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INTPenistoday at 11:03 AM1 replyview on HN

I've been sharing author's view for quite a while now, namely that there must exist a market of goods to give a currency real value.

But I must contradict the author, because there is a market of goods, and bitcoin is indirectly involved in it. Namely the dark web market of drugs.

People love drugs, and they use a lot of them, drugs turnover a huge amount of value. And right now people are buying bitcoin, because it's often safe to buy, and exchanging it for monero, that they then use to buy drugs.

I'm very much interested in this market, and how it affects crypto.


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pydrytoday at 11:11 AM

Ive been saying this for a while. Cryptocurrencies are an index tracker for the underground economy.

They're not without value and theyre not all speculation but what value they do have is almost entirely about facilitating transactions which at least one state considers illegal.

I used to think that this would mean that they'd be outright banned eventually but it seems that the "index tracker for the underground economy" proved to be too profitable an investment for western oligarchs and the chance to undermine rival countries' capital controls proved too alluring for the imperialists in government.

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