Before I continue, I appreciate your time and thoughts in this thread
Can you expand on anti society? The fact that we are hashing this out implies to me im not anti society but maybe Iām not understanding.
As for anti US agenda:
(US citizen here)
This is a clever framing. You indirectly want the US to have ultimate control of the strings and twist it like its hurting citizens, or is anti-(insert word here) when its pointed out that perhaps, the US shouldnāt be in control of every little thing. I think suggesting Crypto isnāt political is wrong. Whatās funny is we want the same things: private digital money for the world. The thing is, the world is bigger than some US policy ā at least it should be. Please understand Iām not an expert on US policy ā these are simply my honest takes with how I see it currently. Is the SEC helping or hurting the US right now? I intend to keep asking questions because frankly something is wrong and things arenāt adding up.
I donāt want to hurt the US, and if asking questions leads folks to point me as anti american we might be in trouble.
I hate to break the news to you, but ZEC, BTC, and all of them are 100% FIAT! The only thing that is not 100% FIAT is the USD. The USD has the backing of gold (indirectly; they will sell gold to buy USD if they have to and we have more than any other country in the world; it has the backing the US Citizens, it has the US military, a tax base, contract laws people trust. There is a lot backing the USD.
All of your arguments infer an anti US and anti USD. Anything that hurts the dollar hurts its citizens. And it hurts the lowest paid people the most. And you directly say you are anti FIAT and particularly the USD (too much control) that we all democratically agree to accept and vote on is to me anti society. Thatās fine if you want to over throw the social order built around the USD, but is anti society when you are anti USD; its anti US labor. Last time I checked there is millions of people fighting to get into this country. So, what you might view as negative about the country is positive for many people fleeing corruption and real suppression in their own countries. What happens to peoples pensions, and savings in your view of the world? Now, I am not saying there is no role for ZEC as sort of an insurance policy or as gas for a monetary base blockchain. And the jury is out if BTC is just our modern day tulip mania.
As for crypto, its a technology. Its apolitical. The people in crypto might be political; but crypto by itself is not. I said I am not in this for politics. I am not about giving US control or China control, or you. You might want private digital money for the world, I just dont think you know what money is.
The SEC in the past has done a pretty good job of protecting US investors. I donāt think they understand crypto because our laws are designed for securities, and commodities and crypto doesnāt fit nicely into these boxes. I think people need protection from fraud; but cryto is a unique thing. I think they have done a good job net net at letting the industry evolve and not crushing it as they could have. Some mistakes probably made. But in the long run I think we will have the safest and best crypto industry in the world.
Again I appreciate your time on this and its clear you are passionate about the US and the US dollar. I might come off as anti, but Im more curious and simply looking to better understand.
That is a fair point, Iām still learning as I go and I think the concept of money is complex.
Sure, but the fact we even need crypto suggest something is wrong.
$1 in the 70ās vs $1 now, what does it actually buy you? Something is wrong.
Cash is on the way out, digital only seems imminent. My hope is that post 9-11 we dont lose even more Freedoms.
Well. Something is always wrong. Riding horses was wrong. And cars fixed that. Now cars are wrong and something new will come alongā¦And so many thingsā¦Itās called progress.
Crypto will improve the cost structure of things and will result in people just having more things at the same or lower price. And will result in new and better things that didnt exist before. The next Apple, Google, or Microsoft will come out of this. And we might already have one of them in Ethereum. There will be more.
Again, this is from people that dont understand money. They didnt have cell phones, driverless cars, 80" TVs and thousands and thousands of other things, our houses are larger and better and appliances more prevalent. You live better than kings did thousands of years ago (you might not have the power you want; but your daily life is better and you will live longer). Your analysis is missing so much. You need to convert your thinking into ālabor hoursāā¦How many labor hours did it cost. Our standard of living is much improved. 1 labor hour likely buys much more today (albeit I have not done the math in a long time).
Cash is 100% on the way out. Its been basically mostly gone for 10 or 20 years for many people. And if you count checks it been gone longer. VISA/Master/AMEX digitized cash a long time ago. These companies are who the real fight is with, not FIAT and not any government. Cypto will further digitize cash that is for sure and it will do it at a lower cost than VISA/AMEX etc. But im pretty certain it would be smart for (VISA et al) to fork ZEC or some technology when it is ready (or they just build their own; but they really dont have the skill setā¦they probably after some time. So ZEC has an opportunity). It is why I argue for a privacy base USDz now. It is inevitable. And if Zcash doesnāt do it, someone will.
I blame the media to a large extent. Here are some stats that might make you feel better or not so bad. Now i just grabbed them off the internet so take it with some skeptism. But directionally it is probably right.
1970 min wage was $1.6 and gas was .36 and average car was $3,542. that means a person had to work 1 hour for 4.4 gallons of gas and 2,213 hours for a avg car.
2023 min wage is $15.5 and average gas is $4.16 and average car is $48,000. that means a person had to work 1 hour for 4.16 gallons of gas and 3,096 hours for a car. now that might seem like a lot
more for a car. but cars last much longer today than in 1970; and they broke a lot more often and MPG was lowā¦ so i believe anyone who calculates the life of car cost will find cars are cheaper today. and better quality. the quality sucked in 1970.
No one had phones or computers in 1970, or the internet or TVs, or all the movies and media content. so we are all better off on average. and the cost of so many things has collapsed in price compared to 1970 and after. People used to pay $2 per min for a cell phone call. now itās basically free. Electronics and so many things.
So when you see people say the dollar has fallen by 50, 75 or 90% or whatever over time, it may just depend on what is being measured. I think they are selling fear and unhappiness. Thatās just my opinion.
that takes more work. many more variables. Housing is always expensive. itās never cheap as far as i remember except for 2010-12 which was a once in a lifetime buying opportunity. i expect itās similar to cars. but just a guess.
Very nice thread.
I would like to add a few points.
Currently the zcash network is supported by ~200 nodes. This is a pretty low number. A fork that would take away 25% of these nodes will be bad for both parties.
21M coin is a great solution for a deflationary currency. Deflationary currencies are inherently a bad currency. A fixed cap is a good solution for a store of value. Can we have a compromise to preserve value and have a useful currency? Maybe a small constant tail emission to replace the physiologically lost coins? (i.e. 1%). We want people to use Zcash not to hoard them.
What is it going to happen when we will hopefully have 25k z2z tx/day? If I would be running a node Iād be very worried.
The ādollar weightedā voting idea looks to me reasonable (disclamer, I am a long term holder)
I believe the attributes of ZEC and Bitcoin make it not useful as a day to day currency. The intrinsic nature of them both are not good for receiving them as payment your a pesons labor and then exchanging them for daily transactions like buying gas, paying rent, or making your mortgage payment. The volatility will never go away. The price of ZEC could rise; but the daily, weekly volatility will stay forever. And people can not accept volatility for receiving and then paying for important items. A person can not risk receiving 10 ZEC today; and tomorrow a person saying its 12 ZEC because the price went down. Bitcoin has the same problem. So, ZEC to me is more of a value preserving currency and will never have the attributes of money required for daily transactions.
You are making something that is not useable for daily transactions. Maybe a better way to say it is you are making something that people can not accept as wages. Because if I accept ZEC as wages, I now expose myself to major risk. Too much risk. People will find this out empirically if they donāt theoretically understand it. And they wont be happy when you tell them its money and they find out there purchasing power suddenly went down because they accept ZEC for a days wages and now is worth less. My bet is no one at ZEC is accepting ZEC as wages and then when they need money convert it to dollars or whatever to buy things. It is too inherently volatile. And it will be volatile whether is $30 or $30,000. And even if ZEC magically went to $30,000 and you got 1 ZEC for working, you still canāt accept it because it has a very good chance of being $28,000 at any moment. And if you did accept it, you would have to convert it immediately to a stablecoin to make sure you donāt lose your purchasing power. That is not money! Money doesnāt have price volatility risk on a daily basis like that. That is an investment or a commodity. ZEC is more like private gold. And it looks nothing like money. You can try to paint Zebra stripes on a horse. But its still a horse. People want safety and security from money. No matter how hard to try to convince yourself, you will never be able to take the volatility out of ZEC.
Now, ZEC has great technology. If it can be applied to stablecoins, it can do what you and I want. It can bring privacy to peopleās transactions in a safe and secure way. Plus ZEC can coexist with stablecoins. A USDz stablecoin could be a really great way to build the ecosystem and network. People can accept their wages in USDz, use it to pay the important things in their lives. And then buy some ZEC for long term savings or security. The entire ecosystem is supported by gas payments in ZEC (ideally a user could use whatever currency they want on frontend to pay the gas; and backend its converted to ZEC where ZEC holders get a share of the gas). It is not an either or, they both could work. And USDz will extend privacy to more people, quickly and provide the stability people want and need from a currency.
Volatility proves that all cryptos are not a currency, but they can be used as tradable asset. Now, xUSD already exists, Iāve been reviewing several ideas out there concerning algorithmic stable coins. They all look fascinating, till something breaks downā¦ but I still keep my hope up. ZSA can maybe be a solution: a Z$ backed by cash? But how?
Algorithmic stablecoins donāt make sense to me. Seems like its a way to try and squeeze more profit out than is reasonable. It seems inherently unsafe. Stablecoins should be backed 1:1 and fully collateralized.
The 20,000 foot way it works is I buy a USDz. When I buy it, $1 is bought as collateral and held as security for you $1USDz. So now, at any time you can exchange your $1 USDz for a real USD. It is fully backed 1:1. I would like to see that $1 held in the bank or trust account used to buy short term treasury bills yielding around 5%. So now your USDz becomes a stablecoin with yield. Its like putting your money in a money market account. But it is packaged with the USDz. This is similar to what Tether does. But a) they take on much more risk and b) I dont think they share the yield with the tether owners. Now the right mix of actual cash vs 90-day Tbills would have to be figured out. This is roughly how it would look. Now you end up with a digital USD that is a) private b) has yield and c) runs on the ZEC blockchain. And you dont have to put it into a bank to generate the yield. Although the actual collateral would be at a bank or an investment bank. JP Morgan.
This is the natural evolution of money. Gold was used. Then paper came in and the gold was held in a trust. The paper had a claim on the gold. That paper became so trustworthy, we eventually moved to a āsoftā gold backing. Now digital money will do the same with paper money being the collateral in the same way gold wasā¦ But digital money can add more features than paper. So we will get more functionality out of digital than paper. And the digital money that is trustworthy, secure, and adds the features people want will survive.
The Zcash mission of privacy is missing the trust part. And for it to be trustworthy it needs backing (USD, Euro, T-Bills etc) the same way paper money needed gold to be considered trustworthy. ZEC could have a lot of fundamental / intrinsic value as the gas powering this ecosystem.
Statistically speaking holding a % of tbills is great. As long as the redemptions are always < to a specific threshold. Not that easy, but doable. Especially all the transparency stack that in Tether is not there. But again from ZSA I expect something cooler: shares (and dividends), ownership fractionsā¦
What entity would have the permission to represent ownership of that collateral?
In a real sense of things, I find it hard to believe possible to get an account with a TradFi entity like JPM to be the custodian of collateral for a disambiguated software program that provides USDZ. A more crypto (riskier) approach would likely have to collateralize its $1 equivalents in the best of breed treasury like DeFi product(s) on Ethereum.
Tether is a good template. This is how they do it (i have very basic understanding of it and not studied in detail). Way to risky for DeFI based collateral. Teather almost went down because of too risky of collateral pool. And we already know about the others that did not understand collateral and risk. Smart investors will come in and short many billions of the token/security if its not properly collateralized and ābreak the bankāā¦ risky collateral or algo wont work for regular people. Only the risk takers or naive. The collateral needs to be rock solid for the average person and to avoid short attacks on the token. They dont want risk.
i canāt remember the year. very early. pretty sure it was over 10 years ago. i was clearly wrong about bitcoin as i never expected it to go anywhere near where it has.
I think my argument will hold up over time however even if zec goes to 10,000. Itās about the vol.
I am long ZEC because i do like the technology and i believe this community will eventually figure out the tech can and should be applied to stablecoins alongside ZEC. Itās not an either or. it only makes th ZEC blockchain stronger and use case stronger.
