United we stand, divided we fall - the coming rise of cryptofiat

[cbeast]

At least this confirms that PoS is fiat.

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[David Latapie]

At least this confirms that PoS is fiat.

Not a all. PoS is a technology, like PoW is.

Making it mandatory to use this particular crypto would make it fiat. Fiat means "let it be done" (like fiat lux) and, on the particular topic of currency, it means that a currency have been established as legal by decree.
Any currency that has value from obligation (decree) instead of actual value is fiat. If a government can hardfork at will and not let users decide if they like it or not, this is fiat. Banknote or cryptographic token, this makes no difference. And the exact protocol (PoW, PoS, PoB, PoI, PoT...) makes no difference.

[cbeast]

At least this confirms that PoS is fiat.

Not a all. PoS is a technology, like PoW is.

Making it mandatory to use this particular crypto would make it fiat. Fiat means "let it be done" (like fiat lux) and, on the particular topic of currency, it means that a currency have been established as legal by decree.
Any currency that has value from obligation (decree) instead of actual value is fiat. If a government can hardfork at will and not let users decide if they like it or not, this is fiat. Banknote or cryptographic token, this makes not difference. And the exact protocol (PoW, PoS, PoB, PoI, PoT...) makes no difference.

Making it mandatory to use this particular crypto would make it fiat.

This can't be done with PoW. It can only be done with PoS. You can't force anyone to use a PoW because you don't control it. Your little tinpot dictatorship will be outgunned by your superior enemies that will overpower your miners and reverse their transactions. It would be a tactical error to use PoW in an oppressive regime. PoW is for the free man.

[presstab]

There might be a misunderstanding of PoS if one considers it fiat.

[cbeast]

There might be a misunderstanding of PoS if one considers it fiat.

PoS is distributed not by random miners competing for a lottery, it is distributed by people (either directly or using an anonymization algorithm) that can choose to take (optionally anonymous) irrevocable capital control. Fiat is also distributed by people that maintain capital controls. So far there is no significant difference between paper money and PoS except that foreign agents can't counterfeit PoS.

I know that people are working on trying to make a fair PoS system, but it is turning out to be a wild goose chase.

[btcxyzzz]

good read. as for plan of action, actually one guy can really bring us a victory. read on: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=784545. i'm dead serious, satoshi can save the world. i would do that if i was him.

[BitAddict]

I agree. I always thought this will happen sooner or later.
It still needs more developement, of course.

But you need to take in mind, at that point with cryptofiat will be extremely easy to buy or sell bitcoin or any other crypto instantly. So bitcoin would probably benefit from it, being an alternative.

[tss]

great read. thanks.

[David Latapie]

This can't be done with PoW. It can only be done with PoS. You can't force anyone to use a PoW because you don't control it. Your little tinpot dictatorship will be outgunned by your superior enemies that will overpower your miners and reverse their transactions. It would be a tactical error to use PoW in an oppressive regime. PoW is for the free man.

That's why my sources are using PoS for their premined

There might be a misunderstanding of PoS if one considers it fiat.

I agree this is not Cryptoland definition of fiat (fiat = traditional money) but more a technical definition of fiat (fiat = mandatory currency - I will develop this more on the Monero Handbook I am writing). Plus "cryptofiat" conveys the right imagery. People seem to immediately understand what this is about.

I agree. I always thought this will happen sooner or later.
It still needs more developement, of course.

But you need to take in mind, at that point with cryptofiat will be extremely easy to buy or sell bitcoin or any other crypto instantly. So bitcoin would probably benefit from it, being an alternative.

Joe Sixpack could choose between a governement-backed, arguably sure, very widely adopted "normal" money (dollar, euro...) and a tiny rebels-driven, scandal-ridden complicated-to-pronounce cryptocurrency. It is easy to see the outcome.
The tiny 1% of people choosing Bitcoin (or Monero ) will not matter at all in the grand scheme of things.

[presstab]

This can't be done with PoW. It can only be done with PoS. You can't force anyone to use a PoW because you don't control it. Your little tinpot dictatorship will be outgunned by your superior enemies that will overpower your miners and reverse their transactions. It would be a tactical error to use PoW in an oppressive regime. PoW is for the free man.

That's why my sources are using PoS for their premined

There might be a misunderstanding of PoS if one considers it fiat.

I agree this is not Cryptoland definition of fiat (fiat = traditional money) but more a technical definition of fiat (fiat = mandatory currency - I will develop this more on the Monero Handbook I am writing). Plus "cryptofiat" conveys the right imagery. People seem to immediately understand what this is about.

I agree. I always thought this will happen sooner or later.
It still needs more developement, of course.

But you need to take in mind, at that point with cryptofiat will be extremely easy to buy or sell bitcoin or any other crypto instantly. So bitcoin would probably benefit from it, being an alternative.

Joe Sixpack could choose between a governement-backed, arguably sure, very widely adopted "normal" money (dollar, euro...) and a tiny rebels-driven, scandal-ridden complicated-to-pronounce cryptocurrency. It is easy to see the outcome.
The tiny 1% of people choosing Bitcoin (or Monero ) will not matter at all in the grand scheme of things.

I just looked up the definition of "fiat money" in my favorite dictionary of economics (former econ student here).  I tend to like their definition far better than the typical wiki/bitcointalk definition. There is a dichotomy between money - either commodity money (asset backed) or fiat money. Fiat money is a type of money that has no intrinsic value. This would mean all national currencies as well as most digital currencies are in fact fiat under this definition. Interesting that the article doesn't really say much about the method of issuance.

If anyone wants to look it up, it is in the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, and you probably need to access it through an school or institution that has access.

[David Latapie]

I just looked up the definition of "fiat money" in my favorite dictionary of economics (former econ student here).  I tend to like their definition far better than the typical wiki/bitcointalk definition. There is a dichotomy between money - either commodity money (asset backed) or fiat money. Fiat money is a type of money that has no intrinsic value. This would mean all national currencies as well as most digital currencies are in fact fiat under this definition. Interesting that the article doesn't really say much about the method of issuance.

Glad to see I'm closer to the real definition of fiat money than the bitcointalk definition of it.

Excerpt from the Monero Handbook:

The dollars or euros or yuans or whatever you are using are fiat money (fiat in latin means “let it be done", like in fiat lux). A fiat money is a money that has no intrinsic value (“let’s give it a value by decree”, one might say).
[...] The oppositve of a fiat money or money without an intrisic value is a commodity money, or money with an intrinsic value. Gold is such a commodity money since it is used in jewelry or electronics. Note, however, that the intrinsic value change overtime, depending of scarcity (which in turn relates to utility, itself being contextual).

I never understood why Proof of Work (or Proof of Stake, Transaction, Importance...) should make a crypto a commodity money. There is NO intrisic use of cryptocurrency tokens - even the most "intrinisically useful cryptos" (Primecoin and Riecoin) are still far from commodity money. So, if Proof of Work is not asset-based (commodity), then it is fiat. Period. Or we invent a third category (not a big fan of it).

On the other hand, as I note it in the Monero Handbook, even value is relative. Dioxygen is worthless in everyday life because of its abondance and despite its critical usefulness. But on restricted environment like submarines or space stations, it is much more valuable. Same goes for cigarettes when shit hits the fan. Even gold: Native Americans did not value gold as much as Conquistadores did. So, how reliable is this "commodity money" thing if even critically-important stuff like dioxygen may be worth much less than utterly-superfluous stuffs like a Lamborghini?

tl:dr: for me, fiat and commodity are mostly pointless ways to categorize money. There is stuff people want and stuff people don't. That's all.

[inBitweTrust]

"United we stand, divided we fall"


Great. How does Monero help Bitcoin instead of bleed off marketshare? Why couldn't the features within monero be built around the Bitcoin blockchain as a sidechain or with counterparty?

[cbeast]

I never understood why Proof of Work (or Proof of Stake, Transaction, Importance...) should make a crypto a commodity money. There is NO intrisic use of cryptocurrency tokens - even the most "intrinisically useful cryptos" (Primecoin and Riecoin) are still far from commodity money. So, if Proof of Work is not asset-based (commodity), then it is fiat. Period.

Tell that to the miners that invested small fortunes in mining equipment that  their PoW is not asset based. That's like that song "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits. Just because you don't understand how it works only makes you sound foolish.

[Beliathon]

Very dramatic, OP. Good for entertainment and not much else.

This is a war and we are soldiers

I know overweight armchair revolutionaries love to think of themselves romantically, but reality check: There is no war, and we are not soldiers. This is plain old technological evolution, which you are needlessly dramatizing. It can be delayed and danced around only for so long before the inevitability of this new reality asserts itself.

So stop infighting and look at the real threat.

There is no threat. Again, this is technological evolution. Cryptofiat is a joke, it's not going to happen, even if it did, who would buy in? What's the government going to do, force us to trade our dollars for cryptodollars at gunpoint? I don't think so.

To quote an excellent comment from Reddit:

I've got to be brutally honest here: most of you seem to have a walmart playpool's worth of depth when it comes to understanding what bitcoin is and what it's primary value proposition is.
Bitcoin is not yet money. For the love of disco, let me repeat: It is not yet a currency. It does not fulfill the three main requirements of a money to a high degree (medium of exchange; yes great. store of value; not so great. Unit of account; not at all . . . yet) And this unit of account aspect is key.

How retarded or misleading can one be; to suggest that a commodity, or a would-be-money, is somehow fundamentally flawed, because it does not yet enjoy a great deal of liquidity and widespread adoption, or because it's exchange price with the current money is volatile!? I mean: how else exactly do people imagine this phenomenon could possibly take place? . . .that one day, some magical company called Bitcoin Inc., should just pop on the scene and declare their unit in their digital blockchain ledger to be worth X amount, and it will just be so, because they declare it?

Only governments can do this, because governments have guns, and a slightly insane population of state-worshipers who believe that their proof-of-violence kind of money is somehow a good thing for society. Anyhow, regardless of how you feel about anarchy. . . it does not change the fact that valuation of a commodity is either forced and enforced. . . or it is emergent on a market. It takes time, to say the least. It cannot happen all at once, and it is going to be a messy, ugly, fits-and-starts, snafus, highly dis-equitable distributions initially, frauds, thefts, evolution of best practices and safeguards, etc. A process of getting a large segment of the population to not only wrap their heads around a new technology to some extent. . . but to build out infrastructure to make it easier to use, and to have a large enough network of people and businesses demanding and accepting bitcoin.

Bitcoin cannot exist without the blockchain. . . but the blockchain is bitcoin. There is no separating the two. The level of ignorance and/or dishonesty to not contemplate and comprehend this fact, before so vociferously decrying the money aspect of it, is staggering. One particularly ridiculous inconsistency of his argument, is that the exact type of "separation" of Bitcoin and bitcoin which he insisted upon (for uses such as remittances which he gave the example of), are already in existence, by way of companies such as Coinbase and Bitpay, which he lambasted. There is no such thing as the coin people! It's a fucking ledger. No community utilizing blockchain technology as a decentralized network (i.e. not a single entity utilizing it internally and later transferring fiat balances between branches), can make any use of changing entries in a ledger unless the shares or units have value. If they have no value, then no remittance network is possible, because there is no objective metric by which the sender and receiver could possibly determine how many units of the blockchain ledger should be assigned to the particular amount of fiat being sent, and how much fiat should be received at the other end in correspondence to those units of blockchain ledger. The blockchain must have value, and indeed the units must have price. This is inseparable from most any use of blockchain technology. People need to get over their centralized, give-it-to-me now thinking; and understand the price discovery period which is going on with bitcoin.

Bitcoin has the network effect, which is growing, and it is that network (of people) who give value to the bitcoin network, and subsequently the shares of that finite amount of units internal to the ledger. That is what allows the network to be useful. . . for anything.

I'm sorry, but if you think that this man brings up any valid points whatsoever. . . .please, please; just stop right now. Get off reddit. Please don't buy any bitcoin. Please go back and read the Satoshi whitepaper. Please go study economics. . . especially monetary history and the history of development of commodities into market-based currency. You owe it to yourself to more fully understand this amazing technology, and the economic and political implications of it's properties and usefulness. Money is memory. Money is societal memory. Having control over the issuance of money is the ultimate power over society, and it is a power far too great to entrust to governments and central banks.

Please understand where this man's rhetoric is coming from: Bitcoin "the payment network" alone, is not threatening to anybody. Bitcoin as money, is extremely threatening to a lot of groups. There is a concerted effort to distract from this much more important aspect of bitcoin and to try to neuter it into being only a payments network, but also stifle it's development into end-to-end use as it's own unit of account; as money.

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2i5oim/omg_watch_this_and_tell_me_mainstream_media_does/ckz51s1

[David Latapie]

I never understood why Proof of Work (or Proof of Stake, Transaction, Importance...) should make a crypto a commodity money. There is NO intrisic use of cryptocurrency tokens - even the most "intrinisically useful cryptos" (Primecoin and Riecoin) are still far from commodity money. So, if Proof of Work is not asset-based (commodity), then it is fiat. Period.

Tell that to the miners that invested small fortunes in mining equipment that  their PoW is not asset based. That's like that song "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits. Just because you don't understand how it works only makes you sound foolish.

Read my sentence again. I said that I never understood, not that I disagreed. Please refrain from making me say what I didn't, this is a sure-fire way to start ambiguity and flaming, which rarely leads to something productive.
Back to topic. So you are saying that Bitcoin is backed by mining rig? This is a honest question.

Cryptofiat is a joke, it's not going to happen, even if it did, who would buy in?

Mmh, let me guess. The 98% of people who don't care about cryptocurrency and just want to continue using their credit card? They would not even know they are using cryptofiat, because it would be even less visible than a change of banknote.

Thanks for reminding us all the three uses of a money (medium of exchange, store of value and unit of account). But I profundly disagree that one cannot separate blockchain and Bitcoin. Even disregarding all altcoins (which are blockchains but not Bitcoin), there are a lot of non monetary uses of blockchain (voting, smart contracts, directory, etc... you know the drill).

As a final note (and this is not directed to someone in particular): please this thread free of "retarded", "moron" or other derogatory terms or sentences. I will not answer to such post, even if they are interesting.

I'm happy to see people are considering the option (since they reading). Discussion is mother of improvement.

[Beliathon]

But I profundly disagree that one cannot separate blockchain and Bitcoin.

This is not a matter of opinion, but fact. An insecure blockchain is a useless blockchain. The value proposition is the only incentive for miners to secure it. The end.

And since you're pushing some shitty altcoin, "monero", you should probably read this.

[David Latapie]

A very interesting reply on the Reddit with particularly insightful remarks; one about the future use of mining (which reminds me how patent transitionned from a defensive weapon to an offensive one) and the second about an essential limitation of PoS.

"mining will no longer be done for profit, but [...] power."
[...]
PoS coins, fiat coins, always end with centralization because, as I have said, once someone, or some nation, gains majority possession of the units of money, they control the currency forever.

(beliathon, I was going to reply to your comment, but I said earlier that "I will not answer to [post using derogatory term or sentences], even if they are interesting." (and shitty is such a term). Now if you edit to make the sentence more neutral, I would happily reply.)

[Beliathon]

(beliathon, I was going to reply to your comment, but I said earlier that "I will not answer to [post using derogatory term or sentences], even if they are interesting." (and shitty is such a term). Now if you edit to make the sentence more neutral, I would happily reply.

Your altcoin is bad, and you should feel bad. All altcoins are temporarily existing, short-lived bitcoin parasites. You are ticks riding on the back of the Bitcoin dog.

You will go broke if you keep your wealth there. I don't need any reply from you, my parasite-pushing friend. I'm just stating facts here. I'm a messenger of reality.

A dog does not "unite" with the ticks riding on its back, it simply waits for them to die of their own short lifespan and carries on.

[jbreher]

Great. A new all powerful bogeyman. Cryptofiat.

What are the essential characteristics of this new fictional threat? I note they have not been described anywhere up thread.

[Beliathon]

What are the essential characteristics of this new fictional threat?

-Imaginary
-dramatic
-fud