seigniorage

The anonymity scheme means there is some reason to grant one-time seigniorage to the original currency issuers.

Cash costs money to mint and print as well but that's hidden in seigniorage, taxes and inflation.

Usually the by the time the government tries to debase the coins gradually so it can make money from seigniorage.

If a government made money from seigniorage, but only to the extent of replacing broken coins, and the nation is in good economic health overall, there will be no currency troubles.

And yes it is an advantage for the central bank / government to be able to do this - this advantage is called seigniorage.

However the citizens do also pay a small tax to the USA from the use of the USD in the form of seigniorage, i.e.

But thanks for reminding me of the word seigniorage, I'd been looking for it actually.

Since specie has value independent of the nominal value (though usually below nominal, hence, seigniorage), where there's a positive, valuable metals are hoarded.

Give me one example where seigniorage preceded raw metal.

One is that Bitcoin, considered as an entity, awarded free money via seigniorage to early adopters and never had to back that free money with actual cash.

They make massively more money from taxation than seigniorage.

The section about seigniorage explains his views here and while it's not worded the most clearly I think that it's a reasonable critique.

"Isn't seigniorage a type of tax?" Yes, but it's not a tax on the people, it's a tax on dollar holders.

Recapitulating shopworn arguments about Bitcoin as if they were fresh points, sometimes using jargon that conceals their banality, such as the "privilege of Seigniorage" that boils down to Bitcoin having no central bank.

> "The moment one becomes centralized, whether due to a flaw in the protocol or the concentration of mining power, it is no better (and probably worse in fact) than fiat money, e-gold, or any other monetary scheme which is vulnerable to capture by a minority, and therefore vulnerable to abusive seigniorage and capital controls." Hasn't this already happened?

Seigniorage, the ability of an institution to print a worthless piece of paper that other people believe is worth something, is a very valuable power, one which is earned over decades, even centuries, of prudent policy.