> The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts. Their massive overhead costs make micropayments impossible.
> Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve.
Right, which is why we have regulations on reserve requirements for banks, as well as things like FDIC insurance that guarantees your money in a bank account.
>The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work.
Surely this is a joke? Most currencies enjoy a high degree of trust until they collapse due to structural reasons that have nothing to do with trust whatsoever.
The euro zone and the dollar show that there is practically no shortage of trust whatsoever.
Seriously, this dude is supposed to liberate us from the evils of money?
How did it come to this? The root problem with currency is the zero lower bound of interest and liquidity preference which both combined result in permanently positive interest rates. When you refuse to pay interest, the economy stagnates and it can result in mass unemployment. This has nothing to do with trust. The Bitcoin economy is plagued with mass unemployment. The insanity of unemployment is a consequence of the insanity of non neutral money.
Alternatively, you can pay interest, however this means you must perpetually borrow more money, e.g. Keynesian fiscal stimulus, notice that the insanity originates in money itself, not in the political response, the political response must be at least as insane as the money system, no less and it collapses. Now, there is a third way, QE aka not bothering to ask people whether they want to lend their money out, however, due to liquidity preference, the additionally created money will stagnate somewhere, meaning you can't ever stop QE. Again, in this case the insanity is a structural property of the currency, the monetary intervention has to be as insane as the money system and no less.
The apparent untrustworthiness of politicians is the result of the insanity of money, not the other way around. If money worked properly, you wouldn't need politicians to mess with it, you wouldn't even consider trust to be the problem because the amount needed would be so miniscule as to never matter in the grand scheme of things.
It is really strange to me, that people notice a constant problem with money and yet they still come up with the same conclusion "you're holding it wrong", what if it is impossible to hold it properly? What if permanent money is irreparably broken and forces its own debasement and all the other problems?
— Satoshi, 2009-02-11 https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/posts/p2pfoundation/1/...
> pseudonymous: why do I want anyone to be able to see my transaction history?
Transactions are viewable in the blockchain so that every party involved can audit the system and confirm the issuance.