Topic: Bitcoin: is geographic segregation an inevitable conclusion? (Read 1906 times)

I can't get behind the "we" in that thinking, the collectivism.

If the exchanges are free and voluntary, they obviously benefit both participants.  If somebody wants to define an aggregate and somehow claim that the free and voluntary exchanges are hurting the aggregate, that still doesn't impose any moral obligation on the individuals participating in the exchanges.  The exchanges are their own business; the individuals involved do not exist to benefit the aggregate.

Clancy's heroes are running the White House in that novel maybe, cannot exactly recall which novel it was. If it was one where they are still merely CIA people maybe it means "we Americans" or "we the people (of the USA)". I think it was probably one where they are having problems with Japan not buying as much American product as Americans were buying of Japanese products.

-MarkM-

Unless its velocity is very low, the initial distribution of money is irrelevant.

Value traded = coin value * number of trades = coin value * velocity * time

As you see, coin value over traded value scales as 1/t. It's not a big problem now, and it weakens over time. Another way to put it: a hoarder, like everyone else, can only spend his coins once.

What is this "we" business?

In some Clancy novel his heroes talk about trade being trade, as in if you want us to buy millions of (currency units) of goods from you then we expect you to buy an equivalent number of currency units from us. BLeeding us dry by selling us your goods for money while not buying any of our goods with money is not trade, it lacks the reciprocity of trade, trade is we will buy hundreds of billions worth of goods from you if you will buy billions worth of goods from us. If you don't buy stuff from us why the heck would we buy from you, we'll shop elsewhere thank you.

In such a setup the units of account are mostly just a way of counting to check whether you are in fact buying a similar "amount" of stuff from us as we buy from you, that is, a way of checking the trade is equal trade, we export to you as much stuff as you export to us. The currency is just a unit of account, not an actual good in and of itself. If we aren't sure whether the number of cars we are exporting to you is actually a fair trade for the barrels of oil you export to us in return we can count up the cars and the barrels in these units of account known as money or currency to check they are equal.

I see game nations taking this kind of view too, when one player suggests to another "lets set up a few hundred bitcoins worth of trade" they usually do not mean "hey how about I give you a few hundred bitcoins a month for game stuff and you go blow it on hookers and blow, never using it to buy any of the game stuff that my nation wants to export". (I imagine though that if you said hey yes trade sounds good, how about I send you bitcoins every month and you send me metal crystal and deuterium resources, they might accept...) On the contrary, they mean "how about my nation and your nation ship each other a few hundred bitcoins worth of goods every month"...

The so called "hookers and blow problem" is I suppose basically what some claim brought down the iron curtain though, all those communist masses preferring to blow their resources on USD (aka "hookers and blow" in this analogy) instead of on their neighbor's produce...

-MarkM-

I agree. Think of Cuba as the 51. state of the USA. There would be no hindrance of trade nor money movement. They would sell to other states to reveive bitcoins, and if they have low productivity, individuals in other states would invest there, so they could buy productive real capital goods. Only restraining trade and money movements will keep areas from wealth.

Selling something is a gain, not a loss.

I can't see why this would be any sort of a problem.  I can see why a government might make it out to be a problem.  After all, they gain their power from "solving" such "problems."  But my grocer has never mourned the "loss" of the produce that he sells to me, and neither would Cubans or Martians or whatever.


Working profitably is just about the exact opposite of paying a debt.

My grocer exports far more groceries to me than I export to him.  He's winding up with all my USD.

This seems to make sense—adopting a currency, suffering a loss in the process, through necessity. Although unjust, a global currency may indeed succeed. In future generations, eventually the debt will be entirely repayed.

Regardless, it seems like countries with less Bitcoin now will also have slower adoption of Bitcoin, as they have to pay a debt many would consider unfair. Geographical segregation may not be permanent, but temporary local coins stand to succeed in the short term.

Because Venusians create beautiful sculptures I like and Murcurials are masters of science and I find their philosophical writings quite intriguing.  If I clone MarsCoin to make EarthCoin, I have to wait a few decades before I can use it to trade with the Venusians and Murcurials I want to buy things from.

Why? Wouldn't making a clone of it, calling it EarthCoin, be a better choice for you?

If we were altruistic enough to care about the well-being of the Solar System as a whole, we may do it as it is more efficient in the long run. But it is hard to be that altruistic. Cubans may feel the same way in my example.

If Venusians and Murcurials also used MarsCoin and teleportation technology eliminated the problems with interplanetary shipping I would hop on that bandwagon in a heartbeat.

This seems confused in several ways, and also appears to ignore the US embargo of Cuba.

Yes, in general, to acquire some of a desired commodity, a market participant must trade with a holder of that commodity something they want.

The use of some commodities as money can be seen as an emergent property of producers expressing preferences about what forms the other half of each trade, but does not alter the rule stated in the previous paragraph.  

If a commodity gains currency for use as money, then the people holding it through the monetisation process win big time.  This isn't something we've seen happen in our lifetimes, so it would be interesting to watch, though we have seen gold become somewhat demonetised.

The analogy of a debt isn't a good one.  It is true to say that those holding some of the commodity through the monetisation process are likely to get a wealth advantage relative to those who were holding none.  But this is no different from how fluctuations in the valuation of everyone's held property affects their relative wealth all the time.

This would be the reason why the Cubans prefer their own currency, wouldn't it? The Cubans don't gain anything from adopting BTC, because they don't have enough to purchase any Floridian goods.

For example, if Martians used MarsCoin but nobody on Earth had any, would you begin accepting it? There is very little reason to do so.

This.

You're only looking at half the transaction.

Cuban goods are funneled to Florida and Floridian bitcoins are funneled to Cuba. The trade occurs because each person wants what the other one has more than they want what they had before.

Now the Cuban economy has more bitcoins in it, which means they can import more goods. The Floridian economy has less bitcoins in it, which means they have to produce more products in order to regain their purchasing power.

There are no losers in voluntary trade.

I went to LocalBitcoins.com recently. This concerned me:


Obviously, Bitcoin has not been uptaken in Cuba. This may not be a problem now, but consider what might happen if Bitcoin becomes an international currency which forms a significant proportion of the wealth.

If the Cubans have less BTC than the nearby Floridians, then they will have less wealth between them. Prices in Cuba will therefore be cheaper to make up for the scarcity in the region. This is not a problem in itself.

However, what if a Floridian comes to Cuba and purchases Cuban goods with Floridian BTC, which is indistinguishable from Cuban BTC? The result is that Cuban goods are funnelled to Florida.

This is not a problem with Bitcoin itself. We have this problem already; that is why many countries export far more than they import. However, Bitcoin could potentially make the problem far worse. Cubans could possibly lose a large chunk of their produce to Floridians, effectively paying a debt they should never have owed.

The Cubans have two solutions to this problem:

1. Export laws prohibiting the export of Cuban goods.
2. "Repay" the debt by exporting Cuban goods.
3. Use CubaCoin, a local Bitcoin fork.

The first solution goes against free trade, and has the unfortunate consequence of funnelling more BTC out of Cuba. The second is unappealing and detrimental to the Cuban standard of living. The third doesn't solve the problem, but is the only solution that isn't deleterious to the local populace.

And so the Cubans will choose the third option.

Is there a reason why this isn't an inevitability?