No.

So many ppl in BTC get this wrong, if BTC was untraceable like Monero it could never become a world reserve currency. Money laundering is one of the best ways governments catch criminals, and society will not accept a world without that power.

Even if 'the people' were able to entirely circumvent the government into making an untraceable currency like Monero the world reserve currency, I think that would make crime too easy and would not be a stable equilibrium. The right answer is always a balance, and you want some AML capacity built into money.

The difference between BTC and fiat or CBDCs is that the latter are way too easy to scale surveillance for, it can easily become mass surveillance of everyone. With BTC you have to put in a lot of targeted effort, so it's not scalable to the masses, and is only practical for targeted cases, which is exactly the balance you want.

In a world where BTC is widely accepted as payment, another key difference is that the government would have to go through the court of law to freeze money, unlike the fiat system where they can just command banks to do it extralegally.

Also there would be no single jurisdictional monopoly on which UTXOs can be spent bc you say there are some sanctioned addresses in the US, you could just go abroad and spend.

Finally, if there is some government mass oppression event the public can resist by organizing massive coinjoins to the point where it doesn't make sense to sanction the entire coinjoined group, and traceability is severely damaged.

Yes some things are more convenient to rent than own but you wanna have the option of both and not be forced into one or the other, the threat is government forcing to rent and share to reduce carbon footprint. Also major things like a house or car are very important to have the opportunity to own so that you can escape rent slavery bc over time renting is far more expensive

I think the situation is much more like a reverse tragedy for the commons (tragedy for the states, W for the people) than mutually assured destruction.

It's not like MAD because no states has the unilateral power to just make BTC the international reserve currency like nuclear states have the unilateral power to end the world.

Instead, all states benefit from the public good of maintaining the fiat money printers and not having BTC be the world reserve currency, yet individual suppressed states have direct and immediate incentives to be free riders by using it to settle international transactions in a sanction resistant way, which will slowly chip away at the public good until it becomes the world reserve currency.

The nation state adoption argument does not start with the united states, which of course will not give up its world reserve currency power willingly unless the alternative is country or group of rival countries are going to have it.

The argument is that the sanctioned nation states will begin to use BTC as a neutral settlement layer for international transactions which is reasonably well removed from US sanctioning power. Countries that do not like the US having reserve currency status and want to introduce a competitor. There is a very strong incentive for nation states antagonistic to the US to use a liquid neutral final settlement layer.

Countries like Iran charging tolls in BTC and Russia conducting cross border payments in BTC.

W

On the whole I mostly agree. Bitcoiners like Bunney really need to increase their economics understanding. Two things tho:

"
But at the same time, “No matter how much governments intervene or central banks print money, they cannot create value, such as energy, food, and commodities, out of thin air.” Jumping between** real and nominal effects like this does nothing but confuse the reader. Capital and money are distinct economic/praxeological concepts, and blurring them benefits nobody
"

I disagree, didn't read Bunney's book but in general this is a very important distinction to make. There's no gaping chasm between money and capital that makes them incomaparable. New money can easily become existing capital very quickly. The point is money creation doesn't create value, it redistributes it, and that's very important to point out.

"
real money somehow consists of boththe notes in people’s wallets — even though they are anonymous, outside-type bearer instruments and direct liabilities of the Fed — andthe bank money in people’s bank accounts, which are none of those things.
"

When analyzing the macroeconomic effects of money supply, I think it makes complete sense to include both cash and deposits in your monetary aggregate. At the end of the day, who is liable for that money and whether or not it's self bearing are insignificant compared to what markets they are accepted in as transactions settlement medium and their turnover rates. Cash and bank deposits operate in largely the same market, the nonbank market (meaning they can be used to settle payments among nonbanks for pretty much and good (with slight differences)), or if you want to be more accurate, a specific countries nonbank market (foreign currencies are assets not money in the domestic market). If the supply of dollars vs supply of dollar deposits increases by 20 trillion it wouldn't really make too much of a difference on prices / macroeconomy in general (assuming in both cases the supply of reserves increases by a significant portion, enough to support the new deposits in the second case), as opposed to an increase in Fed reserves vs dollar deposits or Franc deposits vs Dollar deposits