Cryptocurrencies: Invitation to rationality
The choice of rationality, even wrapped in common sense and good humor, may seem too pragmatic, down to earth, unbelievable, but I recommend it because rationality is a quality that our world – in my opinion – is sorely lacking. Ready-made ideas are legion, including areas of critical importance. Take for example the circulation of cryptocurrencies.
cashless payments
At the end of the Middle Ages, our forefathers returned to the intensive practice of scriptural regulations. This practice was an important factor of development and prosperity during the Greco-Roman period, but then payments in writing lost a lot of ground in a West that was greatly affected by barbarian invasions. This method of payment is based on arithmetic and accounting, which made a certain progress thanks to the adoption of the so-called “double part”. This system, set up on the initiative of Italian merchants and bankers at the end of the Middle Ages, provided, and continues to provide, notable services: he is the one we use – without realizing it – for most of our transactions.
Payments in precious metals have not completely disappeared, but they now represent only a very small part of all payments. Whether transferring banknotes or scriptural transactions, the principle applies is in both cases the use of the creation, cancellation or modification of encrypted relationships called, depending on the case, receivables or debts.
Money creation and cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, were born from the use of computers to, in a way, reconnect with the use of money-things. A rather entertaining crossover was performed to transform the result of a relatively sophisticated computer operation, very expensive in energy, into a monetary object. We have money, called fiduciary or scriptural, depending on whether it is in the form of a note (claim on the so-called “central” bank made by a rectangle of printed paper) or a credit balance in a Bank account. In this system, the creation of money, the heart of credit operations, is cheap: granting credit only requires checking the solvency of the borrower, and therefore the seriousness of the project from which this agent borrows.
On the other hand, in a cryptomonetary system, the creation of money is inspired by “mining”, holding a pickaxe and dynamite, which sometimes leads to the extraction of precious metal, where gold coins or silver. Cryptocurrencies are computer objects whose production, like precious metal coins, is very expensive: a lot of energy has to be spent to obtain the computer object that is a cryptocurrency, and the price of this energy represents a huge part of the value associated with the computer object thus created. Our legislators, when drafting laws, readily apply the formula “why make it simple when you can make it complicated?” ». Developers and makers of cryptocurrencies apply a similar formula: “Why be cheap when you can waste a fortune?” “.
Wasting Cryptocurrency
It happens that people deliberately choose to “complicate it”, because if taken seriously they rely on this complication and the costs it generates. Cryptocurrency creation is under this tactic: this is a special case of large-scale waste made to reflect the naive thoughts that the creators and users of cryptocurrency belong to some kind of superior race, in a world of geniuses capable do good things.
With exceptions, people or organizations that use traditional money creation (to be granted credit, and therefore benefit from a money creation operation, to build a business, buy housing, or study in finance) are almost unconcerned “in the air” , to look modern, innovative: they have a goal, their way to debt is a way, and not an end in itself. On the other hand, what can you use to get cryptocurrency, which is expressly created for you? If you want to create or grow a business, you just need ordinary money to invest, hire, and hold until the first contracts obtained, the first sales made, come to feed your cash flow.
Resorting to a cryptocurrency loan is more a matter of snobbery than economic rationale. It’s like riding in a luxury car, when you’ll do your job just as well or better in a regular sedan or even a minivan. You spend a lot to appear “in”, but isn’t it in your interest to bet on ways of doing more related to your profession and your clients? Not all that glitters is gold, not all that is said to be modern is necessary. False modernity, consisting in this case of the use of esoteric and insane energy-sapping computer techniques, is it not just a trap for c…?
There are two categories of businessman: those who are serious, and those who show off. The latter often squander the funds entrusted to them. Beware of enthusiasm for so-called innovative projects that, in the end, only serve to inflate egos and fool the naive. When we as children blew soap bubbles to sparkle in the sun, we knew they would burst. The problem with adults is that so many of them are serious; let them return to childhood, the age when we know what a soap bubble is.
