Outspoken Reddit CEO Yishan Wong shared his thoughts on digital currencies this week and he appears to be very much a dogecoin man.
What Wong had to say about bitcoin and the politics of many bitcoin enthusiasts, though, probably won’t go down well with the libertarian crowd.
“Dogecoin is great,” Wong said, adding that the greatest contribution being made to economics does not come in the form of bitcoin itself, but rather the customizable spinoff cryptocurrencies that are now proliferating.
Wong made his comments in a post on question-and-answer website Quora.
Much digital currencies
Wong argued that there is plenty of room for altcoins, and pointed out that the basic concept of money does not revolve around a single currency like a dollar, but rather a whole range of currencies. The same rule applies to cryptocurrencies:
“It’s about anyone being able to create and launch a crypto-currency much like bitcoin, but with little tweaks and changes to fit the usage needs of the population looking to transact in it.
Just like in the real world where if you’re a country looking to provide a new currency and you decide you hate Americans and don’t want to transact in dollars, you can just print your own currency.”
He pointed out that fiat currencies work if governments and economies are stable enough, so the same principle applies to digital currencies, including dogecoin.
The best thing about dogecoin is that it has a completely different user base than bitcoin, Wong said.
‘Crazy libertarians’
As for the bitcoin user base, let’s just say Wong probably wouldn’t invite many diehard bitcoin fans over for a drink:
“Without being too inflammatory, the user base for bitcoin is basically crazy libertarians who are increasingly poorly informed about currency systems and macroeconomics.
I say ‘increasingly’ because at one time it was fairly well-informed libertarians but as the currency has become mainstream, it’s attracted more poorly-informed individuals and the conversation have become more polarized and less knowledge-based, driving the well-informed and balanced people away, or at least prompting them to recede into the background.”
He also criticised the obsession of some members of the bitcoin community with bringing down central banks, fiat currencies and governments as “misguided” and off the mark, as it misses the whole point of bitcoin.
For the first time in history, Wong said, the world has a low-friction electronic payments and trust-delegation system, which is valuable in its own right. In essence, there is no need for any ideology, since digital currencies are a powerful concept on their own.
To the moon!
“In contrast, the dogecoin community doesn’t have anywhere near as much of an ideological bent,” he said. “It is basically a bunch of people happily passing around a silly toy currency and giving coins to their friends.”
He went on:
“[Dogecoin] has all the features of bitcoin – technologically speaking – but frees itself from the libertarian culture of bitcoin that turns off so much of the mainstream.”
Wong argued that any currency has to be mainstream and that ideology just gets in the way. An altcoin whose brand is created around a meme is the lowest-common denominator, which helps drive mainstream adoption.
“It couldn’t be stupider, and that’s why it’s brilliant,” he concluded. “Speaking of brilliance, one of the key stated aims of dogecoin is the collective journey to the moon, a source of long-time brilliance throughout human history.”