Help me understand this.
The core principle of any state banking system is that money enters the economy in a structured way. The government may print X currency and lend, invest, subsidize or purchase whatever products or services to bring it into the economy (at the cost of devaluing all preexisting currency).
This just doesn't work when random people are 'minting' it, regardless of why or how. There's no additive benefit to fiat in that case, no investment into the economy - there is no meaningful exchange of services or goods for the new currency that was created. I don't get how people can place value in Bitcoins, they seem like they are literally a hype based currency. To call it a faith based is like saying you have faith that Tim Tebow has a chance of making it back to the NFL as a starting quarterback - neither assumptions of worth are even conceptually grounded in anything tangible, unlike bridges, aircraft carriers, human capital and intellectual property. Any faith that isn't backed up with infrastructure or natural or public resources is instead really blind faith that someone else will find inherent worth in it as well.
Maybe I'm just an economics idiot, but I simply cannot understand how this exists as a legitimate conceptbecausethe basis is not centralized (even if other aspects were not).
To put it even simpler: Let's say I receive a $20 bill from working. I have contributedsomethingto society (even if very, very indirectly). I then take that contribution and trade it in for a product worth $20, which in turn a company paid slightly less to create through some process in order to create wealth. Of coursenothingis valued against an objective standard. That said, with a cryptocurrency that I generate at home worth $20, there has been no transactional benefit to society - I simply should be allowed to 'take' resources (products/services) in the same scenario in exchange not formycontribution to society but rather my creation of the currency item itself.
Waaaaaaat?