Post #4047905

2026-07-23 22:33 UTC

@memewarrior@hear-me.social oh hm that slipped by me. X like in "X rated". very apt your point about cryptocurrency having a genuine use is one I have been wanting to examine. there's a genuine need but, from what I am aware of, the mechanisms that are supposed to give crypto units their value seems a bit nonsensical to me. but I haven't thought it through. are there competing ideas for defining digital currency? non-blockchain ideas?

Replies (1)

@memewarrior@hear-me.social 2026-07-24 00:25

@mxchara@seattle.pink On the value of cryptocurrency: Cryptocurrency gets its value based on what people are willing to pay for it, same as all currencies do. 1 US dollar is worth more than 1 Indian rupee but less than 1 monero because people are willing to pay many dollars for 1 monero & many rupees for one dollar. Downstream from this is scarcity. Only the US government can produce dollars, so most people can not produce dollars. Monero requires large amounts of hardware & electricity to produce. A currency which costs nothing to produce & is producible by everyone would be worth nothing, because there would be no incentive to exchange a commodity for it rather than merely produce it. Thus, monero derives its value from scarcity, as does the US dollar. This scarcity is necessary but not sufficient for currency to possess value, as demand is also needed. Demand for crypto comes from people who use it as gambling chips & from people who use it as money On competing ideas for defining digital currency: I do not know much about alternatives. I also don't see any reason why an alternative would be worth looking into. Blockchain does the job fine. Proof-of-Work is environmentally destructive, but many blockchains are moving to proof-of-stake anyways, which does not use nearly the same amount of electricity or hardware. Is there any problem with cryptocurrency that you know of which is not exclusive to Proof-of-Work & which would not simply apply to digital money as a category, nor to overhyped technologies as a category?

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