Gaku

That's true; I was thinking more in terms of amount of effort to bend down and pick up a shell. That plus the assumption that new shells are still being generated. Good point, though. It is pretty incredible that it caught on. just randomly thinking if there would be an incentive for each nation or region to have its own cryptocurrency, since the real value will vary between regions.

I hope y'all are doing well. I've become a fan of Stefan's YouTube videos recently, especially the 2-3 hour call-in shows. I admire his emphasis on self-knowledge, and it's clear to see how much it helps people who call in. I wish I had been aware of the concept 10 years ago when I was really struggling to understand myself; it wasn't until I delved into the concepts of psychoanalysis, in a series of (unlikely but very useful) college psych courses, that I eventually started to figure things out on my own. I can see how Stefan applies many of those same principles to full effect, which is great, especially since so many of the mental health professionals that people turn to would rather medicate and zombify than work through underlying issues. A little bit about me: I'm probably the kind of person that Stefan likes to chide for doing everything wrong. It's ok though; I know what I'm doing, and I'm having a good time at it. Perhaps "worst" of all is that I'm dating a feminist (gasp!) and we're moving in together (the horror!). But seriously, she's great and we're looking to the future, and I've been through enough failed relationships in the past to know a good thing when I see it. Aside from that, I'm a half-Hungarian Okie transplant (Thunder Up!) working on a Ph.D., getting paid a little over minimum wage by the state (say it ain't so!) to teach the next batch of med school hopefuls the importance of Escherichia coli. I also really, really like kayaking, so if you want to know the places to go in the area, I'll point you in the right direction.

That is one of the best things about cryptocurrency - that its use is voluntary. I was thinking about similar scenarios in a sort of barter society. In the case of wampum shells, I would know that someone took the effort to pick them up, and every wampum shell took approximately the same amount of effort to procure (industrial wampum farming notwithstanding). So in trading wampum shells, you're trading an equivalent amount of time & energy as well as for scarcity. Some people might have access to more shells, but they aren't able to magically create them; they still have to expend time/energy to get them. I think a better analogy would be if someone came across a cache of wampum shells that someone else had collected over many years, convinced others that they had picked them up themselves, and then traded them as if they had put in the time/effort. At least in the case of wampum shells, someone put in effort at some point, and collecting more wampum shells would require a similar amount of effort. In the case of cryptocurrency, that's not really the case, where you need a massive amount of computing power to squeeze out a single bitcoin at present, where you could have mined with an old laptop when it first started.

Dumping bitcoins would probably not be an issue, then. I still see a problem in that the early adopters don't add value; at best they do nothing and at worst they remove it. If you have to pay into the system to join it, then you are essentially rewarding those who came before you, in inverse proportion to how much time/energy/resources they actually invested, for simply having beaten you to it. I think this is where the Ponzi accusations come in, though it isn't technically a Ponzi scheme. There are people now who collaborate to mine for every upstart cryptocurrency they can find. The reward-to-risk is astronomical. What value do they provide, other than standing to become rich if anyone should decide to invest actual resources into one of the many currencies they've mined? It's not like I'm a consumer and I'm paying them for some good or service they've provided. I agree with you about fiat, and I'm not saying that fiat is better. I simply don't see why propping up these rich folks leeching off the system over here is preferable to propping up those rich folks leeching off the system over there.

I see that there are a lot of upsides to crytocurrency, both in reality and conceptually. On the other hand, bitcoin also seems to have a lot in common with penny stocks. If a currency is only worth the value that people ascribe to it, then of course there is incentive to 1) get in early while the price is low (10,000 bitcoins for a pizza) and 2) get others to follow you in and prop up the price ($6,000,000 pizza). The early miners created tons of coins with minimal energy; these coins don't cease to exist just because mining in the present is nigh-impossible for the Average Joe. People who already have bitcoins (especially people with lots of them) have a financial incentive to get others to adopt the currency; the more people who decide bitcoin has value, the more value the early adopters receive from their trivial investments. Despite all that, there are upsides to cryptocurrency. I am not convinced that those upsides outweigh early adopters like Gavin Andresen and "Nakamoto" from quite literally becoming rich at the expense of others, as their coins had no value until others invested. That's not to say that fiat currency is any better, but why should I prop up one group of speculators (early bitcoin adopters) vs another (fiat bankers)? What incentive do I have to feed into this system? In theory, why shouldn't I just create my own crytocurrency (since it's open source), quickly mine 10-20% of all possible coins, and then open it up to the public and make billions of dollars? What is to keep the early adopters from dumping their shares, flooding the market, and laughing all the way to the fiat bank?