Muslims will do well, if they avoid riba. Anything giving yield on bitcoin will fail eventually - people will lose a lot because of their greed.
Now... We need to get Christians to remember that usury was once forbidden to us as well.
Discussion
When was usury forbidden to Christians? I don’t remember seeing that in the Bible. I just remember seeing debt forgiveness.
The Bible does contain passages that condemn usury. In the Old Testament, Exodus 22:25, Leviticus 25:35-37, and Deuteronomy 23:19-20 prohibit Israelites from charging interest to fellow Israelites, although they were allowed to charge interest to foreigners. (How gracious..)
In the New Testament, Jesus teaches about the importance of lending without expecting anything in return in Luke 6:30-35.
Usury is also addressed in several biblical passages, such as Psalm 15:5 and Ezekiel 18:8-9, which condemn those who lend at excessive interest rates.
I can make a similar analysis of Christian values vs Bitcoin, but there is already the book Thanks God for Bitcoin.
Agreed, but it doesn’t seem like it’s was strictly forbidden like in Islam.
Nope and it magically managed to favor one ethnic group over anyone else..
lol. Shalom.
Usury was outright illegal for over a thousand years throughout Europe, and by illegal I mean that the catholic church didn't allow it. Usury became accepted because of Calvin's teaching, and even then it took a couple of hundred years for non Calvinist protestants to start allowing usury. And even then, what they did was redefine usury to "excess" interest - in excess of 6% usually. The major turning point was the US state of Delaware and credit cards. Idk if Delaware repealed usury laws or never had them, but there's a reason all the credit card companies are HQ'd in Delaware. Most states still have laws that prohibit excess usury, so credit cards can't be based there. Only a few decades ago (sorry for the vagueness - going off memory and it's not fresh) there was a court ruling that used the Commerce clause in the Constitution to say that the other states could not bar credit card companies from their states, thus making a whole swathe of laws moot and destroying the last shred of sovereignty of the states. States no more : provinces, in truth.
And how have Christians missed this entire saga? I have only suspicions... But my main suspicion is that the pastors are too easily corrupted and silenced, and too poorly educated anyways.
Sounds like for all history everyone knew fractional reserve banking and predatory debt was a bad idea, up until a short time ago.
Yes... well, it's cyclical. Rome collapsed because of currency debasement. Then a thousand years of sound money, though not well distributed sound money until Medici banking, then the dutch ruined it all with Calvin and their wisselbank
Define usury.
Read stuff
I do - unlike you, obviously. That's why I know there are different definitions.
I dont have a definition either, but for example the btc lending that takes 10%pa and your bitcoin with 50% LTV is clearly usurious to me. But people on the other side of the game are more greedy and don't want to let go of their BTC. So to each what he deserves.
That's the thing. Value is purely subjective and there's no other way to tell, what's right except when supply and demand meet on a voluntary basis. If people don't want to let go of their btc (because of greed or risk aversion), you'll get a high price.