JP Koning writes the Moneyness blog on the economics and history of money, currencies, payments and Bitcoin.
HN commenters call it an interesting blog about all things money, and link its post on why ransomware gangs use Bitcoin.
Individuals and companies with billions of dollars in cash can't really stick it in a mattress and ignore it.
True. Far better to bury it somewhere remote. See this "news article" from the future about how it plays out:
The desert dollar industry
January 1, 2021
These days, the desert is swimming in cash... literally.
Over the last six months, a booming business in illegal
cash storage has sprung up in Nevada, New Mexico, and
Arizona where analysts estimate that $30 billion worth of
$100 notes have been hidden. By day, smugglers drive deep
into the desert, SUVs loaded down with suitcases full of
Ben Franklins. Once they've found an ideal spot, they wait
till the sun goes down and frantically dig a hole, only to
drive away the next morning with nothing but the cache's
GPS coordinates and a drone or two to guard it. When asked
about the sorts of people staying at her motel these days,
Smith shrugs. "I don't ask who they are and they pay cash."
...
http://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-desert-dollar-industry.html
More on this:
http://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2017/06/on-currency.html
> Property that had been granted currency had a different legal status from property that didn't. Let's assume that a good has been stolen and sold by the thief to a third party, a shopkeeper, who innocently accepts it not knowing that it has been stolen. For most forms of property the original owner could sue the third party and get the stolen article back. But not if that good is one of the few to be considered by society to have currency, wrote Macleod. When an article is said to have currency, or to be current, the original owner cannot chase the third party to recover stolen property. So in our example, our shopkeeper gets to keep the stolen good, even if its stolen nature has been proven in court.
I'm as concerned as the next person about energy use, but I did read some counterpoints in an article published yesterday [1]
The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee is reportedly going to investigate cryptocurrency’s effect on the environment...
But the meme that bitcoin or cryptocurrency uses as much power as one country or another, promoted by The New York Times last September, for example, deserves a bit of pushback on a couple of fronts.
[1] https://www.aei.org/technology-and-innovation/no-hearing-on-bitcoins-energy-use-is-complete-without-nic-carter/
Edit: and then someone pushes back on Nic Carter today:
https://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-fallacy-of-bitcoin-and-renewables.html
The US military has had some innovative payments ideas.
An occupying force prefers to use a money that 1) doesn't dollarize the nation they are occupying 2) can be tracked, thus thwarting black marketeers 3) is lightweight 4) if they lose, the enemy can't reuse it
Unfortunately, dollar bills are bulky, infiltrate local economies, and aren't enemy-resistant.
So we get innovations like EagleCash, which solves a lot of these problems.
Other payments ideas emanating from the military include Military Payment Certificates (https://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2017/04/c-day-and-military-money.html), overstamped currency ( https://twitter.com/jp_koning/status/1343874636480729088) and pogs (http://numispedia.org/AAFES/).
The best rebuttal to the perennial and cliche bubble articles is the post by Mencius Moldbug "Bitcoin is money, bitcoin is a bubble".
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/04/bitcoin-is-money-bitcoin-is-bubble.html
He perspicaciously explains that moneyness is inherently related to bubbleness. The two go hand in hand
The concept of "moneyness" is also explained very well at JP Koning's blog:
http://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2012/12/why-moneyness.html
These guys have more insight, into the monetization of bitcoin, in their little finger than Joe Wiesenthal has in his bromide producing brain.
These are all inevitable consequences of artificially cheap debt due to USD "printing". The Cantillon Effect has weird consequences. Bullshit companies can be worth billions, and people will rationally flee the dollar (into e.g. BTC).
Bitcoin has a much more plausible value proposition than most of these bullshit companies. Conflating the anomalously high value of BTC with the anomalously high value of companies is a category error. http://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2018/10/bitcoin-and-bubble-theory-of-money.html https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2013/04/bitcoin-is-money-bitcoin-is-bubble/