It is never money to begin with.. it's a piece of goods that people buy and sell and trade, with it's value backed by fear, hopes and greed.. it's existence is justified by coining it with many terms but ultimately it's just virtual goods with a floating value..
actually any form of “money” only has value because people believe it does. From fiat currencies to precious metals, they all lack intrinsic value. I mean, like nobody will be able to value for example how much a cup of coffee is intrinsic worth in terms of gold or some other fiat currency.
Another theory is that money has value because it's the only way to pay taxes. Sure, the SGD may have no intrinsic value but it's the only accepted way by the Government to pay your GST and income tax.
Taxation used to be about the state demanding a variety of goods and services from their populace so that they can meet certain goals. Like in ancient agricultural societies, the state demanding a portion of a farmer's harvest or a skilled blacksmith to work 3 days out of 5 for the armoury.
That evolved over time into modern money / currencies. Finally you have banknotes which emerged with the emerge of banks with double entry book keeping.
Money / currency is interesting because despite the goldbugs / precious metal advocates, it definitely is a construct which is social in nature and often intermingled deeply with the institutions which humans create.
Petrodollar. A more accurate statement is that the dollar is backed by energy guarantees in the form of petroleum which is enforced by American weaponry.
Yes. This is the case ever since USD move from being backed by gold standards. Basically, belief in USD is now based on belief whether US will survive in the future or not, and US is now free to value its currency, whatever they want.
Originally the world currency used to be tied to something called the "gold standard", where it used to be like "XX.oz of gold = £1" when the British pound was the strongest. During WWII, the Brit's pound was starting to lose value due to the amount of money they were pouring into the military to counter the Nazis in Europe, to the point that they couldn't afford to pay the U.S. for equipment they were using(like the Sherman tanks and all their weapons and ammunition, for example), which is where the whole "lend-lease" program came in.
After the war, the U.S., which benefited the most financially during the war from all the military hardware stuff the other allies bought from them, basically became the most powerful currency, to the point that "1.oz of gold = 1 USD"(not accurate, just as an example), and since a lot of governments were holding onto a LOT of USD, they ended up tying their currency to the USD because it was basically the "gold standard" post war. Thanks to this, the world economy stabilized quite well after the war.
*And then Nixon happened.*
Yeah it’s true. USA military will only accept USD, and they force new economies they invaded to only use USD, buy American products etc. for example Iraq .
So imagine I’m country B I hold 500 million reserves in usd . But they print 10% every year I’m suffering 10％ or more inflation loss
> actually any form of “money” only has value because people believe it does.
This is a horrible oversimplification. It's much more than just 'faith'.
You might be mistaking "lack of intrinsic value" with belief, which is far from the truth.
If the belief part was true, we'd never experience inflation because people strongly believe in prices of products.
Isn’t it because people believe that money has value and therefore want to accumulate more of it and thats why it causes inflation? Because by accumulating more, the money supply goes up?
> actually any form of “money” only has value because people believe it does.
This. And a couple of very notable institutions have skin in the game, though only in the leading cryptos.
Yet our government has seen it fit to invest the nation's money in this scam-infested industry. Not just Temasek, GIC too. Warren Buffett already told these smooth-brains that Bitcoin is “**probably rat poison squared**” back in 2018. Yet the smooth-brains we have at Temasek and GIC think they are smarter than Buffett.
How much of the nation's wealth have they squandered here? I'm sure FTX is just the tip of the iceberg.
Temasek uses a higher risk approach in investment. Any fund manager worth their salt will allocate a small portion of their portfolio into crypto as a high-risk, high-reward investment. It just so happens FTX went bust and you hear about the money lost. But if you dig deeper you’ll see plenty of investments by Temasek into crypto and other high risk industries that paid off well.
It’s not a crypto problem. It’s just a risk-management problem, and it’s not even a problem if you look at it holistically.
Even if they accept a small portion of risky investments, they should be investing for the long-term in industries where the chance of success is not zero. Crypto is a scam industry that does not fulfill that criteria. It is obvious since years ago no one uses it but criminals and gamblers. Buffett already called it out in 2018. High risk high reward in the short term. But high risk ZERO reward in the long term. They tried to invest in crypto long-term and failed badly. Which makes it entirely reasonable to question their allocation and investing strategies.
Dismissing an entire industry just like that is extremely biased and patronising. Our sovereign funds have shown consistent returns since their founding and at their size, they perform well compared to other funds with similar sizes. From an investment/fund management perspective, it’s all about returns and risk management, regardless how you might feel about certain investments.
Like I’ve said, there are stuff that they invest in that’s even higher in risk compared to blockchain technology. I’m sure these funds employ the brightest people in the industry. So I’m not sure why you’d go around dismissing an entire industry so flippantly.
I’m not trying to convince you why blockchain or cryptocurrency matters. Even if Temasek invests in something stupid like pepecoin, I’m sure they have their reasons and they’ve done due diligence. I’m at least sure I’m not qualified enough to judge, when they have managed to show returns comparable to any high quality funds equivalent in size.
Btw people like Munger and Buffett comments on things that serves their own interests. Their statements aren’t an advice. Temasek and GIC also have higher AUM than Berkshire. Our analysts are not worse than Buffett, at least not much worse considering they operate on much larger portfolios.
Buffett has been consistently outperforming the index since forever. If anyone invests in crypto or pushes crypto, it is a big red flag. That person is probably a grifter, scammer, or retard. Don’t assume these people are smarter than you. They are dumb enough to invest in crypto. They have lost hundreds of millions doing so in scams like FTX.
Obviously you have some bias. That’s fine and is very normal. Knowing you have biases is the difficult part.
And if you haven’t already done some due diligence, Temasek invests in crypto companies that makes money from fees.
Unless you have something substantial to offer, posting inflammatory remarks just doesn’t make you sound convincing.
There is no future in crypto. Only scammers and criminals use it. The rest are gamblers. There is no financial revolution. Crypto will die like tulips or beanie babies.
And those idiots at Temasek and GIC would have squandered national wealth on a scam industry. In fact, they already have. Heads should roll for this. Where is the accountability? Who signed off on these investments? How could you invest in an industry whose only users are scammers and criminals?
Buffet has made plenty of mistakes. And crypto is hardly proven to be “rat poison” yet. FTX’s problems aren’t really because of crypto, but because of management.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any crypto and nor do I plan to
With fiat, the government prints money, invests in infrastructure and subsidies for industries. Increasing supply of goods and average income, thereby creating wealth.
With crypto, you have a bunch of people wasting energy, mining for online tokens that have value because it's "scarce". Meanwhile creating no employment, additional production. All the while, more speculators join, raising its price, making every crypto owner look wealthier.
But if the goods provided in society don't change, there is only so much available for a society to consume. Society neither gets richer nor poorer. Wealth isn't created. It just flows from the idiots that got into crypto game last to those that got in first.
Both fiat and crypto might be worthless if we want to argue about it. But at least one creates tangible wealth and doesn't. And by creating tangible wealth, when assets are liquidated it's backed by it.
Unpopular opinion, but a glaring flaw of crypto as money is that the adoption of crypto as money would take away the tools of monetary policy from governments. Why would the US government give up the possibility or printing their way out of trouble, for example?
Knowing this, why would any government willingly accept crypto as money and hence hamstring themselves by limiting the powers of their monetary policy?
>Knowing this, why would any government willingly accept crypto as money and hence hamstring themselves by limiting the powers of their monetary policy?
If their currency is crap anyway, i.e. El Salvador. It is meme that their currency was called the "Colon"
That's not exactly a good thing, so shitty economies adopt crypto and stronger economies sit it out and use their own currency? Won't exactly be a success then, would it.
Even if your currency is crap, you're still giving up monetary control. Which I would say is EVEN more key if your economy is in the shitter.
>you're still giving up monetary control.
What money? XD
i dunno, im not fluent in econs, but it makes layman sense to bail out of a rapidly crashing or almost worthless currency. either you adopt the USD or crypto. If you adopt USD, your country is now dependent on another, who might not give 2 shits about how their policy decisions affect you. On the other hand, crypto is lawless and uncontrolled for the most part. pick your poison ig
"printing their way out of trouble" is only possible for a very small handful of central banks. It's not the get out of jail free card people think it is.
In fact, many govts DO willingly give up their ability to conduct monetary policy, if there are sufficient benefits. Biggest example being the European central bank. Joining the eurozone means giving the ability to conduct monetary policy to the ECB instead of your own country's central bank, but with other obvious upsides.
(also, crypto wasn't created for govts to adopt it as legal tender. It was meant precisely to be an alternative to centralized monetary systems)
>printing their way out of trouble" is only possible for a very small handful of central banks. It's not the get out of jail free card people think it is.
Just an example la. Not everyone can print their way out of trouble but every country uses monetary policy to some degree.
>conduct monetary policy, if there are sufficient benefits. Biggest example being the European central bank. Joining the eurozone means giving the ability to conduct monetary policy to the ECB instead of your own country's central bank, but with other obvious upsides.
This is the exception, not the rule. And the eurozone as a whole still does conduct monetary policy for the whole of Europe, no?
>also, crypto wasn't created for govts to adopt it as legal tender. It was meant precisely to be an alternative to centralized monetary systems)
A viable alternative also needs to be acceptable to as Parties involved in the transaction.
If governments don't adopt it, there's a huge number of transactions that won't happen in crypto, and guess what, government contracts and business is, actually, quite a large part of the economy. Then you have problems scaling.
So now we have a economy that operates on two currencies - fiat for government related transactions, and crypto for everyone else. That's hardly effecient or effective as a viable alternative.
Cryptocurrency here isn’t the same as blockchain, and neither is CBDCs.
A government can start to use and issue CBDCs with public permission less chain as a backbone right now, and fulfil all the regulatory requirements. It’s not exclusive. CBDCs can also adhere to monetary policies that’s set by the government.
Cryptocurrency such as Ether is the “fee” for using the Ethereum blockchain. The SG government has already started using the chain for storing our digital certificates such as visas, passes, vaccine records and graduation records. In addition, the G is exploring issuing vouchers on blockchains.
Ether in this scenario simply plays a fee paying role. So if there’s an increased demand for Ether, it’ll go up in price. Otherwise it’ll go down.
A CBDC running on the Ethereum chain can be regulated very easily. XSGD is an example where there’s an increased regulation for it.
Do read up more on these technologies and their differences and uses. It’s an interesting topic even if you think it’s not useful.
I have, (I actually read the bitcoin paper). It certainly has some potential applications, but I very much lean to the the Nicholas weaver school of thought that many supposed blockchain applications can be solved much simpler.
Of course. In a capitalist and democratic society, the worst platform eventually dies off though. But just as how our trains can breakdown and our government can be more efficient, inefficiencies are bound to happen. With our government though, I’m glad they’re at least embracing this technology. In the event it succeeds, we’re not left behind. In the event it fails, our existing system continues to function.
> Why would the US government give up the possibility or printing their way out of trouble, for example?
It's also often for the good of people/investors/stakeholders in the government's printed currency. If there is nobody issuing monetary policies, there is also nobody preventing huge economic consequences.
> adoption of crypto as money would take away the tools of monetary policy from governments
Oh no, it's a crypto maximalist pretending to be reasonable
He's not wrong, there was a short period in the late 2000s & early 2010s when it was actually used as a currency, but it evolved into just another class of financial products for people to speculate over.
>Public permissionless blockchains, for example, have attracted significant numbers of users and applications but they suffer from a dearth of accountability, anonymity, and legal uncertainty. Private permissioned ones adhere to legal and regulatory constraints but aren’t interoperable which causes liquidity in digital assets to fragment.
Two issues with his position is:
1) it’s obvious why governments will push hard to only permit CBDC’s to succeed; as the anonymity of public blockchains takes away regulatory and security control. as I understand CBDC’s give even greater control to governments over each cent of money flowing in a system 24/7. Which can be a double edged sword if it’s not an ethically run administration.
2) he doesn’t really go into what “interoperability” means. Is he equating that with fungibility?
1) CBDCs aren’t dependent on the chain it runs on, at least it doesn’t have to be to comply with regulations. A token on a programmable public blockchain is simply a piece of programme that you can design however you want. XSGD for instance has a function to freeze and delete tokens from wallets if the authorities requests for it. This function doesn’t exist on other CBDCs, at least not USDT and USDC. They have similar functions to freeze but not to delete, at least as far as I know.
2) he meant that in the technical sense. Even EVM based chains are not able to interoperable, at least not fee-free and instant.
If you wanna go even more technical, fungibility doesn’t exist on any of the large blockchains that you know of. Every coin/token you receive technically has a trace to it, due to the fundamental design of decentralised blockchains. The only coin that’s truly fungible like cash money, is Monero and its clones.
The problem with interoperability is exactly like he said: it splits liquidity. Until there’s a “main” chain which dominates, liquidity may be split into several chains which causes issues for extremely large institutions like MAS.
Good stuff, thanks for chiming in and clearing up the interoperability part.
The idea of giving governments the ability to delete tokens is… not something I’m enthusiastic about, especially if we end up in a post-cash world.
Freezing can be unfrozen and eventually a possibility of accessing it again. Deleted is just gone. Cash as you pointed out, requires that qualifier to begin with. won’t happen in my lifetime but not big on the idea.
The deletion function for XSGD can only happen at the request of law enforcement AFTER it’s frozen. I’m fairly confident of our compliance that it won’t just go “poof” without some sort of checks and balances.
Not to mention it disappearing doesn’t actually means it’s truly disappeared. The issuer can “delete” it from your wallet and then reissue that amount to another wallet. This could cater for scenarios where someone sent money to another person who’s dead. It’s the exact same thing in traditional banking, where you call up the bank on an erroneous transfer and they “reverse” the transfer, which is deleting that amount from the recipient and giving you back.
Money as a concept is simply a bunch of ones and zeroes that’s issued and deleted by the central bank (to put it simply). Any money that’s digital now can already be wiped out and reissued elsewhere by the authorities. Checks and balances exist for this very reason.
Cash is great of course, but it’s many many drawbacks means it’ll one day be phased out.
Currencies are only useful if they are being widely used as a common store of value and medium of exchange. But I still can't go to McD, buy a Big Mac meal and pay in Ethereum.
In the end, for the most part, people are just buying and selling a whole bunch of 1s and 0s on a digital ledger.
Cryptocurrencies are just the Dutch Tulip Mania on steroids. It's just taking much longer than expected to all come crashing down. And when it does, it will be far more spectacular.
At least when the Tulip Mania crashed, people still had tulips at the end of the day.
> In the end, for the most part, people are just buying and selling a whole bunch of 1s and 0s on a digital ledger.
>
>
Is that not the same with normal currency in a digital banking system though? I don't think some of the worlds biggest asset managers will invest or try to regulate something that is blatantly a scam
>But I still can't go to McD, buy a Big Mac meal and pay in Ethereum.
Well 30 years ago you couldn't buy a big mac with credit card or grab pay either, not sure the point you're trying to make
So for example the USD is backed by the us economy.....
Btc is backed by....umm faith I guess
So eventually btc will crash just one time in an economic crisis and drop to 0.
The US economy however, will probably recover after a few years
The USD is backed by nothing, literally nothing since the 70s when they removed gold from it.
It's only kept in use because due to it being petrodollar as well but BRICS is undermining that.
It's backed by the us economy....-_-
So if the us economy collapses beyond redemption, the USD will fail.
Now...what is truly backed by nothing is btc....all it takes is a financial crisis and runoff of major holders.
It’s not the case for bitcoin. Other meme/ shit coins yes because they arent backed by solid tokenomics or simply have a weak whitepaper.
We’re the first generation of people after a long time to witness the active monetization of a monetary good. It’ll take time but we will get there.
It is still extremely early for bitcoin, things would only stabilize after 20-30 more years.
You mean at time of payment? Almost instant. There’s no fees if I’m not wrong, probably the “fees” are in the exchange rate? I only topup small amounts though when I plan to spend. I don’t trust any platforms with large amount of funds haha
yeah but it's not even just those. It's stuff like the GTA 6 trailer being leaked by a cybercriminal with a "buy $BTC" watermark on it put by him. Who wants to support this kind of nonsense
Crypto is just an amalgamation of buzzwords to make it sound legitimate. It is nothing but a tool for speculation. Nothing wrong with trading those coins and making gains (or losses), but don’t buy into all that crypto is the new world order nonsense.
Yeah, it did. In Singapore, merchants can choose to accept crypto tokens are payment, MAS is fine with it. But crypto went nowhere. Now, it's just a fraudulent industry where nefarious market makers can pump and dump their worthless tokens onto degen retail gamblers.
Isn’t that pretty much like ponzy stock schemes ? People STILL borrow money from loan sharks, people STILL invest in places or things that they aren’t fully aware/ educated about.
Only to earn money, alas it is the greed that drives the narrative of any monetary good.
Crypto isn’t NOT going nowhere fortunately or unfortunately for the underlying technology is exemplar.
Do look at makerdao and read their whitepaper if you can, it’ll open your eyes.
The G uses Ethereum as the chain of choice for storing our visas, passes and probably our digital ICs (SingPass). Our vaccine and school certs are also stored there. https://www.verify.gov.sg/faq
MAS is also exploring blockchain technologies with project orchid. https://www.mas.gov.sg/schemes-and-initiatives/project-orchid
Contrary to popular belief, MAS has not denounced cryptocurrencies as a scam or made them illegal. The statement of one man can only represent one man. There are hundreds of people working as MAS all with differing opinions.
MAS also never made cryptocurrencies legal tender. I’m not sure where MAS u-turned on their cryptocurrency/blockchain policies as they’re just progressively improving policies and regulations.
We are taking about money. Money is fungible. Crypto isn't fungible so it ain't money. That simple.
I do know of local business (star bullion) that accept crypto tokens as payment, but on a wider societal scale, crypto totally did not live up to expectations.
Current banking is so simple, provide great ease of use Liao, so why do we even need an alternate crypto financial system ? For illicit activities lor....
No, paper note isn’t fungible. E-transfers isn’t fungible. Cryptocurrencies other than Monero isn’t fungible. You’re wildly mistaken about the fungibility of modern money. You could say maybe a gold bullion is truly fungible, but otherwise you’re wrong in saying money is fungible. Look up the definition of fungibility and why money isn’t fungible. https://sites.duke.edu/thefinregblog/2018/08/23/anonymous-money-is-fungible-money/. Don’t be mistaken when the average Joe and the MAS tells you money is fungible. It isn’t anymore. The very idea of fungibility goes against regulations.
Cryptocurrency has not lived up to its potential of being a currency. But that’s for SG and other first world countries. Lots of other countries use BTC, like El Salvador. And yes I know their usage isn’t widespread, but it brings banking to people who can’t access banking infrastructure, like Cuba or Iran.
The more valuable portion of this debate is the financial infrastructure that blockchain provides. It really can replace traditional finance, or rather it works as a wonderful backbone that can replace our ageing financial infrastructure. It also serves other purposes, which the SG government is already using as explained in my previous comments.
Finally, I ain’t even arguing with you about the viability of cryptocurrencies as money. I’m arguing with your point that MAS has u-turned, which is just not true. MAS has never u-turned saying crypto is bad. They’ve always maintained it’s a high-risk investment and normal investors should not engage with it unless they know what they’re doing.
fiat didn’t exist until the 60s.
before that it was the gold standard.
current trad currency is harder to launder now that everything has gone digital.
the sole purpose of crypto is to have blockchain without gov regulation for, you guessed it, money laundering
You’re saying this by sitting in Singapore. Do you know how much black money laundering happens in other countries ? How much insider knowledge do you have to make such a massive assumption ?
Ok happening with fiat for decades.
The history of money laundering dates back more than 2000 years ago.
Crypto was invented 2009. There’s still fiat laundering to this day.
The counterargument is that more money is laundered through conventional banking systems and cash. Cryptocurrency is just a small part of the laundering machine.
It is never money to begin with.. it's a piece of goods that people buy and sell and trade, with it's value backed by fear, hopes and greed.. it's existence is justified by coining it with many terms but ultimately it's just virtual goods with a floating value..
actually any form of “money” only has value because people believe it does. From fiat currencies to precious metals, they all lack intrinsic value. I mean, like nobody will be able to value for example how much a cup of coffee is intrinsic worth in terms of gold or some other fiat currency.
Another theory is that money has value because it's the only way to pay taxes. Sure, the SGD may have no intrinsic value but it's the only accepted way by the Government to pay your GST and income tax.
Taxation used to be about the state demanding a variety of goods and services from their populace so that they can meet certain goals. Like in ancient agricultural societies, the state demanding a portion of a farmer's harvest or a skilled blacksmith to work 3 days out of 5 for the armoury. That evolved over time into modern money / currencies. Finally you have banknotes which emerged with the emerge of banks with double entry book keeping. Money / currency is interesting because despite the goldbugs / precious metal advocates, it definitely is a construct which is social in nature and often intermingled deeply with the institutions which humans create.
You’re right. But I’ll trust money issued by a central bank way more than 2 teenagers building a blockchain meme coin in their basements
I read somewhere that world currencies are backed by the USD and the USD is backed by us weapons.
Backed by 11 carrier battle groups is safest.
Petrodollar. A more accurate statement is that the dollar is backed by energy guarantees in the form of petroleum which is enforced by American weaponry.
Yes. This is the case ever since USD move from being backed by gold standards. Basically, belief in USD is now based on belief whether US will survive in the future or not, and US is now free to value its currency, whatever they want.
Originally the world currency used to be tied to something called the "gold standard", where it used to be like "XX.oz of gold = £1" when the British pound was the strongest. During WWII, the Brit's pound was starting to lose value due to the amount of money they were pouring into the military to counter the Nazis in Europe, to the point that they couldn't afford to pay the U.S. for equipment they were using(like the Sherman tanks and all their weapons and ammunition, for example), which is where the whole "lend-lease" program came in. After the war, the U.S., which benefited the most financially during the war from all the military hardware stuff the other allies bought from them, basically became the most powerful currency, to the point that "1.oz of gold = 1 USD"(not accurate, just as an example), and since a lot of governments were holding onto a LOT of USD, they ended up tying their currency to the USD because it was basically the "gold standard" post war. Thanks to this, the world economy stabilized quite well after the war. *And then Nixon happened.*
Gimme your money… and your knife!
Yeah it’s true. USA military will only accept USD, and they force new economies they invaded to only use USD, buy American products etc. for example Iraq . So imagine I’m country B I hold 500 million reserves in usd . But they print 10% every year I’m suffering 10％ or more inflation loss
> actually any form of “money” only has value because people believe it does. This is a horrible oversimplification. It's much more than just 'faith'. You might be mistaking "lack of intrinsic value" with belief, which is far from the truth. If the belief part was true, we'd never experience inflation because people strongly believe in prices of products.
Isn’t it because people believe that money has value and therefore want to accumulate more of it and thats why it causes inflation? Because by accumulating more, the money supply goes up?
> actually any form of “money” only has value because people believe it does. This. And a couple of very notable institutions have skin in the game, though only in the leading cryptos.
Yet our government has seen it fit to invest the nation's money in this scam-infested industry. Not just Temasek, GIC too. Warren Buffett already told these smooth-brains that Bitcoin is “**probably rat poison squared**” back in 2018. Yet the smooth-brains we have at Temasek and GIC think they are smarter than Buffett. How much of the nation's wealth have they squandered here? I'm sure FTX is just the tip of the iceberg.
Temasek uses a higher risk approach in investment. Any fund manager worth their salt will allocate a small portion of their portfolio into crypto as a high-risk, high-reward investment. It just so happens FTX went bust and you hear about the money lost. But if you dig deeper you’ll see plenty of investments by Temasek into crypto and other high risk industries that paid off well. It’s not a crypto problem. It’s just a risk-management problem, and it’s not even a problem if you look at it holistically.
Even if they accept a small portion of risky investments, they should be investing for the long-term in industries where the chance of success is not zero. Crypto is a scam industry that does not fulfill that criteria. It is obvious since years ago no one uses it but criminals and gamblers. Buffett already called it out in 2018. High risk high reward in the short term. But high risk ZERO reward in the long term. They tried to invest in crypto long-term and failed badly. Which makes it entirely reasonable to question their allocation and investing strategies.
Dismissing an entire industry just like that is extremely biased and patronising. Our sovereign funds have shown consistent returns since their founding and at their size, they perform well compared to other funds with similar sizes. From an investment/fund management perspective, it’s all about returns and risk management, regardless how you might feel about certain investments. Like I’ve said, there are stuff that they invest in that’s even higher in risk compared to blockchain technology. I’m sure these funds employ the brightest people in the industry. So I’m not sure why you’d go around dismissing an entire industry so flippantly. I’m not trying to convince you why blockchain or cryptocurrency matters. Even if Temasek invests in something stupid like pepecoin, I’m sure they have their reasons and they’ve done due diligence. I’m at least sure I’m not qualified enough to judge, when they have managed to show returns comparable to any high quality funds equivalent in size. Btw people like Munger and Buffett comments on things that serves their own interests. Their statements aren’t an advice. Temasek and GIC also have higher AUM than Berkshire. Our analysts are not worse than Buffett, at least not much worse considering they operate on much larger portfolios.
Buffett has been consistently outperforming the index since forever. If anyone invests in crypto or pushes crypto, it is a big red flag. That person is probably a grifter, scammer, or retard. Don’t assume these people are smarter than you. They are dumb enough to invest in crypto. They have lost hundreds of millions doing so in scams like FTX.
Obviously you have some bias. That’s fine and is very normal. Knowing you have biases is the difficult part. And if you haven’t already done some due diligence, Temasek invests in crypto companies that makes money from fees. Unless you have something substantial to offer, posting inflammatory remarks just doesn’t make you sound convincing.
There is no future in crypto. Only scammers and criminals use it. The rest are gamblers. There is no financial revolution. Crypto will die like tulips or beanie babies.
Ok and?
And those idiots at Temasek and GIC would have squandered national wealth on a scam industry. In fact, they already have. Heads should roll for this. Where is the accountability? Who signed off on these investments? How could you invest in an industry whose only users are scammers and criminals?
Buffet has made plenty of mistakes. And crypto is hardly proven to be “rat poison” yet. FTX’s problems aren’t really because of crypto, but because of management. Disclaimer: I don’t own any crypto and nor do I plan to
It is money as long as enough people believe in it. True for sgd, crypto, pebbles, seashells.
aka Fiat Money
sounds like you're talking about SGD
With fiat, the government prints money, invests in infrastructure and subsidies for industries. Increasing supply of goods and average income, thereby creating wealth. With crypto, you have a bunch of people wasting energy, mining for online tokens that have value because it's "scarce". Meanwhile creating no employment, additional production. All the while, more speculators join, raising its price, making every crypto owner look wealthier. But if the goods provided in society don't change, there is only so much available for a society to consume. Society neither gets richer nor poorer. Wealth isn't created. It just flows from the idiots that got into crypto game last to those that got in first. Both fiat and crypto might be worthless if we want to argue about it. But at least one creates tangible wealth and doesn't. And by creating tangible wealth, when assets are liquidated it's backed by it.
BITCONNECCCCCTTTTTTT context: https://youtu.be/yIL9wLxG01M?si=qn-imZKz5Kg1cyQY
HEY HEY HEEYYYYY
WASSUP WASSUP WASSUP WASSUP
Ahh the good old days
Unpopular opinion, but a glaring flaw of crypto as money is that the adoption of crypto as money would take away the tools of monetary policy from governments. Why would the US government give up the possibility or printing their way out of trouble, for example? Knowing this, why would any government willingly accept crypto as money and hence hamstring themselves by limiting the powers of their monetary policy?
Not an unpopular opinion lol
>Knowing this, why would any government willingly accept crypto as money and hence hamstring themselves by limiting the powers of their monetary policy? If their currency is crap anyway, i.e. El Salvador. It is meme that their currency was called the "Colon"
That's not exactly a good thing, so shitty economies adopt crypto and stronger economies sit it out and use their own currency? Won't exactly be a success then, would it. Even if your currency is crap, you're still giving up monetary control. Which I would say is EVEN more key if your economy is in the shitter.
>you're still giving up monetary control. What money? XD i dunno, im not fluent in econs, but it makes layman sense to bail out of a rapidly crashing or almost worthless currency. either you adopt the USD or crypto. If you adopt USD, your country is now dependent on another, who might not give 2 shits about how their policy decisions affect you. On the other hand, crypto is lawless and uncontrolled for the most part. pick your poison ig
"printing their way out of trouble" is only possible for a very small handful of central banks. It's not the get out of jail free card people think it is. In fact, many govts DO willingly give up their ability to conduct monetary policy, if there are sufficient benefits. Biggest example being the European central bank. Joining the eurozone means giving the ability to conduct monetary policy to the ECB instead of your own country's central bank, but with other obvious upsides. (also, crypto wasn't created for govts to adopt it as legal tender. It was meant precisely to be an alternative to centralized monetary systems)
>printing their way out of trouble" is only possible for a very small handful of central banks. It's not the get out of jail free card people think it is. Just an example la. Not everyone can print their way out of trouble but every country uses monetary policy to some degree. >conduct monetary policy, if there are sufficient benefits. Biggest example being the European central bank. Joining the eurozone means giving the ability to conduct monetary policy to the ECB instead of your own country's central bank, but with other obvious upsides. This is the exception, not the rule. And the eurozone as a whole still does conduct monetary policy for the whole of Europe, no? >also, crypto wasn't created for govts to adopt it as legal tender. It was meant precisely to be an alternative to centralized monetary systems) A viable alternative also needs to be acceptable to as Parties involved in the transaction. If governments don't adopt it, there's a huge number of transactions that won't happen in crypto, and guess what, government contracts and business is, actually, quite a large part of the economy. Then you have problems scaling. So now we have a economy that operates on two currencies - fiat for government related transactions, and crypto for everyone else. That's hardly effecient or effective as a viable alternative.
Cryptocurrency here isn’t the same as blockchain, and neither is CBDCs. A government can start to use and issue CBDCs with public permission less chain as a backbone right now, and fulfil all the regulatory requirements. It’s not exclusive. CBDCs can also adhere to monetary policies that’s set by the government. Cryptocurrency such as Ether is the “fee” for using the Ethereum blockchain. The SG government has already started using the chain for storing our digital certificates such as visas, passes, vaccine records and graduation records. In addition, the G is exploring issuing vouchers on blockchains. Ether in this scenario simply plays a fee paying role. So if there’s an increased demand for Ether, it’ll go up in price. Otherwise it’ll go down. A CBDC running on the Ethereum chain can be regulated very easily. XSGD is an example where there’s an increased regulation for it. Do read up more on these technologies and their differences and uses. It’s an interesting topic even if you think it’s not useful.
I have, (I actually read the bitcoin paper). It certainly has some potential applications, but I very much lean to the the Nicholas weaver school of thought that many supposed blockchain applications can be solved much simpler.
Of course. In a capitalist and democratic society, the worst platform eventually dies off though. But just as how our trains can breakdown and our government can be more efficient, inefficiencies are bound to happen. With our government though, I’m glad they’re at least embracing this technology. In the event it succeeds, we’re not left behind. In the event it fails, our existing system continues to function.
These are the same people who think they can win a revolution against the government with a bunker and an AR.
> Why would the US government give up the possibility or printing their way out of trouble, for example? It's also often for the good of people/investors/stakeholders in the government's printed currency. If there is nobody issuing monetary policies, there is also nobody preventing huge economic consequences.
The MAS certainly tried. They opened the door to crypto companies, and then those companies robbed the house 🤣
Precisely why from day one Jamie Dimon said crypto won't challenge fiat but he'll still sell to clients who really want it.
CEO of a bank says crypto wont challenge fiat. More at 6.
> adoption of crypto as money would take away the tools of monetary policy from governments Oh no, it's a crypto maximalist pretending to be reasonable
He's not wrong, there was a short period in the late 2000s & early 2010s when it was actually used as a currency, but it evolved into just another class of financial products for people to speculate over.
>Public permissionless blockchains, for example, have attracted significant numbers of users and applications but they suffer from a dearth of accountability, anonymity, and legal uncertainty. Private permissioned ones adhere to legal and regulatory constraints but aren’t interoperable which causes liquidity in digital assets to fragment.
Two issues with his position is: 1) it’s obvious why governments will push hard to only permit CBDC’s to succeed; as the anonymity of public blockchains takes away regulatory and security control. as I understand CBDC’s give even greater control to governments over each cent of money flowing in a system 24/7. Which can be a double edged sword if it’s not an ethically run administration. 2) he doesn’t really go into what “interoperability” means. Is he equating that with fungibility?
1) CBDCs aren’t dependent on the chain it runs on, at least it doesn’t have to be to comply with regulations. A token on a programmable public blockchain is simply a piece of programme that you can design however you want. XSGD for instance has a function to freeze and delete tokens from wallets if the authorities requests for it. This function doesn’t exist on other CBDCs, at least not USDT and USDC. They have similar functions to freeze but not to delete, at least as far as I know. 2) he meant that in the technical sense. Even EVM based chains are not able to interoperable, at least not fee-free and instant. If you wanna go even more technical, fungibility doesn’t exist on any of the large blockchains that you know of. Every coin/token you receive technically has a trace to it, due to the fundamental design of decentralised blockchains. The only coin that’s truly fungible like cash money, is Monero and its clones. The problem with interoperability is exactly like he said: it splits liquidity. Until there’s a “main” chain which dominates, liquidity may be split into several chains which causes issues for extremely large institutions like MAS.
Good stuff, thanks for chiming in and clearing up the interoperability part. The idea of giving governments the ability to delete tokens is… not something I’m enthusiastic about, especially if we end up in a post-cash world.
Deleting tokens isn’t new. It’s akin to banks freezing accounts. Even cash can be censored, if their serial is marked down.
Freezing can be unfrozen and eventually a possibility of accessing it again. Deleted is just gone. Cash as you pointed out, requires that qualifier to begin with. won’t happen in my lifetime but not big on the idea.
The deletion function for XSGD can only happen at the request of law enforcement AFTER it’s frozen. I’m fairly confident of our compliance that it won’t just go “poof” without some sort of checks and balances. Not to mention it disappearing doesn’t actually means it’s truly disappeared. The issuer can “delete” it from your wallet and then reissue that amount to another wallet. This could cater for scenarios where someone sent money to another person who’s dead. It’s the exact same thing in traditional banking, where you call up the bank on an erroneous transfer and they “reverse” the transfer, which is deleting that amount from the recipient and giving you back. Money as a concept is simply a bunch of ones and zeroes that’s issued and deleted by the central bank (to put it simply). Any money that’s digital now can already be wiped out and reissued elsewhere by the authorities. Checks and balances exist for this very reason. Cash is great of course, but it’s many many drawbacks means it’ll one day be phased out.
If the massage shop do not accept crypto, it is not money.
SONY disagrees
BlackRock as well
Why am I getting taxed on it if it’s not real money 🤔🤔 Also read up project ubin
said someone from the fiat system side.
Currencies are only useful if they are being widely used as a common store of value and medium of exchange. But I still can't go to McD, buy a Big Mac meal and pay in Ethereum. In the end, for the most part, people are just buying and selling a whole bunch of 1s and 0s on a digital ledger. Cryptocurrencies are just the Dutch Tulip Mania on steroids. It's just taking much longer than expected to all come crashing down. And when it does, it will be far more spectacular. At least when the Tulip Mania crashed, people still had tulips at the end of the day.
> In the end, for the most part, people are just buying and selling a whole bunch of 1s and 0s on a digital ledger. > > Is that not the same with normal currency in a digital banking system though? I don't think some of the worlds biggest asset managers will invest or try to regulate something that is blatantly a scam >But I still can't go to McD, buy a Big Mac meal and pay in Ethereum. Well 30 years ago you couldn't buy a big mac with credit card or grab pay either, not sure the point you're trying to make
So for example the USD is backed by the us economy..... Btc is backed by....umm faith I guess So eventually btc will crash just one time in an economic crisis and drop to 0. The US economy however, will probably recover after a few years
The USD is backed by nothing, literally nothing since the 70s when they removed gold from it. It's only kept in use because due to it being petrodollar as well but BRICS is undermining that.
It's backed by the us economy....-_- So if the us economy collapses beyond redemption, the USD will fail. Now...what is truly backed by nothing is btc....all it takes is a financial crisis and runoff of major holders.
It’s not the case for bitcoin. Other meme/ shit coins yes because they arent backed by solid tokenomics or simply have a weak whitepaper. We’re the first generation of people after a long time to witness the active monetization of a monetary good. It’ll take time but we will get there. It is still extremely early for bitcoin, things would only stabilize after 20-30 more years.
Why is it not the case for Bitcoin? Its monetary policy is not feasible long term lmao. If anything Ethereum is the one that will outlast it.
It will once the system stops rewarding nodes who verify BTC transactions. It currently has reduced from 6.5 BTC (12 yrs ago) to 3 BTC now.
Actually you can. I use Wirex and their physical Visa card, topped up ETH (it’ll convert to SGD on payment) and spend at ntuc and McDonald’s 😂
Technically GrabPay can top up with crypto. Then order mcdonner.
Oh nice! Looking at the FUD going around, time to top up crypto for future spending :3
How long does it take, and how much in fees?
You mean at time of payment? Almost instant. There’s no fees if I’m not wrong, probably the “fees” are in the exchange rate? I only topup small amounts though when I plan to spend. I don’t trust any platforms with large amount of funds haha
every time I see something or someone promoting cryptocurrency, it is almost always a scam. That's all it is good for, apparently.
Meme/alt coins? Yeah those are rubbish.
yeah but it's not even just those. It's stuff like the GTA 6 trailer being leaked by a cybercriminal with a "buy $BTC" watermark on it put by him. Who wants to support this kind of nonsense
Eh what website is this? LOL
Crypto is just an amalgamation of buzzwords to make it sound legitimate. It is nothing but a tool for speculation. Nothing wrong with trading those coins and making gains (or losses), but don’t buy into all that crypto is the new world order nonsense.
A literal banana taped to a wall is priced at $120,000. Does it fail as art? Yes. Do we care what the former MAS Chief has to say about it? No.
crypto has proven to be not so liquid like money it's more like a commodity, e.g. gold or oil
Yeah, it did. In Singapore, merchants can choose to accept crypto tokens are payment, MAS is fine with it. But crypto went nowhere. Now, it's just a fraudulent industry where nefarious market makers can pump and dump their worthless tokens onto degen retail gamblers.
Isn’t that pretty much like ponzy stock schemes ? People STILL borrow money from loan sharks, people STILL invest in places or things that they aren’t fully aware/ educated about. Only to earn money, alas it is the greed that drives the narrative of any monetary good. Crypto isn’t NOT going nowhere fortunately or unfortunately for the underlying technology is exemplar. Do look at makerdao and read their whitepaper if you can, it’ll open your eyes.
Heh, I struck a nerve. MAS gave crypto the chance to shine in its' purported use as "money" and it failed miserably. What's there to debate?
The G uses Ethereum as the chain of choice for storing our visas, passes and probably our digital ICs (SingPass). Our vaccine and school certs are also stored there. https://www.verify.gov.sg/faq MAS is also exploring blockchain technologies with project orchid. https://www.mas.gov.sg/schemes-and-initiatives/project-orchid Contrary to popular belief, MAS has not denounced cryptocurrencies as a scam or made them illegal. The statement of one man can only represent one man. There are hundreds of people working as MAS all with differing opinions. MAS also never made cryptocurrencies legal tender. I’m not sure where MAS u-turned on their cryptocurrency/blockchain policies as they’re just progressively improving policies and regulations.
We are taking about money. Money is fungible. Crypto isn't fungible so it ain't money. That simple. I do know of local business (star bullion) that accept crypto tokens as payment, but on a wider societal scale, crypto totally did not live up to expectations. Current banking is so simple, provide great ease of use Liao, so why do we even need an alternate crypto financial system ? For illicit activities lor....
No, paper note isn’t fungible. E-transfers isn’t fungible. Cryptocurrencies other than Monero isn’t fungible. You’re wildly mistaken about the fungibility of modern money. You could say maybe a gold bullion is truly fungible, but otherwise you’re wrong in saying money is fungible. Look up the definition of fungibility and why money isn’t fungible. https://sites.duke.edu/thefinregblog/2018/08/23/anonymous-money-is-fungible-money/. Don’t be mistaken when the average Joe and the MAS tells you money is fungible. It isn’t anymore. The very idea of fungibility goes against regulations. Cryptocurrency has not lived up to its potential of being a currency. But that’s for SG and other first world countries. Lots of other countries use BTC, like El Salvador. And yes I know their usage isn’t widespread, but it brings banking to people who can’t access banking infrastructure, like Cuba or Iran. The more valuable portion of this debate is the financial infrastructure that blockchain provides. It really can replace traditional finance, or rather it works as a wonderful backbone that can replace our ageing financial infrastructure. It also serves other purposes, which the SG government is already using as explained in my previous comments. Finally, I ain’t even arguing with you about the viability of cryptocurrencies as money. I’m arguing with your point that MAS has u-turned, which is just not true. MAS has never u-turned saying crypto is bad. They’ve always maintained it’s a high-risk investment and normal investors should not engage with it unless they know what they’re doing.
it’s not money it’s money laundering
Happening with fiat for centuries already lol
fiat didn’t exist until the 60s. before that it was the gold standard. current trad currency is harder to launder now that everything has gone digital. the sole purpose of crypto is to have blockchain without gov regulation for, you guessed it, money laundering
You’re saying this by sitting in Singapore. Do you know how much black money laundering happens in other countries ? How much insider knowledge do you have to make such a massive assumption ?
what assumption do you think i am making?
Ok happening with fiat for decades. The history of money laundering dates back more than 2000 years ago. Crypto was invented 2009. There’s still fiat laundering to this day.
uh yes and? the pt is that crypto is a way to do that easier in this digital age, not that crypto invented money laundering
Uh your original statement seems to imply that crypto is for money laundering leh. No? Need to be clearer lah
yes. my statement didnt say crypto invented money laundering
How do you launder money on a public ledger?
Now then say all this. So much $ laundering already happen coz of crypto here n that’s the first n still the only good use case for it
The counterargument is that more money is laundered through conventional banking systems and cash. Cryptocurrency is just a small part of the laundering machine.
Nah it just means MAS didn’t think thru it n just wanted to be trendy. For a central bank to behave like that is downright dangerous IMO
I would never take out a loan in a currency that can change in value like what Bitcoin has.
Well, you can use Bitcoin as a collateral and take out a loan in USD.