Argentinian President Promotes Memecoin. It Then Crashed 95% as Insiders Cashed Out (web3isgoinggreat.com) 127
gwolf (Slashdot reader #26,339) writes: On Friday, February 14, Libertarian Argentinian president, Javier Milei, promoted the just-created $LIBRA cryptocoin, created by the Viva la libertad project, strongly aligned with his political party, La Libertad Avanza. Milei tweeted, "This private project will be devoted to promote growth of the Argentinian economy, funding small startups and enterprises. The world wants to invest in Argentina!"
It is worth noting that the project's website was registered a mere three minutes before Milei tweeted his endorsement. The cryptocoin quickly reached a $4.6 billion market cap... Only to instantaneously lose 89% of its value, with nine core investers pulling the rug from under the enthusiast investors. More details from the blog Web3 Is Going Just Great: [W]ithin hours of the launch, insiders began selling off their holdings of the token. The token had been highly concentrated among insiders, with around 82% of the token held in a small cluster of apparently insider addresses. Those insiders cashed out around $107 million, crashing the token price by around 95%. After the crash, Milei deleted his tweet promoting the project. He later claimed he was "not aware of the details of the project."
UPDATE: CNN reports that Argentine President Milei is now facing calls for impeachment. The presidency on Saturday announced an investigation into the matter, saying: "President Javier Milei has decided to immediately involve the Anti-Corruption Office to determine whether there was improper conduct on the part of any member of the national government, including the president himself."
It is worth noting that the project's website was registered a mere three minutes before Milei tweeted his endorsement. The cryptocoin quickly reached a $4.6 billion market cap... Only to instantaneously lose 89% of its value, with nine core investers pulling the rug from under the enthusiast investors. More details from the blog Web3 Is Going Just Great: [W]ithin hours of the launch, insiders began selling off their holdings of the token. The token had been highly concentrated among insiders, with around 82% of the token held in a small cluster of apparently insider addresses. Those insiders cashed out around $107 million, crashing the token price by around 95%. After the crash, Milei deleted his tweet promoting the project. He later claimed he was "not aware of the details of the project."
UPDATE: CNN reports that Argentine President Milei is now facing calls for impeachment. The presidency on Saturday announced an investigation into the matter, saying: "President Javier Milei has decided to immediately involve the Anti-Corruption Office to determine whether there was improper conduct on the part of any member of the national government, including the president himself."
lol (Score:4, Insightful)
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A fool and their money are easily parted
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A fool and his money were lucky to get together in the first place.
Re: lol (Score:2)
Re: lol (Score:2)
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$TRUMP (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump did the exact same thing with TRUMP coin only three weeks ago.
Re: $TRUMP (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah still surprised that wasn't as widely reported
Re: $TRUMP (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah still surprised that wasn't as widely reported
American mass media doesn't say bad things about Trump.
Look what happened to AP this week - they're banned from press conferences for not toeing the Trump line.
"Freedom of the press" is a lie in Trump's America.
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It is hilarious watching that line still work because 50 years ago TV sitcoms pushed back against racism and homophobia. The homophobia thing wasn't even because anyone was particularly trying to be progressive.
The TV networks Got really crazy with the censorship and TV became so boring people started reading books or going out at night. Their ratings collapsed so they decided to spice things up with more gay folk.
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Oh now that crowd is suddenly for respecting chosen pronouns,
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I'm gonna guess you don't live in the US, or you live here but you don't know much about the media ecosystem we have.
So, first, yea Fox is objectively a bad news source. It's been well documented to be low on factuality, in addition to being pretty biased conservative.
But, not every US citizen watches Fox. For every fact-free conservative outfit like that, theres a highly accurate moderate-leaning source like AP, and two liberal-bi
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I think he was just Trolling with that first part of his comment. CNN and NBC love Trump. He drives viewership so the people mad at him have their own echo-chamber. Fox also loves him but they cheer lead instead. All of them do it for the money and perceived influence they have over their base. It's scary because they actually do influence people and definitely not for the best. It's very divisive for the country as a whole.
Re: $TRUMP (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing a lot of people, conservative AND liberal miss about Rupert Murdoch and FOX is , Rupert isn't pro trump or even pro conservatism. He's pro Rupert and whatever makes Rupert more money. That tends to be whoever promises him the less tax. But its not always conservatives. Here in Australia he was for a long time pro Labor party because he liked Labors media cross-media ownership laws keeping the television stations from buying newspapers and competing with him. Then he got richer and wanted to buy TV stations, so he suddenly turned into a conservative. He's done similar moves with the UK, and I guarantee that if the Democrats suddenly turned into a "We need to give Rupert billions of dollars for some reason" party, he'd be doing his uttmost to march AOC into the whitehouse.
But most importantly, not only is he not on any political side genuinely, he's not on YOUR side or MY side. He's only on HIS side.
This, by the way, applies equally to Bezos, Bloomberg, John Henry, and all of those Media moguls.
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...I guarantee that if the Democrats suddenly turned into a "We need to give Rupert billions of dollars for some reason" party, he'd be doing his utmost to march AOC into the whitehouse.
I agree with you and that sudden realization hurts, like in a headache/pounding-migraine kind of way.
Zuckerberg's role model is Murdoch btw. This is now obvious.
Media skilz matter a lot.
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This is all true.
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So anyone should be allowed to cry "all vaccinations will give our kids autism and then turn them gay" without any sort of checks and balances? Flat earthers should be able to change US policy with Canada because Canadians are too close to the edge of the disk and risk falling off? Moon deniers should be able to defund NASA because space is just the underside of the glass sphere and all the money is being hidden in billionaire's wallets?
When do obvious stupid rants rise to the level of being removed befor
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Yeah still surprised that wasn't as widely reported
You are not allowed to criticize the King.
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It was reported. Nobody cares. Some idiots lost money, but that's on them. Suckers. Sure, they were Trump supporters, but who cares? Trump won't be "elected" again.
Re: $TRUMP (Score:4, Insightful)
LOL blame the Jews, okayyyyyyyyy
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LOL blame the Jews, okayyyyyyyyy
If the Jews really have the power to do all that... and the space lasers... Wouldn't it be a bad idea to antagonise them? Just saying.
Oh look, an anti semite has crawled out from under (Score:3, Informative)
Any opportunity eh? Btw Trump isnt jewish and yes, we all know what the dog whistle "zionist" really means.
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Oh please, how fucking naive are you?
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He does.
Him: "Zionists are the J0000Z!!! They're the source of all evil, all problems, they conoise and genocide everyone, rob everyone, they run Hollywood, the government, the banks, Wall Street, tech, and they wrote every single popular Christmas song!!!! Beware the Zionist J000000000Z!!!!111 they will eat your babies!"
Re: $TRUMP (Score:4, Informative)
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It's one of those statements that's technically correct, and almost always wrong in any particular case.
Yes it's possible to be against "Zionism" (whatever that means) without being against the Jews but most of the time people want to pick something very Jewish adjacent to have a go at and feel good about.
The key is that if an "anti Zionists" won't give a very very precise definition of what Zionism is, i.e. what they are against you can be sure they are against the Jews. Zionism is an old concept and means
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"but most of the time people want to pick something very Jewish adjacent to have a go at "
Zionism is as Jewish-adjacent as the Evangelicals are Christian-adjacent. Both use a shallow implementation of a religion as a justification for their own continued theft. Both use other followers of their supposed religion as a stalking-horse for their own selfish ideology, and put other members of their own religion at risk with their extremism. Both claim full possession of their broader religion and cast out any di
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Zionism can cover everything from Jews being in Israel, to Israel existing as a country to the shit that's being perpetrated right now.
It is absolutely used as a dog whistle, 100%, because it can mean so many things and allows the whistler to shift smoothly around when challenged. That doesn't mean every year is a dog whistle, but make people use it as such. I have had arguments with people who loudly bang the anti Zionism drum but are mysteriously coy about whether they want to stop the settlers or eject
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This means that anyone who hates Israeli colonialism, and there are lots of very good reasons to hate Israeli colonialism, those people will likely also be at least a little anti-Semitic. This is true even if
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Wait wait wait wait. You are telling me Zionists with large followings are duping dumbass "coin people" with tails of riches, only to pull the rug from under them?
Those coinbros need a heads-up on buying I to such scams.
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Re:$TRUMP (Score:5, Interesting)
Trump did the exact same thing with TRUMP coin only three weeks ago.
I'm not sure that was a rug pull as much as Trump's well known incompetence when it comes to business.
The trigger to the crash wasn't selling, it was Melenia releasing her own coin. The whole point of currency is scarcity. The moment Melania jumped in it became clear that all of the Trump clan were likely to follow up, and that Trump himself would be unable to resist further attempts to cash in.
That's what killed the value, Trump having the same level of understanding of currency as he does of trade policy.
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Hmm, the whole point of currency is to hold value so it can be used as a way to purchase goods and services without having to barter. No more taking 10 chickens in for a doctor visit. Instead, you sell your chickens for currency, then use that currency to pay the doctor. Doctor can then use the currency earned to buy some other goods and services.
Of course, that's not what crypto is for. Crypto is used to scam stupid people out of their money. Since it has wild swings in value, it's pointless as an actual c
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No more taking 10 chickens in for a doctor visit.
Please stop falsifying history. In no part of history, and in no part of the world were doctor visits ever paid in chickens.
In fact, in most of our history and in most parts of the world, the doctor was community supported and free if you needed him/her. Money is not a recent invention, but relying entirely on it for daily life is fairly new and a total westerner's idea.
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"Money is not a recent invention, but relying entirely on it for daily life is fairly new and a total westerner's idea."
Using money for daily life has been a thing since Neolithic China, WELL before any western civilization was worth a shit.
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If the total currency in circulation were to suddenly double but the total amount of goods and services in the market remains constant, prices will essentially double. Hence I would be quite mistaken in accepting the payment toda
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Yes but shares are in a company that produces actual tangible goods and services. When you invest, you are providing them capital in which to grow their business. Sure, it's all technically gambling. You hope you invest into a company that will grow in popularity and usefulness for society, which increases it's share value.
Bitcoin doesn't produce shit. It just waste electricity so people can defraud other people and try avoid paying taxes while they use society's resources without paying for them. Fuck thos
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Good. And this should keep happening. Because people getting screwed over on crypto is really the only
Re:$TRUMP (Score:4, Informative)
Some of el Bunko's current bunks:
1. Shitcoins
2. Sneakers
3. NFTs with him doing stupid shit
4. Watches
5. Fragrances
6. “Cabinet positions”
7. Bibles
8. His "media company".....just announced they "lost" $400 million in the last year. That's $400 million of other people's money he and his cronies have made off with.
And all of his tat is made in China.
Number 6 is so special. He sends his Maggots emails promising them a special cabinet position he's created just for them. When they click on the link, they just need to pony up some money to get this cabinet position. This is in addition to the real cabinet positions he's already sold to the potted plants he put there.
There's more bunks but the list is too nauseating to detail. And he is doing it now from the Oval Orifice.
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Trump did the exact same thing with TRUMP coin only three weeks ago.
Proving you can’t fix stupid but can profit from it
Shitcoins, are shit. (Score:2)
Trump did the exact same thing with TRUMP coin only three weeks ago.
Doesn't really matter who does it. No shitcoin has proven itself worth the effort.
If you think even BTC has been a worthwhile venture, tell me how much power a planet wastes “mining” it. And how much more it will waste. Would we even have an energy crisis to deal with a decade from now, or will e-mining become THE energy crisis by then.
Re:$TRUMP (Score:4, Interesting)
Update: "President Javier Milei has decided to immediately involve the Anti-Corruption Office to determine whether there was improper conduct on the part of any member of the national government, including the president himself."
Trump didn't feel the need to do any of this with his own shitcoin and Milania shitcoin rug pull. But it probably surprised absolutely nobody. Everybody knows what you are going to get when you elect a con man and a sexual predator convict as your leader.
Now who does this remind us of? (Score:5, Informative)
Climate skeptic, check
war on woke, check
Luvs musk, check
views media as corrupt, check
Scammer with crypto, check
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Re:Now who does this remind us of? (Score:5, Informative)
likes to claim media is corrupt in an attempt to distract from his own pervasive corrupt practices, check
FTFY
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Apparently Milei is facing impeachment, but it doesn't matter who's impeached or convicted if no one enforces the ruling.
As long as he's copying, I'd tell him to just follow the US model and pack the Argentinian justice department with stooges.
Impeached? Convicted? Who cares?
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he's not facing impeachment. the opposition party filed for impeachment but none of the other parties (except the communists) are supporting this.
this is a (legal) non issue so far.
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I would say, believes media that does not toe his line and always give him positive coverage as corrupt.
One of the benefits of being a populist ... (Score:4, Insightful)
... is that your supporters are fucking morons. You can milk them and milk them and these dummies keep coming back expecting different outcomes.
Re:One of the benefits of being a populist ... (Score:4, Insightful)
... is that your supporters are fucking morons. ...
I'm not going to argue against that, but would add that many people are either too busy or lazy to be properly informed and many of those, as well as others, wouldn't even try because the truth/facts would probably be contrary to what they want to hear. Others (may) know what's going on and are fine with it, possibly because they believe the bad stuff won't happen to them or only to other people they don't like -- ask the brown Trump supporters who are now getting deported how that's going... In any case, they believe the, mostly plainly obvious, lies and buy into the caustic us-vs-them rhetoric and that's on them.
Re:One of the benefits of being a populist ... (Score:5, Interesting)
well yes except that literally no one in argentina bought into this memecoin. all of the affected people are abroad, most of them in the US.
in fact, only 2% of the tweets about this are coming from Argentinian accounts.
Re:One of the benefits of being a populist ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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As illustrated by Mark Twain, 140 years ago, in "Huckleberry Finn".
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No one? The Argentian president tweeted in Spanish mentioning Argentina 4 times promoting a scam coin helping Argentine businesses. I think it's fair to say that most of the people burned were Argentinian.
This is why Crypto is Fraud (Score:3, Insightful)
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I once heard a currency expert being interviewed on NPR say that bitcoin is a collective hallucination that some abstract concept has value.
He immediately followed this by saying every currency is a collective hallucination that some abstract concept has value.
Money is worth what you can buy with it. The End.
Another day.... (Score:2)
... another cryptcon story on Slashdot. [slashdot.org]
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Sure beats the AI submissions!
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I'm dreading the inevitable advent of "AI-designed cryptocoin increases wealth 38% faster" stories...
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There are (or were) already a few AI blockchain efforts. Slashdot hasn't covered any of them. Yet!
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i'm HODLing on all my popcorn for the "Most popular cryptocoins of the year" ranking.
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I miss when we used to get AI stories on /.
Now we only get about 4-5 a day.
No one could have possibly seen that coming (Score:5, Funny)
This rug-pull is totally unprecedented, no one could have possibly seen that coming.
Re:No one could have possibly seen that coming (Score:4, Interesting)
IMO anyone buying crypto gets what they deserve. It’s a glorified version of selling Minecraft swords on the Internet. You’re just a gold farmer in another video game.
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When on one's knees with a dictator's dick in their mouths, it's hard to see the coming. Tasting it, however...
Learnt from the best (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Learnt from the best (Score:5, Informative)
actually the story is a bit more complicated. There were talks with two people, an argentinian guy, and a singaporean. Their company is called "KIP Protocol". They were behind the idea. The pitch was they were going to create a coin to "support argentinian startups" or something like that. An american guy (Hayden Mark Davies) was involved and he was going to provide the "technical infrastructure" for this.
They met with Milei in the government house in january and apparently Milei agreed to support the "endeavor". Milei's advisors were following the matter.
Then Milei for some reason tweeted about this. We don't know the motivations. Depending on who you ask, the answer is "milei got paid for scamming", to "he was advised by his team to tweet this". Milei, just like Trump, tweets all day from his personal account. It's not known if Milei was told by his advisors to tweet this, or if he decided to do it by himself.
A few hours later, Milei retracted his support for the tweet. This happened after the rug was pulled. Around 10 wallets that controlled the coin pulled out at the same time leaving everyone else holding the bag. Milei was probably advised that this was happening and he posted a followup tweet stating he no longer supported the project after "having learned more about it" (probably after learning a lot of people were scammed).
The american guy behind this posted a video saying there was no wrongdoing and the coin crashed "after Milei pulled his support", in fact, blaming Milei for "not standing up to the agreement" (the whole video was basically "if milei kept his mouth shut none of this would have happened", basically a scammer got busted).
In all, this seems like a combination of ignorance from Milei, bad advice from his advisors (either from ignorance or malice), and basically falling for a scam orchestrated by 3 people that met in person, in an official meeting, with Milei and his team back in january. It's really too early to know but we'll learn over the next few weeks when heads start rolling. The 3 people involved seem to be abroad (in the US) so US authorities will need to get involved.
Re: Learnt from the best (Score:2)
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literally did in the followup tweet. after withdrawing support, in the next paragraph he blamed the "political caste" as usual.
The drama is still unfolding over here. The opposition party is trying to trigger a market crash. The r/argentina subreddit was completely overrun by troll accounts repeating the same messages all weekend. A low volume "traditional investments" subreddit was also target, very subtle "how do i protect myself from
That cowboy is a maverick (Score:3)
Memecoin, and other things ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Milei just keeps doing what other populist right wing politicians do.
For example, he plans to pull Argentina out of the WHO [bbc.com] just like what Trump did with the USA ...
So it is no surprise that he exploits his base financially too ...
Re:Memecoin, and other things ... (Score:5, Insightful)
These moves are truly baffling. The stupid part about the whole blaming COVID on the WHO is that the WHO is nothing more than an organisation making recommendations on behalf of members based on data submitted by members. You're 100% within your national right to completely ignore the WHO. There's no mandates to follow anything they say. All you do by pulling out is concentrating power to make recommendations in the members which are left.
It's kind of at odds with nationalism. If the USA / Argentina actually wanted to control things, they'd stay in the WHO.
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Yes, this is baffling ...
The WHO is primarily a reporting organization: they gather data from each country they are in, and collate it for comparisons, trends, ...etc. Then they make recommendations based on the data.
Part of the reporting is looking out for outbreaks, from known pathogens, such as Ebola, Marburg, mpox, and bird flu, as well as novel pathogens (SARS-CoV-2 for example).
My guess here is that these ignorant and harmful moves are from a combination of things: inherent stupidity, lack of understa
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I personally think it's far more nefarious. They are just looking for someone else to blame to cover up their own gross incompetence.
Ponzi (Score:3)
Re:Ponzi (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's a distinction that often gets lost. It wasn't conceived as a scam. It quickly became that, because it isn't suited to much else.
Any kind of digital coin is ... (Score:2)
... in it's base a pyramid game. Even bc is. Think about the mechanism and don't be fooled.
Argentina lightyears ahead of United States (Score:2)
Calling for impeachment after a president promotes a meme-coin scam now seems rather quaint.
Why does this stuff keep failing? (Score:2)
All I wanted is way to make a lot of money quickly without creating a useful good or service. Why is it so hard to become rich in this day and age? It's so unfair!
Well, do you want a currency or an investment? (Score:2)
The core problem that we see repeated with crypto is that it gets traded like a stock. So individuals who buy heavily into it are going to cash back out of it as soon as they see an opportunity to make a big profit doing so.
Nobody would want to do their daily financial transactions by selling fractions of stock they hold. You'd never be certain exactly what it was worth just before completing your purchase, and sellers would hesitate to accept it at the current stock valuation, out of fear it might drop bef
Voidzilla's interview... (Score:2)
Re:The grand master plan of crypto (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a crowd-funded Ponzi scheme.
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So you want to go back to the gold standard.
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But there is a reason that it is not backed by gold which is they want to spend more than they gather in taxes
Or maybe it's this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Panic of 1819, a U.S. recession with bank failures; culmination of U.S.'s first boom-to-bust economic cycle
Panic of 1837, a U.S. recession with bank failures, followed by a 5-year depression
Panic of 1857, a U.S. recession with bank failures
Panic of 1873, a U.S. recession with bank failures, followed by a 4-year depression
Panic of 1884, United States and Europe
Panic of 1893, a U.S. recession with bank failures
Panic of 1896, acute U.S. recession
Panic of 1901
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The economy is simply it's outputs, how much food, goods, services it produces each period.
True! Thusly it makes sense to not have the currency bound by a fixed asset physical material when we have the means otherwise.
If you think that Bitcoin can somehow ward off a depression then you need help and I suggest in reading some real economics text books.
Did you really get that impression from my comment, that I am in support of Bitcoin? I surmised from yours you were the bitcoin supporter...
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Bitcoin solves one major problem:
...and introduces 5,000 other problems.
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Like the government not being able to zero someone's accounts and debank them with a click of a button. Which is a "problem" if you're a totalitarian asshole who thinks it's his side who'll have control over the button. Well guess what, I don't want that button handed over the democrat assholes, but unlike you I don't even want MY side to have it.
Your side already does. [forbes.com]
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"Governments should not be allowed to expand money supplies without equitable distribution among the current holders."
Why not print a basic income, since the equitable distribution undermines the Cantillon effect?