In both cases the trading value of the currency has almost nothing to do with who originated it, and almost everything to do with how the general public feels about it.

Just like crypto, most "government" currencies are worth what they're worth only because everyone agrees that they are. That's called "fiat" currency. And that's why fiat currency exchange markets exist. The US Dollar hasn't been "convertible" (redeemable for a fixed amount of precious metal) since 1971, and many other world currencies were already backed in some way by the US Dollar at that time.

The real difference is in the supply.

Government fiat currency is difficult to counterfeit, although the government (or reserve bank) can always make more whenever they want. We trust them not to print more money, increasing the money supply and devaluing the currency. However, this is exactly what has happened sometimes in the past, and no doubt will happen again in the future.

Crypto currency is virtually impossible to counterfeit, and IIRC there's a finite (but not precisely known) amount of it that can be made, no matter who you are.

Personally, I still use physical fiat currency and no crypto. I'd like to use crypto, but regulation in my country makes it very difficult to use without registering your details with a central authority. And although everyone's pushing e-money options which are similarly tracked, thankfully I still have the option of using anonymous cash.

I don't do anything bad or illegal. I just believe that government and big business don't deserve to know everything I do in my life simply because they want to.

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 5 points 5 hours ago

You just reminded me that it's been a couple of decades since I Candyflipped. Need to do that again soonish...

[–] cobalt32@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 4 hours ago

Monero my beloved...

I believe in a future where we won't need money anymore, but in the meantime, Monero is a pretty solid choice.

[–] TheparishofChigwell@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I tried looking at dreadforum to see how markets work nowadays and found out in a minute I was viewing a mirror that was injecting links

I think I'll just ask a dude on the street at this point

But then again I am in a country where that would work with 0 negative consequences for me as the user

[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 hours ago

Doesn't dread's captcha force you to check the url? Afaik it makes you fill in specific parts of the url, so that you check that the url you are using is the same one they are using. Curious how the mirror was able to bypass that.

Regardless I just spent some initial investment saving the pgp public keys and making sure they are legit, so that I can use them to verify dread's mirrors.txt whenever needed. Faster than walking out to the street imo