I'm baffled people throw capital into this fiat digital currency that can barely be spent and has no intrinsic trade value. 40 million dollar market cap purely off hopes and dreams?
Sidepost, anybody got a good audiobook source for Das Kapital? I feel like this could sense from a dialectical analysis.
I know you are not going with "but Marx failed to consider" bullshit, but if you did, and even if Marx somehow had given a cool nice critique of some cryptocurrency-homologue of his time; I don't care what Galileo would have thought of today's astronomy.
Socialism (or whatever) is not religion. Whatever some centuries-dead-people wrote might be useful and insightful, but they are just early science publications.
I posted to /c/marxism specifically hoping to find a cool nice critique of some cryptocurrency-homologue of his time or some prediction of how an unhinged capitalist system could produce this almost meta-speculation market.
Off-topic, but genuine thank you for contributing like 10% of total site posts I see on main
:heart-sickle:
2.81 percent at the last 100.000 posts milestone.
c/main is no more :angery:
Well computers didn't exist when he was alive so it would be a hell of a prediction. It's also not functionally a currency as nothing is priced in it
I suppose it is more of a commodity with tarp over and "CURRENCY" written on the side in spray paint
yeah it's commodity speculation on a made up commodity that only exists to be speculated on. If the energy cost weren't ridiculous it would be funny
Crypto is a speculation market.
Land existed and Properties existed and I imagine Futures markets/trading existed back in Marx's time so whatever he was saying about those things probably applies to cryptocurrency stuff. Its just people putting a ton of money into something with the hopes of getting out after the valuation soars but before it crashes.
Currency is just measurement system of value, to which all commodities are pegged. This is just fiat without central banks, same shit otherwise. Capital speculating on exchange rate fluctuations seems fairly normal otherwise
It's not a currency, things are priced in currencies, if I bought a car in Japan for Yen and had to return it I would be refunded the same amount of Yen I had paid regardless of inflation/deflation. If I bought a tesla in bitcoin and returned it I would be refunded according to the dollar price
If you bought car in euro and returned it in usa, you’ll also get hit with exchange rate fluctuations. It’s basically consumer right protections kicking in, not immutable exchange relations.
On the other hand crypto mania can be seen as giant inflationary release valve for excess dollars in the economy, which is inflating as big dollar intrinsic value is dropping like a stone, you can’t buy shit for investment if compared before the pandemic, market is higher, houses are higher, commodities are higher, everything is too expensive/inflated.
maybe but there is nowhere where I could get it refunded in the bitcoin price as in pay 1 bitcoin and get refunded 1 bitcoin. And the price of everything you buy fluctuates to be exactly the same as the currency bitcoin is acting as a substitute for
Ah, I see someone has not lived with rapidly changing currency fluctuations, where price can shoot 20 percent in a week cause something happened:) yeah, you cannot get refunded in bitcoin of course, cause it’s not subject to laws basically.
Cryptocurrency as it exists today is a scam investment/pyramid scheme. Even if it was somewhat commonly used as a currency, it provides very little value above existing forms of currency for the vast majority of people. It's appeal is (theoretically) in anonymity, so it's only worth bothering with if you're trying to buy something illegal (drugs, guns, CP) and are desperate/unconnected enough to go to internet strangers for it (those internet strangers have to accept crypto in payment, too). And of course the biggest illegal market -- drugs -- is fast becoming a legal market, so who needs cryptocurrency for that anyway. But this currency discussion is all moot because price fluctuations in cryptocurrencies mean people use it as an investment vehicle, not money, and treating it as an investment undercuts whatever utility it might have as a currency.
The mistake is thinking it's something fundamentally new. It's new technology, sure, but it interacts with the market the same way a bunch of other stuff has. It's smoke and mirrors and an undeliverable product.
