Hi Mq. It's now 9 years since you decided to go public with your plans to replace the communist money with your swishy new-fangled cybermoney. Quite a lot has happened since then. It looks as though it's now timely to get it going because the cyberphones are ubiquitous, fingerprint, iris scan, voice interrogation, DNA testing, PIN, password, and the necessary Cyberspace infrastructures are fairly well developed.
One big dopey idea that was expounded by "experts" on money has been totally debunked as you said. The idea that money has to start from some material intrinsic value backing such as gold, silver, eggs, fancy sea shells, land, power to tax, oil, energy is dead. Johny Come Lately bitcoin has soared in market capitalisation to $40 billion and total market value of all cryptocurrencies is about $94 billion of which there are 802 according to coinmarketcap.com
Your original criticism of bitcoin remains true. But you should have got some bitcoin when it first appeared because even if it's NOT going to last, while it's the best thing going, like the Model A car, you should buy shares in the factory.
You should have sold bitcoin when you finally got your amazing currency going which will turn bitcoin into scrap iron. Except that 0s and 1s don't have scrap value. They just vanish into quantum mechanical aether.
The bitcoin mining equipment might have some residual value as heating equipment which they have been used for to try to get some value out of the waste heat they generate.
The intrinsic problem with bitcoin and block-chains is that they waste energy doing pointless vast calculations and they take time to do it. So moving bitcoins is expensive and slow, waiting while 0s and 1s are thrashed around in a monetary mill racing against other mining machinery with the winner getting the job done and the payment of new bitcoin as a reward for a hard job well done. Much of the bitcoin generated goes to paying for the equipment and electricity used to do the mining.
Bitcoin is also insecure because a hacker can get hold of the code and they then own that money and can move it to another wallet. Once it is gone, it's gone. Vanished into the aether.
Entropy is an inevitable part of steam engines and bitcoin mining, but entropy should still be minimized. Bitcoin actually INCREASES entropy as a mechanism to control mining production. Nature aims for efficiency, not inefficiency. So a cheetah is light and well designed for high speed across flat countryside. Birds are designed with super light bones so that they can fly fast and far. Elephants have huge strong bones so they can support a massive weight and carry giant tusks which are useful for killing lions. The Model A had a clunky internal combustion engine which was very inefficient. Cars improved over the decades until 100 years later internal combustion engines are cheap to produce using robots and very efficient, long-lasting with low maintenance, and reliable. But they still can't beat thermodynamics.
Now electric cars are finally gaining ground thanks to good batteries and electronic controls. Cars still look the same from the outside, but the motive power is totally different. Photovoltaics, batteries and electric motors are now all the rage.
So it is with money. The Model A of cybermoney run by people, not Big Brother kleptocratic hyperinflators, has demonstrated important attributes, but it's not going to have a long product life cycle.
So go on Mq, make it happen. It's now a dozen years since you went to Montpelier to hang out and get it all figured out. The technology is now ready to go, more or less.
Maybe check those 802 competitors and see if any of them are going it right. They surely aren't but maybe so. It would be easier to just vote along with one that's doing it right.
Mqurice
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