I just realized that a lot of cricisisms that Austrian economists have made have been levied against fiat currency. A lot of what I’ve read has been directed on paper money. Digital currency wasn’t really around when those publications were made. I know it’s complicated to describe how digital currency works, (or doesn’t work shall I say), and that a lot of the criticisms probably are similar to paper currency, but that the criticism to digital currency made by Austrians would probably be a bit more different, since, there is no printing press, and, it’s made just literally out of thin air. And plus, there are lots of different ways to count digital currency, with the M1, M2, and M3 banking system. Does anyone here have an answer to my question? I would like to be pointed out to criticisms that Austrian economists have made on the subject.
I don’t think any Austrian would critisize “digital currency” as is. Austrians don’t critisize money substitutes, just fiduciary media.
Does it matter if the money is green or blue or pink? Would we need a whole new literature of publications if the dollar was colored pink from now on? Having money as an electronic soemthing or other in a bank’s computer is the same as having it as a green piece of paper in a bank’s vault. The underlying understanding of what’s going on remains the same.
Digital currency deserves a few pages just to reiterate that whatever we ever found wrong with fiat paper, should be multiplied a thousand fold when it comes to digital currency. Seriously the thing should not even be contemplated as money.
Merlin
That’s precisely what I’m saying. Digital currency and fiat currency may work on the same concepts but in reality digital currency is much, much worse. If you’re just using digital currency that’s not backed on anything, you can just emit credit like it was nothing a billion times more than you could with a printing press. It’s absolutely worthless really.
Does that include debit cards and credit cards? Nothing wrong with them.
I assume that by “digital currency”, what is meant is not the electronic transfer of claims to a real commodity, but fiat currency in purely electronic form (i.e. electronic assets not even backed by paper).
That’s not even possible because you cannot police counterfeiting as far as I can see.