ac04 said:
CDUB98 said:
If the Fed gov't decides it doesn't want any competition with the CBDC and outright bans crypto transactions, what value does BTC have anymore? Zero, as it cannot be converted to the Federally recognized currency. Unless there is a wholly parallel, end to end underground economy, at some point, someone has to exchange BTC for dollars. If that transaction becomes illegal...well....
if there's one thing that alcohol, gold, drugs, guns, and terrorism have taught me, its that once the government bans something it is completely gone forever.
Because you can/could take all of those items to a person who wanted them an exchange them for dollars. Under CBDC, that becomes impossible if the government feels like it. They program the new currency to where that transaction literally can not happen. Not "your going to jail". More like "error: transaction invalid".
So you would left to barter your bitcoin for whatever non currency items you can get. But why would someone accept the trade if they can not launder that illicit trade back into currency for licit purchases? If the government operating CBDCs ever decided that crypto coins cannot be converted, it would require a full parallel economy for bitcoin to have any value.
I don't think bitcoin is the devil. I just don't believe it has any value in the end of cash scenarios we're looking at. Honestly nothing likely does, but some things like metals and goods will. It's highly unlikely the government would ever program the CBDCs to be unusable at your farmers market stand so vegetables would have more value that bitcoins. But if they wanted to ban that, they could.
The issue shouldn't be how bitcoin is useless. It should be that programmable CBDCs are evil incarnate.