Chris Hayes broke down a plan by Republican legislators to transfer billions of dollars of taxpayer money to owners of Bitcoin in exchange for their holdings.
Bitcoin does have artificial scarcity, though. There can only ever be 21 million in existence under the current protocol. Nearly 20 million have been released through mining, so there are only a little over 1 million left to mine. (There’s that number again…)
Yes, Bitcoin is an open-source project and anyone can modify the code, but the network operates based on all the mining nodes accepting the same rules. If I were to run a node that changes the rules to mine more BTC out of thin air than the protocol allows, other nodes would just reject it. Changing the 21 million limit would involve getting all these miners to decide to change that code, and why would they do that, when it would dilute the coins they have already mined?
I agree with you, though, that it is too risky for the US Government to keep BTC in reserve. It’s price widely fluctuates, it has reached $100k but is probably going to be valued at less then $50k at some point in Trump’s term. It will also be valued at more than $200k at some point during Trump’s term. Speculators are betting on which will come first. The US Government shouldn’t be involved at all.
Bitcoin does have artificial scarcity, though. There can only ever be 21 million in existence under the current protocol. Nearly 20 million have been released through mining, so there are only a little over 1 million left to mine. (There’s that number again…)
Yes, Bitcoin is an open-source project and anyone can modify the code, but the network operates based on all the mining nodes accepting the same rules. If I were to run a node that changes the rules to mine more BTC out of thin air than the protocol allows, other nodes would just reject it. Changing the 21 million limit would involve getting all these miners to decide to change that code, and why would they do that, when it would dilute the coins they have already mined?
I agree with you, though, that it is too risky for the US Government to keep BTC in reserve. It’s price widely fluctuates, it has reached $100k but is probably going to be valued at less then $50k at some point in Trump’s term. It will also be valued at more than $200k at some point during Trump’s term. Speculators are betting on which will come first. The US Government shouldn’t be involved at all.