Value of Bitcoin "Crashes"

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Posted by ryuzaki0 on Wednesday October 19, 2011 @01:36AM from the smells-like-real-currency dept.

souravzzz writes with an update on the state of Bitcoin. Quoting the Ars Technica article: "Bitcoin, the world's first peer-to-peer digital currency, fell below $3 on Monday. That represents a 90 percent fall since the currency hit its peak in early June." That's still three times its value in April 2011.

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Bitcoin by TechLA · 2011-10-19 01:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

People keep saying that BitCoin will have it's value as long as people keep using it and that you're not supposed to get rich by mining. But that isn't even the problem. I transferred some cash to BitCoins and back on Friday and it was paid out to me on Sunday. By the time I got the transfer, it had lost almost half of its value. Now imagine if that would constantly happen with your real money. It wasn't much, but I sure as hell aren't going to use it again. This is why PayPal and other ecurrencies are fixed to real world value - they are stable (as far as it can be), and BitCoin can't ever get as stable as real world currencies (yes I know they aren't that stable, but that just means even bigger problems with BitCoin)
1. Re:Bitcoin by Smallpond · 2011-10-19 01:40 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  You may have lost money on it, but somebody gained. Currency speculation has been around a long time. Most currencies aren't as volatile because there is a government making a monetary policy to control it. Bitcoin is a real opportunity for speculators.
2. Re:Bitcoin by Goaway · 2011-10-19 01:42 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Oh, that's nice. I can give my money to speculators! Let me get right on that.
3. Re:Bitcoin by MareLooke · 2011-10-19 01:55 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  You are most likely already doing that already anyway. What do you think your bank does with your money?
4. Re:Bitcoin by mmcuh · 2011-10-19 02:13 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  You get back what it says on your balance with Bitcoin as well. It's a currency, not a banking system.
5. Re:Bitcoin by TheRaven64 · 2011-10-19 02:17 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  No, the real problem is that bitcoin is not backed by anything. Old currencies were backed by a precious metal. If you had one Pound Sterling, then the Bank of England would give you one pound of sterling silver. Modern fiat currencies are backed by a promise from the government that they will accept them in payment of taxes. Bitcoin was backed by some pointless computation.
  If a bitcoin had been a promise to do some computation work in the future, then it may have had some value, because people need computational work done. For example, something like Amazon's compute cloud could potentially back a currency, because the service of running a VM for some number of CPU seconds is fungible and - importantly - people actually want it. No one wants the work that is done to generate a bitcoin, so the coin itself is worthless. Its value is based entirely on the premise that other people will want it in the future, but that's just a pyramid scheme.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
6. Re:Bitcoin by LoyalOpposition · 2011-10-19 02:38 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  They can do what they want as long as I can get back what it says on my balance. Are you seriously this [redacted]ing stupid?
  Hmmm, how to put this...let's say TechLA put 1000 BitCoin into the BitCoin bank on Friday. Then on Sunday he withdrew 1000 BitCoin from the BitCoin bank. In other words, the BitCoin bank payed out what it said on the balance. TechLA's complaint is that he could only buy about half the stuff with that 1000 BitCoins on Sunday as he could on Friday. A similar thing can happen with other currencies. Take the United States dollar as example. One of the highest recent inflations occurred in the late 70's and early-to-mid 80's. So, suppose you put 1000 USD into a checking account in 1977. Let's ignore the Negotiable Order of Withdrawal stuff for a bit, and any service charges. Then in 1987 you could withdraw 1000 USD. However, in 1987 you could only buy about half of the stuff (actually about 0.518) with 1000 USD as you could with 1000 USD in 1977. According to some theories of economics, that change was partially caused by the change in the amount of money; and, in the United States, the amount of money is controlled by the Federal Reserve System in coordination with the various banks in the country.
  So I would have to say, no, MareLooke isn't quite as stupid as you might have thought.
  ~Loyal
  
  --
  I aim to misbehave.
7. Re:Bitcoin by fridaynightsmoke · 2011-10-19 02:38 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Oh, that's nice. I can give my money to speculators! Let me get right on that.
  Can anyone explain the purpose of "speculators"? When I ask "What do speculators produce?" the answer seems to always be, "Speculators produce liquidity in the market."
  That sounds suspiciously like when my mom used to say "Because I said so."
  When speculators are right, they even out price fluctuations by buying when they believe a commodity is unreasonably cheap, and selling when it's expensive. The act of buying makes the 'cheap' price more expensive by taking some of the commodity off the market, and conversely selling when expensive makes the commodity cheaper at that time. In non-price terms, speculators soak up surpluses when they exist, and add extra supply in times of shortage.
  When speculators are wrong or generally stupid, all hell breaks loose. Careless/stupid speculators buy in a rising market, driving the price up faster, then all sell at the same time when they realise that prices can go down as well as up, causing and then bursting a classic bubble.
  
  --
  This is a substitute for a clever sig that fits within the maximum number of characters.
8. Re:Bitcoin by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · 2011-10-19 02:42 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Rolling around naked in it laughing like maniacs...
  And this is why I no longer use cash.
  
  --
  Time to offend someone
9. Re:Bitcoin by DrXym · 2011-10-19 03:04 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  So it's directly comparable except in the sense that Bitcoin lost half its value in 2 days versus 10 years in your handpicked scenario.
10. Re:Bitcoin by Asic+Eng · 2011-10-19 03:20 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I don't understand why people feel so strongly that a currency needs to be a commodity first.
  Not the point which was made. Currency being a commodity is *one* way to back it. Bitcoin doesn't have that. Another way would be lots of people using it for trading goods, by having a significant power structure (like a country) standing for it etc. As far as I can tell Bitcoin doesn't have backing in the form of the named examples, or in any other form.
  its value cannot be manipulated by a central group of people in the same way as fiat.
  Unfortunately that's not correct, a small number of people who got in early own most bitcoins. That's not technical problem of currencies like Bitcoin - but it is one Bitcoin has, specifically.
  Even worse - the Bitcoin supply itself is finite and very small (compared with economies of entire countries). So it has no chance to ever become stable, and even if it did it would suffer the same problem the gold standard had, i.e. being inherently deflationary.
  Bitcoin is interesting because it makes you think about how currencies work, but unfortunately it's not set up to become a viable currency. Either because someone didn't think enough about how currencies work, or because becoming a viable currency wasn't actually the goal.
11. Re:Bitcoin by iamthelaw · 2011-10-19 03:33 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Let's be clear here -- no currency is backed by anything, ever. Sure, "old currencies" were backed by a precious metal. What was that backed by? The answer to "why do currencies have value" is that _nobody knows_. The different schools of economics all have different theories, but macroeconomics is not, despite what people say, a science.
  The theory backing bitcoins is largely based on the (non-mainstream) ideas of Austrian economics; which claim that currencies have value almost entirely because they are scarce, fungible, and useless. That is, their value as an exchange medium far exceeds their value as physical objects. Incidentally, Austrian economics is pretty much the only school of economics to openly acknowledge that it is not a scientific theory.
  Fiat money qualifies easily -- nobody is burning dollars for heat or using them for wallpaper, and the scarcity is guaranteed by the issuing government (although easily abused, and sometimes catastrophically, which is why Austrian's tend not to like fiat currencies).
  Gold qualifies with caveats; it's clearly "money", but it suffers from portability and verifiability problems unless it's minted into a form that is hard to reproduce (the old-old-school approach) or vouchers are issued that can be redeemed for stored gold (the newer-old-school approach). The vouchers then become money in their own right, since their scarcity is tied to the scarcity of the underlying metal, and they're just as fungible and useless. But almost universally, governments (and unscrupulous banks, and sometimes even scrupulous banks) abuse the fact that the holder of a voucher can't see the gold to steal the gold; effectively disconnecting the scarcity of the two. Same goes for silver, though less dramatic.
  It's surprisingly hard to come up with examples of things that are scarce, fungible, and useless that are have not been used as currencies. Even things that violate one of these things is often used as money in a barter sense or in the short term (i.e. cigarettes in prison, wampum among east-coast Native Americans, Facebook game fun-dollars, baseball cards, or the Iraqi Swiss Dinar).
  So this is what Bitcoins are -- they are nothing but pure scarcity, fungibility, and uselessness. The portability is nice, except that transactions are tricky (since there's no real "receipt" mechanism -- verifying that a customer has paid his bill requires funky gymnastics), all use of it is dependent on the accessibility of the internet, and the scarcity is conditional on there being sufficient computing power applied to the problem. But aside from those, it really should work. And the fact that they are worth anything at all (that people are willing to buy them at any non-zero price) is a big deal.
  In terms of price stability, this is a complicated phenomenon; Austrian's generally do not consider price increases to be the same as inflation (a purely semantic distinction). What causes price changes are complicated, and can not be reduced to a simple rule, because at any moment, technological progress and other myriad phenomenon are messing with prices that affect, to a small extent, everyone in the supply chain of every business in the world, and that effect get compounded over time. The most visible form of this is the supply chain of money itself, through the mechanisms of banking and credit.
  So why is the Bitcoin value so volatile? (Now we're in the realm of pure speculation on my part) Because there's no supply chain to keep prices stable. No supply chain of any sort; a restaurant that accepts bitcoins can not buy silverware, or food, or paper cups, or cash register tape, or POS systems, or pay rent in Bitcoins. There are no mechanisms for loaning bitcoins; in either direction -- there are no banks that will pay you to lend them your bitcoins, and no banks that will assess your trustworthiness and income and lend you the money lent to them. So the price floats, while people try to figure out how to provide baseline services (like web hosting), s
12. Re:Bitcoin by networkBoy · 2011-10-19 03:33 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Speculators are a capacitor. Storing charge when the voltage is above the mean level, dumping charge when below.
  Market manipulators are an external power supply, forcing the mean level up then down.
  If speculators have more resources than the manipulators, the manipulation will fail, otherwise it succeeds.
  -nB
  
  --
  whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
13. Re:Bitcoin by murdocj · 2011-10-19 03:38 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  In other news, there are no "sure things" in this world. If Vladimir Putin goes nuts and unleashes Russia's nukes, clean water and non-radioactive food is going to be a worth a whole lot more than dollars, bitcoins, or gold. In the meantime, comparing Bitcoin losing half it's value in 2 days to the chance that you won't get your federally insured deposit money back is absurd.
14. Re:Bitcoin by a_nonamiss · 2011-10-19 03:41 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  In Zimbabwe a few years ago, their national currency lost its value at a rate much higher than Bitcoin over the 2 day example provided above. And I'm pretty sure that's even a real country with a president and an army and everything. Currency changes value over time. The amount of time varies based on the stability of whatever is backing the currency.
  
  So to answer your question, yes, it's directly comparable.
  
  --
  -Arthur
  Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
15. Re:Bitcoin by Chris+Burke · 2011-10-19 04:17 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  You mean Bitcoin is directly comparable to the currency of an unstable currency like Zimbabwe's that I also would never dream of transferring any of my comparatively rock-stable $US to.
  I do believe you are completely correct in that.
  
  --
  
  The enemies of Democracy are
16. Re:Bitcoin by Yunzil · 2011-10-19 04:58 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Great marketing campaign. "Bitcoins: Hey, it's not as bad as Zimbabwe!"
  So to answer your question, yes, it's directly comparable.
  No, it isn't.
17. Re:Bitcoin by reverseengineer · 2011-10-19 05:27 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  The issue with that example is that there wasn't continuity of currency throughout that whole period. The infamous "papiermark" of 1923 was converted into the rentenmark of 1924 -at an exchange rate of a trillion to one, and then into the Reichsmark. After WWII, the Reichsmark was exchanged for the Deutsche Mark (in W. Germany at least) and that was your stable currency. The DM can even today be exchanged for euros, though I'd imagine most DM are out of circulation. The point is that other than the DM/ euro changeover, the transitions have been limited time arrangements, in one case backed with a military occupation. What came out of each was basically a new currency. You can turn in that shoebox of DM from 1994 and get crisp new euros at a rate of about 0.5 euro for each, but you can't exchange a quadrillion 1923 papiermarks for 500 trillion euro. Different money.
  
  --
  "FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
18. Re:Bitcoin by goose-incarnated · 2011-10-19 11:04 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Too bad you never took any economics courses. You'd almost be spot-on if not for a few tiny oversights.
  Too bad you never took any economics courses.
  Speaking as part of the 1%, just FYI.
  Sigh.
  I am part of the 1%. I also did complete economics (Money, Banking and Financial Markets). I also know that because money is used a measure of value in barter, the market sets the value for any form of money. The bitcoinites seem to miss a very important point - there is no value in electricity already spent unless value has been added. The only value of a currency is to represent the value added by the next link in the chain of production.
  Farmer grows sunflower crop (adds value by expending work to make something that the next person wants)
  Vegetable oil refinery uses sunflower seeds to make vegetable oil (added value is something that people can cook with)
  Supermarket makes oil available to shoppers (added value is to the shopper that purchases all groceries at the same place)
  All that is value being added!
  How about normal currency?
  State takes worthless paper and, using electricity and effort and time, makes legal tender (the value added to the paper is the promise that all vendors within that jurisdiction will accept that paper as payment, and they can always redeem it for actual value with the state)
  The secondary value added by dealing with the paper (or any other similar state-backed currency) is the secure knowledge that it can be used to measure value in any amount of arbitrary products - it's the base of reference for value.
  Now, bitcoins?
  Miner takes electricity and produces unique combination of numbers (No added value, as those numbers have no legal status as a measure of value in any nation)
  Those numbers can be exchanged for items of value, but said items value is not measured in those numbers, it is measured in the currency described above
  Those numbers are accepted by an insignificant minority of vendors, rendering them even more worthless.
  At this point, bitcoins aren't a currency because a currency has to be universally recognised as a measure of wealth in that jurisdiction. Bitcoins are simply an item of value to barter with, much like swapping a pocket of potatoes for a crate of tomatoes. Unfortunately, the value bitcoins possess differs from person to person in the same jurisdiction (some value it close to nothing, others hoard it in anticipation of future payoff) so the bartering is unpredictable and thus it even fails as an item of barter. Even worse, the only way to measure it's value (from zero to infinite) is by using the existing ruler - namely the actual currency of that jurisdiction.
  Bitcoins are a lovely idea, but the idea has no grounding in reality. Posts below mine explain all this very well for non-economics people; I'll just add that a real currency has a measure of worth that is independent of other currencies. For example, a single ZAR is backed by the South African Government. The country as a whole has value that is expressed by the GDP (irrespective of actual units of measure, the GDP is still a statement of value!). That single ZAR is a slice of that value. A bitcoin, OTOH, has no value that can be expressed as the product of a jurisdiction. This is because it does not represent any sort of value.
  
  --
  I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Winner: ATI by bengoerz · 2011-10-19 01:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

And the winner of this whole experiment ends up being ATI, who sold a bunch of GPUs to doe-eyed bitcoin miners.
1. Re:Winner: ATI by Hazel+Bergeron · 2011-10-19 02:50 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  During a gold rush, sell shovels.
Bitcoin Crashes,,, by Oswald+McWeany · 2011-10-19 01:42 · Score: 3, Funny

Bitcoin crashes after CmdrTaco leaves Slashdot.
I don't think that is just a coincidence.

--
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Crash? More like correction. by Cainam · 2011-10-19 01:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

It seems more like a correction to me. The idea that a BTC was worth $20 or more seemed too good to be true, probably because it was.
I think BitCoin is a great concept, but it needs more of a real economy and less currency speculation. I suspect that will come once the hype dies down. Maybe now that the value has gone down, that'll happen soon.
1. Re:Crash? More like correction. by betterunixthanunix · 2011-10-19 02:08 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I think BitCoin is a great concept
  Except that decentralized digital cash is inherently flawed, since the tokens will always grow linearly in the number of transactions they are used for. In other digital cash systems, this problem is solved by having an issuing authority (bank, government, etc.) that accepts old tokens and issues fresh tokens. In the case of Bitcoin, no such authority exists, so the tokens are just going to keep getting bigger, and eventually they will be too large to be useful.
  
  Not that the technical problems are going to be what kills Bitcoin. In terms of economics, Bitcoin has a shaky basis to begin with: people only accept Bitcoin because they believe that they can exchange their Bitcoin tokens for some other currency. Eventually people need to make that exchange, in order to pay their taxes, but there is no similar need to obtain Bitcoin tokens. The gap in demand is not really filled by Bitcoin's utility as a digital cash system, which is questionable to begin with because of the technical limitations on Bitcoin.
  
  Even if somehow that did not become a problem, there is the fact that Bitcoin is an inherently deflationary currency. This creates problems with hoarding (which we are already seeing), and makes it harder to repay loans (loans are crucial to a functioning economy, despite what those "occupy" protesters tell you).
  
  In short, the odds are against Bitcoin being successful. Really, more traditional cryptocurrency is needed, where a bank issues tokens but the tokens can still be transferred anonymously. Sadly, Bitcoin's failure will make it even harder to start a digital cash bank, since everyone will associate digital cash with Bitcoin and think that all digital cash systems suffer the same problems.
  
  --
  Palm trees and 8
2. Re:Crash? More like correction. by Zibbo · 2011-10-19 03:27 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  I think BitCoin is a great concept
  Except that decentralized digital cash is inherently flawed, since the tokens will always grow linearly in the number of transactions they are used for. In other digital cash systems, this problem is solved by having an issuing authority (bank, government, etc.) that accepts old tokens and issues fresh tokens. In the case of Bitcoin, no such authority exists, so the tokens are just going to keep getting bigger, and eventually they will be too large to be useful.
  What? I think you may have misunderstood some aspects of Bitcoin. You can easily divide and combine bitcoins in any way you want. You can combine one thousand 0.001 bitcoins to a single bitcoin, or do the same in reverse and divide. The smallest possible unit is 0.00000001 BTC.
  Bitcoin is not perfect, but this is NOT one of it's problems.
Time to invest in tulip bulbs... by Layzej · 2011-10-19 01:46 · Score: 4, Funny

I'm moving all of my cash to tulip bulbs. They're due for a comeback ;)
Valuable lesson in currency... by RyuuzakiTetsuya · 2011-10-19 01:47 · Score: 4, Insightful

All currencies are fiat. No matter what they're backed by. Currencies have to exist inside of a strong ecosystem that encourages their trading rather than hoarding.

--
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
1. Re:Valuable lesson in currency... by laron · 2011-10-19 02:27 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Gold was already valuable before it was actually useful. If a large fraction of the value of gold was based on it's technical uses, the gold price should be more stable IMHO. The gold price is more based on a circular logic: It's valuable because everyone thinks so.
  
  --
  "Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
2. Re:Valuable lesson in currency... by thelexx · 2011-10-19 03:42 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  "The gold price is more based on a circular logic: It's valuable because everyone thinks so."
  Incorrect. It's called intrinsic value and gold has it. It's hard to dig up and there's not much of it. It never deteriorates (silver does) and is easy to work/subdivide (platinum isn't). It is also highly portable and easily storable (vs oil, wheat, etc). Aristotle laid it out pretty well when he wrote that something used as money should have the following properties: Durable, Portable, Divisible, Intrinsic Value
  Those are the reasons gold has retained it's status for thousands of years, and continues to do so today. See my sig for confirmation even from one of our modern economic 'masterminds'. I would suggest that somewhere around nothing has changed concerning the status of gold since he said that. The fact that it looks nice and can be worn is just a bonus that influences the weak minded.
  
  --
  "Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
Re:STOP WITH THE SLASHVERTISEMENTS FOR BITCOIN by TarMil · 2011-10-19 01:53 · Score: 3, Insightful

Stop with the whining already. It's been at least a month since I saw a bitcoin article on slashdot. Btw "bitcoin crashed 90%" is hardly advertisement.
Probably "Occupy Wallstreet" by Greyfox · 2011-10-19 01:59 · Score: 3, Funny

Those guys take bitcoins. Probably one of them bought a twinkie, or something.

--
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Economic Experiment by DaMattster · 2011-10-19 02:14 · Score: 3, Insightful

Bitcoin is kind of an interesting experiment in economics. Its founders started out with a relatively simple premise by asking the quintessential question: Why is a central clearing house or central regulation is necessary? Unfortunately, they ended up (re-)learning a valuable reason as to why our forefathers realized a need for some centralization and regulation. Our forefathers realized that monetary centralization provides currency stabilization. When the United States was young with newly won independence from Britain, each state minted its own currency and this was a debacle. How would one determine how much New Jersey dollars would one get in trade for, say, Connecticut dollars? Bitcoin's founders also re-learned the difficult concept of valuation. Last summer, Bitcoin essentially bubbled because, for a short time, its followers had a strong, collective emotional belief that bitcoins have real value. The moment this emotional belief foundation is placed into doubt or shattered, the value comes down. With the storm of server, desktop, and web application intrusions resulting in the theft of Bitcoins, the latent problems with the currency model were suddenly propelled into the main stream. Its users became frightened and distrustful. It is more than just supply and demand economics but believing that the medium that you are using for trade is intrinsically worth something (when, in actuality it has no real value.) Finally, centralization helps mitigate criminality and makes it easier for a victim to recover stolen funds.
...And nothing of value was lost. by Kaenneth · 2011-10-19 02:19 · Score: 4, Insightful

Seriously, what did you expect?
A small Bitcoin success by Teppy · 2011-10-19 02:25 · Score: 5, Interesting

Our new game, "Dragon's Tale," functions exclusively in Bitcoins. It's a gambling MMORPG based on the same technology as our previous game, "A Tale in the Desert." Choosing Bitcoins means that I never have to worry about PayPal freezing my account, or about $25 chargeback fees, or making Mastercard a 2.5% partner in my business.
When we started Dragon's Tale, Bitcoins were worth 5 cents, and people played for 100's at a time. When Bitcoins were $30, people played for fractions of a coin. Now that Bitcoins are $2.00 or whatever, they may spend a Bitcoin or two on a play session.
The point is that the exchange rate to dollars is irrelevant - players play at the level they're comfortable with, and our revenue (viewed in dollars) has been increasing steadily.
1. Re:A small Bitcoin success by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-19 04:17 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  So in other words, you run an illegal online casino hidden under the guise of a game.
  Interesting.
Re:Speculation by timholman · 2011-10-19 03:40 · Score: 5, Insightful

The majority of bitcoins is in the hands of a handful who cash in large quantities from time to time thus crashing the market.
Excellent point, and in fact Bitcoin may be one of the cleverest moneymaking scams in recent memory.
No one knows who Satoshi Nakamoto, the purported creator of the Bitcoin protocol, really is. Assuming Bitcoin ever achieved widespread adoption, he and a handful of early adopters would become the richest people on earth by default. When I pointed this out to a Bitcoin "true believer", his response was along the lines of "Well, he's a genius and deserves it." Yes, but if in fact "Mr. Nakamoto" is simply a syndicate of very clever scammers, then we would effectively be turning over a huge portion of the world's wealth to a criminal enterprise. No government is EVER going to allow that to happen.
No cryptographic currency is ever going to gain any traction if it makes early adopters obscenely wealthy just by default. Consequently, the only way anyone will ever make money from Bitcoin is via speculation. The people pushing Bitcoin are appealing to the same mentality (and lack of logic) you see with believers in gold currency. Given the long history of scams involving precious metals, there is clearly no lack of potential victims willing to throw away their money.
I assume the early Bitcoin adopters are cashing in before the entire house of cards collapses. If that was Satoshi Nakamoto's intent from the start, then my hat is off to him for committing what is essentially the perfect crime.
Ah, Slashdot by Siberwulf · 2011-10-19 03:55 · Score: 3, Funny

Come for the tech, stay for the fiscal policy lectures.