The very original idea was to just have a global currency that didn’t have an exchange rate.

Lol that's not even close to true.

Some places do pay with crypto and accept it as payment for legal goods, as well.

You can very easily tie your crypto to a debit card that works in any place that would take a VISA card and also with ATMs, so it is usable just like any other currency in that regard. Do not I am saying usable and not used, though.

And under the hood it is of course converted to a regular ol' currency and then paid using that.

Multiple crypto exchanges allow you to issue a card and pay for usual stuff. I don't use one now because I don't have savings in crypto, but I did buy groceries with BTC. They were actually traded to euros first at the moment of payment, but it didn't require any additional steps from me.

Didn't the UAE say like yesterday they were going to start trading petrol in Yuan if they run out of dollars. People will accept whatever they feel is safe and available. Crypto isn't safe, so it won't be used

Is it really that different with proof of work? In the end the control is going to end up with relatively few entities that have the resources to build large scale mining farms..

It's better than proof of work, even though both of them reward people who already have resources.

I've been interested in the G1 currency system. (Pronounced June) Participants are all issued the Universal Dividend each day. Sort of bootstrapping universal basic income. Current issue is it's pretty much limited to France because you need five users you've met in real life to certify you.

to me it feels like the subtle difference between a representative democracy and a direct democracy. Representative tends to be more common as those in power are more willing to transition to systems in which they could reasonably hope to keep most of their power, whereas I see the crypto selling point being that the end-users would have some voting rights towards the setting of inflationary rates (different mechanisms for adjustment than fiat, I am sure [seriously not an expert on crypto or fiat {or what I think involves an understanding of “modern monetary theory”}]), versus non-government financial platforms such as bank owners (federal reserve) printing the money in order to effect inflation rates.

Oh yeah it's a huge stretch. I just mean that the revolution tied to etherium was chopping out the massive environmental impacts compared to Bitcoin.

Otherwise I look at it as the U.S. government owns the dollar, and it's value is directly tied to what they say it is. If the U.S. government decided to double the amount of dollars in the world tomorrow and use the money in the way they want, everyone who owns said money just saw it's value half, and only if they were on the in and in of who the federal government cared about would you possibly benefit or even make even.

"I bought a bond for $100,000 with guaranteed 4.34% interest over 10 years"

Then the government prints as much as it wants or makes decisions that could devalue the currency to its own benefit. Currency value drops by 10%, they pay you out 4.34% interest... And you lost money. Why, because the U.S. dollar lost money and much of the world hedges their bets on the U.S. staying normal.... Which the U.S. Doesn't look very normal right now.

Hell if I became president and had support in Congress I would "print" 20 trillion dollars virtual of course put it in an account and build housing for everyone in the U.S. that doesn't have it using 250k homes rotating them out every 30 years off the interest and money from that false account. It would put a shit ton of people to work, it would renovate all old homes deemed good enough to sustain people for the next 30 years and end homelessness while creating jobs or housing in areas which allows companies to expand to areas we otherwise weren't using. Solar powe, fiber, whatever can be set up all around..

Everyone else's money drops in value, but all housing and rent costs just disappeared. Jobs are abundant and stress would drop for a lot of America. The debts we owe are in U.S. dollars, everyone now owes less, a crazy stupid slate to shake things up.

Every other country/person that owned U.S. dollars, well they are just out of luck.. they just lost a lot of value.

Point is, who knows what kind of crazy shit people could do in government. If it collapsed in 1 country, not everyone who lives there should suffer because their only money is held together by that government. A universal currency is safer in that mindset.

It doesn't matter if it is fiat or not necessarily. But if I told you your money was going to be worth half tomorrow, then half again the next every day for the next 16 weeks... You would think shit... Maybe there is a better way to do this. That has happened to millions of people across several countries. They didn't wake up one day and choose it, but poof gone. Your entire life turned to nothing because we are using currency that isn't based on anything but a government that can collapse. Universal currencys not run by local governments could help prevent such.

The thing is, large countries that don't have these problems currently, are the ones with power to change that.. and would never vote to change it, because it could help poorer countries create stability and grow over time, which makes them not so much less than the big countries who want to be able to take advantage of those countries when they wish for their advantage.

Anarchist types are concerned about government backed crypto coins since you lose the fungibility/anonymity of physical dollars but don’t get any of the freedom and separation from centralization that crypto supposedly represents.

Plus all the potential for oligarch corruption, like current crypto has. Yeah, it’s like the worst of everything, by design.

Also, I was thinking of various wallet drainers, not just simple transactions or classic scams: https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/what-is-a-crypto-wallet-drainer/50490/

Etherium isn’t just a currency, but a contract system. You basically have to be a digital lawyer+developer to understand it, and not accidentally click on the wrong thing to drain your account, and that is a LOT to ask of the average person.

We’re on Lemmy, which must put us in the first percentile of tech nerds, yet I don’t have the bandwidth to learn enough of that to feel secure with my savings in an Etherium wallet. How could the average person?