No, that's not true. Money can be either debt-based or non-debt-based.
The current government issued money is based on debt. It means that in order to create new money, someone has to be in debt for that amount. I.e. someone has to promise to create value in the future. When more promises are made, the monetary base inflates and money loses value. Money is created at the central bank (public/national debt) and in commercial banks (private debt).
The alternative is money that is based on value that was created in the past. The distinction is that the work already happened and there's no promise to be held. Such money can be anything that requires work to obtain, and can't be created in any other way. Examples of such money are gold and bitcoin.
> No, that's not true. Money can be either debt-based or non-debt-based.
Well, you are right in that money _can_ in theory be non debt based. However, currently it is not, and I am quite confident that if you tried to come up with money that is non debt based, first, it would work horribly badly and second, there would emerge almost immediately a debt based money. You see, it is practically impossible to forbid a debt based money. If I have three friends that trust me, I can write on a paper that "if you give this paper to beefield, he will give you five apples". Now that paper is literally money between my friends. And there is very little you can do to stop that. You see that also in crypto world. Crypto people are vehemently against fractional reserve banking and anybody being able to generate money. Obviously there are now instruments that are newly created money supply for all practical and theoretical purposes (e.g. tether and exchange deposits), but somehow the cognitive dissonance seems to be too strong to admit that.
Debt and credit are useful and necessary tools, I'm not against them. Tether and exchange deposits are obviously not cryptocurrency and I think lots of people understand that. They require trust, which has been breached many times already.
There's a saying: 'not your keys, not your coins'. Cryptocurrency makes it possible to actually own your money when you hold the keys, and it's impossible to take it away from you.
> Tether and exchange deposits are obviously not cryptocurrency
As you say, that is obviously true. Almost as obviously true should be that they are (or at least very hard try to be) _money_. And that should roughly as obviously point to the conclusion that one of the central tenants of cryptofolks' philosophy, fixed money supply, is broken. Fairy tale. Utter crap. Or whatever is your favourite idiom for something that simply, completely, demonstrably and blatantly untrue.
The current government issued money is based on debt. It means that in order to create new money, someone has to be in debt for that amount. I.e. someone has to promise to create value in the future. When more promises are made, the monetary base inflates and money loses value. Money is created at the central bank (public/national debt) and in commercial banks (private debt).
The alternative is money that is based on value that was created in the past. The distinction is that the work already happened and there's no promise to be held. Such money can be anything that requires work to obtain, and can't be created in any other way. Examples of such money are gold and bitcoin.