My Thoughts on Dogecoin

I, for one, am delighted to see people acknowledging the long and important history of banking, and the role of the medieval Republic of Venice and its doges in that history.

The Doge of Venice, painted by Lucas d'Heere in the late 1500s; thanks to Wikipedia for the image.

 

Oh, wait ….

Comments

[MatthewSlyfield]

It's not Doge coin, it's Dog E Coin.

[Dilan Esper]

Isn't he the drummer for Cheap Trick?

[David Bremer]

I sense the look on the Doge's face right there signifies his disapproval of that joke.

[AmosArch]

I used to be quite skeptical of cryptos. Now I've shifted a bit on them. Specifically I now feel the major challenges are technical and can theoretically be overcome rather than inherent and intractable. I could not get over the creating value from nothing bit but then I realized thats what most money is nowadays. Dollars, bitcoin, even gold. Sure they say gold has intrinsic value but its just a figleaf. Very few people are chomping at the bit to buy gold to smash up for their homebrew cpus. What matters not is the 'intrinsic value'. Which really is a subjective concept at best when you think about it. Its the chain of obligation. And say what you will about the current flawed implementations but crytocurrency is absolutely capable of replicating this. The world needs a decentralized medium of exchange free from the interference of authorities. Maybe crypto can fill this niche provided they overcome some admittedly big problems.

[MP]

Capable? At what scale? I've yet to see something that convincingly makes the case that a decentralized currency could replace a nation-state currency.

[Orbital Mechanic]

AmosArch,

There will always be among those that reject utterly the idea or implementation of any fiat currency. Long after you and I are gone there will still be people crying out to return to the gold standard. They crave the simplicity of it. The thing you can "count on."

I can't imagine the psychological tumult they must be going through with the idea that these unseeable bits in computers are worth something.

[JohnnyAppleseed]

It's not free from the interference of authorities. Governments can easily outlaw any crypto they want. If they don't want to go that far, do you really think China or the U.S. government don't have the resources to execute a 51% attack on the BTC ledger? There's also no hard cryptographic guarantee with most currencies, which is what theoretically makes interference "hard". Shor's algorithm on a quantum computer for example can be used to crack most of the hashes. For those that rely on elliptic curves, discrete logarithm problem also has vulnerabilities to quantum attacks. Furthermore, there's a massive privacy issue. The ledger isn't private and easily traversable by government. Some cryptos like Monero and Zcash are "private" — Zcash is the only one that is provably so, but the protocols behind zero knowledge proofs still suffer from same issues as above.

[MatthewSlyfield]

"Sure they say gold has intrinsic value but its just a figleaf."

Not completely a figleaf.

Gold has utility as an electrical conductor that is corrosion resistant. That give is some inherent value.

Though nearly all of it's current economic value comes just from the fact that people covet it.

[JohnnyAppleseed]

An obvious Trojan Horse. Nation states and the global elite can't wait for widespread adoption of crypto because it means they can step in and replace paper fiat with centralized digital that is significantly easier to control. Think about it, expropriation becomes far easier with digital currency. With physical currency, the feds need to send an entire tactical team to seize assets.With crypto, they can simply cut off your digital wallet. Late parking ticket? Lol good luck paying your electricity bill. Share an offensive meme? No groceries for you. Donated to a political opponent? Say goodbye to your 401K.

[bernard11]

This is nonsense.

Only a small percentage of money is held in the form of physical currency. And a much smaller percentage of wealth is held that way.

Want to expropriate me? No tactical team needed. Just cut me off from my Schwab account.

[JohnnyAppleseed]

The difference is that you can still choose physical currency if you need it. In a completely digital world, you can't. Physical currency is far more antifragile. Also doesn't require internet or use massive amounts of electricity.

Unrelated, but Schwab sucks.

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

This comes to mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_lAFDbnMLA&t=49s

[Jimmy the Dane]

Crypto is a fad just like being a liberal who supports free speech and an "anti-racist" who supports "equality"....

[LawTalkingGuy]

In a sense Cryptocurrency does honor the Doges by being somewhat convoluted just like the selection scheme the Venetians used to pick one.

[Ben_]

Wow. Much Venice. Very serenity.

[Eugene Volokh]

See https://dogemuchwow.com/the-doges-of-venice/.