pull down to refresh
0 sats \ 5 replies \ @fourrules OP 5h \ parent \ on: Is tokenisation a bad word in bitcoin maxi circles bitcoin
I'm not ignoring that at all, in any way. When a person or institution loses power then do it by choice, they don't give it up freely, they just lose it. Circumstances change, the ground shifts beneath their feet, the road runs out and they hit a wall.
The exorbitant privilege of the US government is ending. This is not surprising, it's a system only 50 years old, an aberration, a blip in financial history, a fleeting moment.
That moment is nearly over.
And none of your comments on China logically infer that the yuan will be adopted as a world reserve currency or medium for international settlements, given the exorbitant privilege this would give to China, which has already demolished everyone else's manufacturing base.
China won't have a choice, no more than they had a choice of adopting the US standard. They'll try gold, obviously, but settlement is slow too slow for modern economies and inevitably a new gold standard leads directly to a bitcoin standard, whether the CCP likes it or not.
It is necessary for YOU to think in a different way to understand that the reaction of the incumbent system obviously meant that Bitcoin had to become a store of value before a medium of exchange, but a store of value that has monetary properties will inevitably become a medium of exchange, and then a unit of account.
If a Bitcoin Standard does overcome the state power imperatives that fiat money supports, then a very different economic and monetary model would develop, but people will always bet on the future and tokenisation is the most efficient vehicle for debt markets.
I don't think you have a good grasp of this topic so this is my last comment.
The Yuan is already being increasingly adopted for settlement of international trade.
Iran, N.Korea and Russia now settle most of their trade via Chinas rapidly developing alternative trade payments protocols including CIPS and mBridge via which China has partnered with UAE, Thailand and HongKong.
The Saudis have joined mBridge and if they continue to increase their sales of oil in other than USD denominations then the end of the petrodollar is imminent and it does not result in the increased use of Bitcoin for settlement.
Bitcoin MoE use is virtually non existent, after more than 15 years the protocol is stuck in a narrative of NGU speculative commodity capture and control by bankers and governments who are not at all threatened by another speculative commodity swelling the demand for their fiat debt issuance.
Just like Trump hopes stable coin dollar can sustain demand for USTs while the Saudis and others lose interest in them...USA needs to sell many trillions in USTs to just remain viable over the next 12 months and after that the outlook does not improve!
The regaining of Hong Kong sovereignty by China has been crucial to the reverse engineering of the monetary hegemony the west imposede upon China at the start of of Opium Wars an which resulted in Chinas 'one hundreds years of humiliation'.
The IMF, World Bank, SWIFT and BIS are ignorant of the volumes of trade now settled via Chinas alternative trade payments protocols because they do not have access to or control over them.
BIS did quite recently distance itself from mBridge when it realised mBridge now being at an operational level of development poses an existential threat to the legacy US global trade payments hegemony that the BIS is part of.
China does not need to fall into the trap the US did of suffering chronic trade surpluses due to dominating global trade and trade payments- all that is required is to maintain a competitive economy and not become corrupted by the extraordinary privilege of systemic dominance.
For example acquisition of an increasing range of strategic offshore assets can absorb surpluses...and this is exactly what the Chinese have been doing.
You don't seem not understand history, monetary dynamics, political structures and consequences and like many Maxis seem to think Bitcoin Standard and continued US dominance is inevitable. Good luck with that. It is far from inevitable. A Bitcoin Standard if it does develop removes debt issuance power from governments and banks. Get your head around that one at the very least...difficult as it might be given the current system.
The wealth of nations is fundamentally and intricately related to the quality and strength of their governments and their ability to project power and preserve access to resources and markets. Fiat money can be sued to leverage that process- Bitcoin cannot.
Bitcoin would result in a neutral MoE for trade and that would result in a more free trade internationally, but that is unlikely to develop due to the political imperatives and requirements for military and strategic control over logistics and infrastructure.
Just one example for you that demonstrates how empires contest trade access and logistics- Trumps proxies Blackrock regaining US control over Panama canal ports reduces the ability for Venezuela to ship its heavy crude to Chinese refineries which would unleash another very large source of fossil fuel energy to power the Chinese empire additional to its already acquired Iranian and Russian tributaries.
Thinking monetary dominance can be solely an algorithm driven process is naive of real world trade, politics and history.
The decline of the US empire is certainly not being done 'by choice' but rather because of the extraordinary sense of entitlement that has developed in the US culture- the US Exceptionalism that delusionally believes US dominance is the natural order of things- this sort of hyperbole is exactly what commonly signals the end is nigh for an empire.
Very few US citizens realise what is happening let alone accept it, as is evidenced by comments and dialogues like the one you are proposing.
Trump does appear to have some awareness of the problem but also faces the reality that politically and culturally the US is far too divided and riven with corruption to respond in any manner better than damage control, at best.
reply
You keep projecting opinions onto me, like you are arguing with a person in your head and this thread is just a medium for you to feel clever.
That is despite my responses stating repeatedly that "I don't believe ABC", and "I never said XYZ", you continue to project onto me the opinions that you want to argue against rather than anything I am actually saying.
Now, I have no doubt that China has Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea over a barrel. I'm sure they have strong influence in the middle East, South East Asia, and even South America to encourage the use of their payments system for international settlements.
But ultimately in a multi-polar world the base layer will be neutral, India, Brazil, the Middle East, Norway, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, there are many power players who don't want to replace one bully with another, and to give China even more leverage.
Incumbent fiat dominance ensures that Bitcoin has to be a store of value before it can become a medium of exchange, that is obvious. It was always naive to think that bitcoin could become a medium if exchange first.
Anyway, you took over this thread about tokenisation to rant on a soapbox, just use a mirror next time you want to listen to yourself.
reply
You say - ' But ultimately in a multi-polar world the base layer will be neutral, India, Brazil, the Middle East, Norway, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, there are many power players who don't want to replace one bully with another, and to give China even more leverage.'
Now you assume a multipolar world and I agree that is possible.
And that Bitcoin might be one of those poles.
However India is deeply tied to Russia and with Russia now deeply dependent upon China India has few options, especially with the rapid decline of western power and its long term reluctance to align with western imperialism.
The mostly authoritarian nations outside of the liberal western democracies are even less inclined to accept Bitcoin for MoE as they nearly all outright ban it for MoE use.
Yes there are potential pockets of resistance that could adopt Bitcoin but if that excluded them from Chinese protocols and trade that would be a cost few would want to accept.
'But ultimately in a multi-polar world the base layer will be neutral'
There is no logical basis for this assumption- history strongly suggests it is not the case.
While Bitcoin presents a potential new paradigm state power structures and imperatives argue in the opposite direction.
After all the network effect applies to monetary systems and because China now dominates trade in manufactured goods and commodities it can dictate terms and in fact must impose some sort of power projection beyond its borders to enable it to invest in and maintain control of global supply chains and infrastructures including institutional structures.
China is the logical builder of new alternative trade payments protocols and it has already built them and they are already being used by a growing number of respondents.
Your assumption that Bitcoin, an apolitical algorithm will over ride the imperatives of global hegemony is an assumption ignoring history and logic.
Bitcoin could in theory provide a fantastic basis for true free trade, but true free trade has never been the reality- trade has always been to a greater or lesser extent subservient to the dictates of dominant military and trading nations.
Just because Bitcoin delivers superior monetary functionality (in theory) to the individual does not mean it does the same for the nation state- it doesn't!
The nation state is still a major factor, perhaps the most important factor in the wealth of nations.
The wealth and dominance of the US owes at least as much to its legacy domination of global protocols and institutions as it does to 'free trade'. The US has been far from an exponent of free trade but rather increasingly dependent upon exercising its domination of trade payments and military power projection. Now that US economy is increasingly mired in debt the viability of its empire is declining and Chinas is rising.
Bitcoin may be a useful neutral outlier/safe haven, but looks unlikely to gain the critical mass and widespread MoE acceptance required to be anything more than an outlier to Chinas growing dominance. Speculating upon the worth of potential Bitcoin derivatives without accepting and incorporating context in the real world is fruitless.
You say- 'you took over this thread about tokenisation to rant on a soapbox'.
I say I am just providing real world and historical context that is lacking in your analysis.
reply
Solomonsatoshi is obsessed with arguing that China is supplanting the US. Getting into arguments with him about that topic isn't likely to lead anywhere productive
reply
Try to dismiss the messenger but fail to dismiss the message why don't you!?
Yes I do raise this topic sometimes but it is also true that nobody of the Libertarian ideology has yet responded with any credible refutation of the main points I raise.
Perhaps because they cannot they respond with a credible reasoned argument they respond instead with personal attacks...in order to avoid these issues they cannot refute.
In doing that they concede defeat, by default in terms of a fair and reasoned contest of ideas.
I have been called names (statist, Chinese operative, lunatic etc etc) for my efforts but that just shows nobody of the Libertarian ilk can respond in a credible reasoned fact based manner and so resort to crude name calling shoot the messenger trolling.
I believe this is an important and significant issue today and going forward especially relevant to Bitcoin and to Libertarian ideology.
The fact that it presents real and demonstrable challenges to Libertarian ideology is not my problem but it is revealing that the Libertarians who often claim nobody is prepared to engage with them in reasoned debate are not themselves capable of calm and reasoned contest of ideas when offered the opportunity.
The OPs obsession with digital tokens/tokenisation/financial derivatives I would present as further evidence of the corrupt narratives within the west where financialisation of everything has come to dominate and the actual making and production of useful tools, materials, infrastructure and products in the real world is increasingly deficient.
The highly financialised western hegemony is inherently vulnerable to the 'practical mechanics' of Chinas mercantile based strategy, but US Exceptionalists are seemingly blind to this vulnerability. The OP demonstrates this blindness by assuming that the Chinese would invitably fall into the same trap (of chronic fiscal and trade deficits) as the US has regarding being the dominant issuer of currency when that is clearly not inevitable.
The Chinese will be free to construct a monetary and trade payments protocol/s and institutions to avoid such a trap, and very likely will.
They might ultimately fall into new traps but that is for the future and history to tell and is unlikely to be foreseen easily via existing paradigms.
reply