So those are some possible answers to your questions. Have you thought of possibilities of how this could work? It seems like with the technological advances we have today, we should be able to create a money that allows people to retain value over time without relying on buying another commodity to do it.
That’s the right question. But a stranger doesn’t need anyone to trust them to get started. If they sell something and get paid in IOUs, they can turn around and spend those IOUs right away. They’re the one doing the trusting, not the other way around. Credit only comes in if they want to spend more than they’ve earned, and that grows as they build a track record. If they want it sooner, they can put up collateral and get a matching credit line, like a secured credit card. No ranking oracle needed.
And no money starts from nothing. It either starts with a group that already trusts each other or with a government forcing it through taxes. Bitcoin had the cypherpunks and early miners. WIR started in 1934 with a small group of Swiss businesses. You start where trust already exists and it grows from there as the networks overlap. That’s how it happens naturally for the most part anyway. We now have the technology to expand this on a bigger scale.
You probably can’t get to zero hubs, but you can get lots of small ones instead of a few big ones. Local businesses acting as connectors and competing on fees, kind of like the Irish pubs during the 1970 bank strike. Lightning already shows routing like this can work.
None of it gets trust to zero, Bitcoin included, but it keeps what’s left visible and limited. The goal is for someone to get $100 worth of money today and be able to buy the same value of goods with it in the future. For companies and individuals. And governments would have to NOT tax “gains” caused by inflation.
Collection: credit limits based on collateral plus track record, so newcomers start small. Collateral in escrow releases automatically on default. Vouchers put some of their own credit on the line. Someone can still walk away, but the loss is capped.
Index drift: don’t trust one publisher. Use several, publish the raw price data so anyone can recheck it, take the median. And lock each IOU to the methodology version it was written under, so changes only hit new IOUs. Existing debts can’t drift.
Thanks, that’s a fair challenge, but I think it assumes a different design than the one I’m describing. You’re right that any token whose supply gets expanded or contracted to hold its value steady needs someone running that rule, and that someone becomes the trusted party. That’s the stablecoin and central bank problem.
What I’m proposing doesn’t have a supply to manage. Nobody issues units. Credit is created when two people agree to an IOU and disappears when it’s paid, like original Ripple. Stability comes from what the IOU is written in, not from anyone controlling how much money exists. Chile’s Unidad de Fomento has worked this way since 1967: nobody manages a supply of UF, the value is just published daily from a price index.
There is still trust in whoever measures the index, and I don’t pretend otherwise. But that’s a smaller and more checkable risk than dilution. A bad index could shift value between creditors and debtors, but it can’t create new money and spend it first, and anyone can compare it to real prices. Collection and dealing with strangers are handled by trust lines, vouching, and collateral, not by the protocol.
And Bitcoin doesn’t fully remove the actor either. You’re still trusting the code, the developers, and the miners. So I’d agree no system gets trust to zero. The question is whether the trust that’s left is discretionary or rule-based, and how much damage it can do.
You seem to be thinking too narrowly. A solution would have to combine the best of bearer money and trust money. Bearer money is hard to dilute but rewards whoever holds it first and swings in value. Trust money has no issuer and no windfall, but struggles with strangers and with collection.
The drawdown might not be over (although I admit it looks that way). Of course introducing big finance flattens things out, but that doesn't necessarily lead to any of your other conclusions and everything has been flattened as far as returns so far (which was happening before ETF and continues after)
Right but it comes with the same issues that gold or any other "commodity" based currency has. The ease of use and the ability to store and send are amazing advances. But the goal is for someone to have $100 worth of purchasing power today be worth the same $100 worth of purchasing power in the future. No "commodity" (virtual or otherwise) that needs to be purchased should be necessary to make this possible with the technology available today.
Yes, but again why are we tying the "backing" and the ledger entry together when we have technology to separate? The solution isn't to replicate gold but to surpass it. All we did here was to change the venue but keep the same thing with the same issues.
What do you mean "helped reach $126k"? Maybe, that's speculation. It reached $69k without any help (from $19k on previous high).
It did need to be everyday tender to matter. Who has used gold as money since it stopped being everyday tender? It's ONLY used as an inflation hedge. Aren't there better ways to hedge against inflation? Also, why are we still tying ledger entries to "objects" (digital or otherwise)?
So you think the ETFs will have a much, much greater affect on things than they have almost 3 years ago? Seems silly they wouldn't have had more of an effect already. Sure we had a 54% drop rather than 70% plus (if that was the bottom), but other than that?
So 2% of US adults (maybe) used crypto for payments in 2025. So what is the use case? Hoping it keeps appreciating at a rapid pace as an inflation hedge for companies? Really. That's what the revolution is about? lol
Sure, but if the percentages shrink then you don't get $400,000 base case. That's not rocket science. Be consistent for god's sake.