[Cryptography] threat models, was quantum computers & crypto

[John Levine]

It appears that cherry <cherry at cpal.pw> said:
>On 11/1/21 12:57 PM, Jerry Leichter wrote:
>> The focus on irreversibility and anonymity by so much of the > crypto-currency community guarantees that what they produce
>> will always be marginal:  It's just too dangerous.
>
>All soft money rests on hard money.  Underlying every reversible 
>transaction is the capability to do an irreversible transaction. 

A hundred years ago, a lot of people believed that.

After WW I, when all of Europe went off the gold standard and financed
the war with various kind of paper, the governments wanted to get back
to their prior gold parity, which meant they had to deflate their
currencies, which meant austerity and depression until they gave up,
at which point they started to recover. 

Germany was late to that party, but a decade after the 1923
hyperinflation (a deliberate move to sabotage the reparations from the
Versailles treaty), in 1930-1932 chancellor Heinrich Bruening was
deflating the mark to try to get back to gold parity, causing a severe
depression.  We all know who came after that.

Financiers predicted disaster when the Roosevent ended the US gold standard
in 1933, which did not happen, and again in 1971 when Nixon ended even nominal
gold convertibility, which didn't happen either.

In the meantime, US GDP grew from inflation adjusted $0.82 trillion in 1933
to $5.1 trillion in 1971 to $21 trillion now.  The US population has grown
by about 2.6 since 1933, so divide and you can see how much richer we are now.

It's a little dismaying how many people seem so ignorant of economic history.

R's,
John