I agree "illegal" is the wrong word, but it's hard to describe what I am talking about in brief. I have competed ("competed") in China with the CPC with products before in my career, and they do... things... to you. They don't out-and-out make your product illegal, they just pass certain subtle laws and policies that advantage the party's product and disadvantage yours.
OK... But, in the previous discussions we've had, you said he would make it illegal, and I think you were pretty clear on that part. You even claimed that he would reach a point to discriminate anyone who runs software with consensus rules that do not align with his altered version of Bitcoin. (At least that's how I interpreted your solution for his plan to "change" Bitcoin.)
Yes, it could definitely get to that. Or maybe he won't need to while still making his own coin worth $1T+. And yes, I didn't go into the long explanation about what I meant because... I was lazy
. But "illegal" basically describes what I am talking about.
Of course he's going to pass laws that benefit him and his close people, just as Biden tried to squeezed as much of the crypto space as possible, by passing laws that discriminate people that choose to self-custody their bitcoin. I'm genuinely curious what's worse than that for a bitcoiner.
First of all, Biden did not "try to squeeze the crypto space". That's pure nonsense, and Bitcoin went up 500% under Biden.
And in case you haven't been tracking where all of the $billions from the crypto space came from, it was... (surprise!) entities like Coinbase, who are in the business of NOT self-custody.
Bitcoin isn't going to benefit from being "even more legal" now that Trump has been elected. It's legal now, and it will remain so as long as that benefits Trump personally.
And finally, you are comparing Biden (who, to be clear, had absolutely no direct connection to crypto laws or regulations) to Trump who is
actively competing with Bitcoin with a product that brings real money directly to his own personal pocket. That's just an absurd comparison.
And things like gold and BTC today operate like meme speculation investments, not safe havens.
Why do central banks hold immense amounts of gold if they do not view it as a safe haven?
Compared to the overall assets of the country? It's peanuts now days for the major economies. The gold in Fort Knox is worth about $300B, which is diddly squat in this context.
They hold these reserves as a legacy investment, because they always have, but it doesn't move the overall needly anymore and hasn't for a century.
The modern world economy is a very different beast than what we saw in the past. The old rules don't apply.
What has changed, comparably to the old times?
Well, I think part of it is the point I made above about gold. I also think that the globalization of economies makes them act very differently. Today, ordinary consumers can, within milliseconds, trade in and out of investments all of the world and have no incentive to, nor barrier to keep them from, holding any significant amount of their daily trading currency. This alone starts to make individual currencies, in terms of their long value, irrelevant. In other words, if the value of a currency goes down, you just trade out of it, or better yet your algo does it in real time for you. This also completely globalizes the world financial system in real time (which, I reckon, will actually makes things very volatile because money can come and go from economies so fast now).
I expect the USD to survive in the long term (and survive forever) only as a measurement instrument and nothing else. There will be currencies suited for transactions (high speed, low cost), and currencies that are popular memes and therefore hold a lot of value. And USD, EU, etc. will just live along side all of the other memes, in terms of their investment value--and governments themselves will invest this way, which means the value of their own currency won't necessarily affect their economy nor their people.
And I am... also missing a ton of details here, and I certainly don't know them all, but... this is a very, VERY different world we live in now.