For a UBI to work people have to be able to actually spend the currency they receive. In places that people (especially the poor) actually spend their money. Let me know when the neighborhood bodega, grocery store, barber or daycare start accepting cryptocurrencies.
>For a UBI to work people have to be able to actually spend the currency they receive.
I don't see why this is true. People were saying the same Bitcoin, yet people still use that, which is turning this conversation in to a circular argument. The truth is a UBI has never really been tested out in the world, it's all theoretical, and a cryptocurrency UBI even more so. I don't think it's right to just write it off completely without actually testing it.
And by "hold value", i meant that humans find value in it. Although I admit that was a poor choice of words due to the traditional financial meaning.
>>For a UBI to work people have to be able to actually spend the currency they receive.
>I don't see why this is true.
Because otherwise they can't pay rent, get evicted, and/or starve to death?
Unless I'm missing something here, isn't a key part of any UBI system must be using that income to spend it on things you need to survive, no?
It'd be an odd chicken-before-egg problem, where you would need everything required to survive to be purchaseable with whatever new cryptothingy you do UBI with, before you can actually distribute UBI with it. But who is going to support the thing which doesn't exist yet?
I'm not writing it off completely just because. I'm writing it off completely because it doesn't even seem to address the really hard part of this all: how do you spend cryptocurrency in the same way I can use regular currency? If it's not eventually going to be useful as a currency, can we stop calling it cryptocurrency and call it cryptogold or something?
Edit:
Also, you seem to take it as proof that since people are buying BTC, there must be a demand for a currency that cannot even be spent anywhere. That's one way to look at it, personally I explain it with the Greater Fool Theory [1]. I think this because whenever I heard about people buying BTC who aren't die-hard true believers (ie normal people, not cryptocurrency enthusiasts), they don't know why BTC is valuable. They don't see any value in it, other than the fact that it's price has gone up a lot. They don't understand it, they don't think it's useful, they just see other people buying it and driving the price up and want to get in on the action.
> The truth is a UBI has never really been tested out in the world
Huh? Yes it has. There still isn't nearly enough data, but there have already been multiple pilots studying various basic income schemes, with encouraging results.
