I’m just too conservative (the English word, not the meaning as in Republicanese).
For a currency to be viable, it should be backed by something. The days when a country’s currency was completely backed by gold and silver are long gone, but other factors play a role. Does the issuing authority have desirable assets? Desirable real estate? Food? Water? Security? Are they available to anyone able to pay in the local currency?
For me, a currency needs to be tangible, as well. I even hate credit cards. Mine have been hacked often enough. Crypto comes across to me—and I freely admit that this is because I don’t understand it—as a phantom, created out of nowhere, and only negotiable under limited terms. I can’t go to the grocery store and buy $200 worth of food and hand the cashier one sixth of a bitcoin. The cashier wouldn’t take it, and I wouldn’t know where to get it.
Maybe it would work in a fully cashless society, but a cashless society seems to me to be an entity most vulnerable to hackers as well as government abuse. I remember what the government of Cyprus did a few years back. They had a budget crisis, so they just electronically raided the bank accounts of the people of Cyprus. *poof* crisis solved, not even a need to say efharisto poli.
I understand that to some, the fact that cryptocurrency is beholden to no nation is part of its attraction. But if, for any reason, from a power outage to more sophisticated threats, access should be denied, to whom does one go for redress? Some central bank in Cyber City?
I find a currency that is not accessible whatsoever without a computer hooked up to the internet to be one very elite currency indeed. But, again, that’s my cautious conservative nature. If I see some street musician playing a lively Irish reel on a street corner, if I could even figure out how to toss her or him a few bytes into their hat in five seconds, can they buy lunch with that? At least, if I toss in a $10 bill, they can go buy a sandwich.
= new reply since forum marked as read