Oh is this a beautifully summarized paragraph:

One theory of crypto is that there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoins. Bitcoin is scarce in a way that traditional financial assets aren’t: Bitcoin’s supply is set permanently and transparently by code, so no one can ever create any more, while banks can create dollars whenever they please. A dollar is just an entry on a list at a bank, and a bank can give you more dollars just by adding numbers to your list.It’s not quite
that simple — when it creates dollars, the bank will create an offsetting asset (a loan) and liability (a deposit) for itself, so it doesn’t get magically richer, and its capital requirements will limit its ability to create too many dollars — but broadly speaking that’s true. This is called “fractional reserve banking,” and part of the reason that Bitcoin was invented is that a lot of people don’t like it. Feels fishy, that banks can create dollars. Better to just have 21 million Bitcoins forever.

"But then Bitcoin became hugely popular and integrated into the traditional financial system, with the result that now there are a lot more ways to create, you know, fractional reserve crypto.""But then Bitcoin became hugely popular and integrated into the traditional financial system, with the result that now there are a lot more ways to create, you know, fractional reserve crypto."

futures exchanges can just match bears and bulls, slice off a small fee from both and practically speaking make a bitcoin without having a single one around.

Economically and psychologically, you now own some Bitcoin — you are exposed to its price moves, etc. — but you don’t own any of the 21 million Bitcoins. We just created some new Bitcoins for you.

or, you know, you just FATFINGER a Strategy-sized haul into existence:

"Look, if a crypto exchange accidentally gave me $9 million, I would fight to the death to keep it, just on principle.""Look, if a crypto exchange accidentally gave me $9 million, I would fight to the death to keep it, just on principle."

Yeah I mean we can await the results of the investigation, but here I will tell you how I think “Bithumb was able to distribute 620,000 Bitcoins when its own stockpile appeared to have numbered closer to 50,000,” which is that
(1) it had a computer that lists how many Bitcoin its customers have and
(2) it typed bigger numbers into the computer.

I love it when Levine dumbs down technical/plumbing finance to such statements!

It doesn’t mean that in quite the same way that “a dollar” means “an entry on the electronic list maintained by a bank,” but it’s closer than some people would like.

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