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0 pointsjasode4y ago0 comments

I understand your larger point but to be fair to gp you're responding to, he was scoping the word "control" to Central Bank since he actually wrote:

>and by _state control_ I mean something along the lines of a central bank.

So central bank control would be something like "expansion of money supply beyond 21 million bitcoins". Therefore, your options (B) Coinbase/Binance (C) Visa/MC/banks and (E) courts -- really have no "control" over that "central bankish" aspect.

EDIT reply to: >Central banks [...] don't have complete control about the money supply, because commercial banks also create money via fractional reserves.

The Federal Reserve (central bank) in USA is the entity that adjusts the fractional reserve requirement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve#Reserve_requir...

> The idea that no one can expand the supply of bitcoins beyond 21 million is a nothing but fairy tale.

It could theoretically be done but it would require the coordination of the Bitcoin developers + miners + node validators. A crypto-exchange like Coinbase can't do it.

As a previous case study, Coinbase was part of the group that aligned with majority miners to change the Bitcoin protocol to increase the block size -- but all that influence and miner support still couldn't get the Bitcoin network to adopt it.

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lottin4y ago

This is a misunderstanding of how the money supply works. Central banks have a legal monopoly on the issuance of currency, but they don't have complete control about the money supply, because commercial banks also create money via fractional reserves. Over 80% of the money in circulation is created in this way by commercial banks. And this applies to bitcoin as well. Crypto-exchanges can expand the supply of any crypto-currency by creating deposits that aren't fully backed with reserves. The idea that no one can expand the supply of bitcoins beyond 21 million is a nothing but fairy tale.

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