share the "scare" made about CBDCs. IMO CBDCs should simply not be necessary. In China the e-yuan for example has low adoption, as everybody is accustomed to the private solutions like Alipay.
Step 4) Make the solution mandatory.
Banks will resist this, because if you don't pay electronically with their solutions, you're much less dependant on having a bank account. And here is the flaw in the logic of those scared by CBDCs, in my opinion.
I also don't think CBDCs will become the most popular payment means because they are a bit late, as banks are now offering instant and free transactions without VISA/Mastercard intervention in most countries, and that also benefits merchants. Still they try to make people using their card solutions. And so there is still a window of opportunity for Bitcoin-based solutions to "make a dent" with almost fee-less techniques like Lightning.
But as I will always repeat: BTC volatility is still too high. It's possible that this window of opportunity for Bitcoin (and thus for the gradual deflationary scenario I mentioned in previous posts) will thus close in a couple of years if solutions based on instant transactions without fees become easier to use. I think this may be inevitable at some point, but the Visa/Mastercard complex is surprisingly long-lived. Bitcoiners should almost pray for Visa/Mastercard/Paypal staying a bit longer around
Regarding "Social credit" scores, they are already widely implemented by private firms and I don't think this will change for the good nor for the bad.
Lastly, you have to understand that a government mandated solution can never be the same as one that is done by a 3rd party in the legal sense.
Yes, data protection is a reason why I would probably not use a CBDC. Even if they say they protect the data with a two-layer system where the data is controlled by a separate organization as the "digital Euro" project is planned, and even if this is correctly implemented - a leak, intentional or unintentional, would be devastating. So yeah, you should not interpret my posts about being less scared about a CBDC than other privacy threats to that "I like CBDCs".
You tell those that have the power and those that teach the future generations in dogmatic universities that it is easily debunked, not me.
The more people know these simply logics, the better. And even if only 10 people are reading this thread, it's still "something".
I wonder what is the value of all the resources that can be gained from a Greenland annexation.
I am even skeptic of this example bringing real benefits for "the US". It's not that "resources" are like a treasure and will instantly make the attacking nation rich. Resources require exploration and exploration is risky because you don't know how the demand curve evolves. The most that can happen is something like the oil companies' stock surge after the Venezuela "intervention". But there are many experts questioning that that will really traduce into real long term benefits.
My theory about Greenland is that it's a desperate attempt of the Trump government to recover popularity by fostering nationalism. And of course to scare the EU for diplomatic reasons.
Regarding sanctions' effects, the situation in Europe has more to do with increased competition from China and also their weak positioning in the "tech" (IT) sector (e.g. AI) than the sanctions effect. What I've read is that instead the sanctions reduce the price of Russian oil/gas about 10% which is a significant effect on income. I however won't go too much into detail here in this thread, as I think it's not really that relevant for the topic and we would need good data sources here.
Is that so bad though or is it merely a reflection of just how valuable Bitcoin is compared to an inflationary currency? Right now we only have some cases where we can draw from real world data from but they are not going to be that accurate for what we have here -- places where 2 fiat currencies co-exist or co-existed, and where one was preferred over the other for some reasons.
Well Argentina is such a case, US dollars are widely circulating, but are used mostly for very large payments (properties and cars). However, as I wrote in the previous post, this is not necessarily a problem for a wider Bitcoin adoption (or "deflationary currency adoption") due to the other advantages.
I would say that the really beneficial advantages only really matter to a subset of merchants. Sure, lower fees are always good but stuff like censorship resistance is not what most people need or value.
While I think that merchant adoption does not depend on it (and I think the subset who benefits is very large), I think there will be a constant percentage of users getting convinced by censorship resistance and other "typical Bitcoin" features, and that could convert users who only use Bitcoin for payments because it's beneficial for them, to convinced users, at a low but constant rate, and thus accelerate the process at least a bit.
What have these protests actually accomplished? Can you give me recent examples where they led to really lasting changes rather than a simple shift in the leading political party?
The EU "client side scanning" policy (messenger companies having to scan user devices for illegal images) which was dropped is a surprising example, because the average public was initially indifferent to it, but civil society organizations gathered support and were able to push the German government to oppose this measure, and even if others like Denmark did favour it, the policy for now is dead or will at least not be discussed for several years. The danger is not gone but it would have been devastating for privacy. I think this is a much better precedent for Bitcoin restrictions than everything related to fuel prices. And remember there were even Bitcoin restrictions which were planned in the EU, due to the energy use of PoW, which were also dropped due to resistance from the local Bitcoin organizations and other parts of civil society.
