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Why Bitcoin Is Doomed To Fail, In One Economist's Eyes
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Economist Edward Hadas writes in the NYT that developers of bitcoin are trying to show that money can be successfully privatized but money that is not issued by governments is always doomed to failure because money is inevitably a tool of the state. 'Bitcoin exemplifies some of the problems of private money,' says Hadas. 'Its value is uncertain, its legal status is unclear, and it could easily become valueless if users lose faith.' Besides, if bitcoin ever really started to take off, governments would either ban it or take over the system says Hadas. The authorities might be motivated by a genuine concern about the stability of a shadow monetary system or they might act out of self-preservation because tax evasion would be too easy in a parallel economy. 'Part of the interest in virtual currencies like bitcoin is that their anonymity can provide a convenient cloak for criminal activity. Part is technological — this is a cool idea. And part is speculative — gamblers bet that bitcoin's value will increase,' concludes Hadas. 'Truly private money is an inferior alternative to the money that comes with the backing of a political authority. After all, no bank or bitcoin-emitter can be as public-minded as a government, and no private power can raise taxes or pass laws to unwind monetary excesses.'" Could be there's something good about money that can't be manipulated by law. Some people at least think there's plenty of value in Bitcoin and similar currencies, despite the risks. And those risks at present probably aren't enough to comfort the unfortunate Welsh fellow who (HT to reader judgecorp) "has realised he threw out a hard drive containing 7500 bitcoins, worth £4 million at today's prices. It is now under four feet of garbage in a landfill site the size of a football pitch."
We've played this game before.
I look forward to the first Bitcoin Panic, it should be interesting to see what happens...
Seems like this economist is too fond of governments to be really objective. The last quote in the summary was specially awful. No bank or financial institution will ever be able to do as much harm to a population as a bad government.
That said he has a point regarding government interests in taking virtual currencies down or controlling them. The thing is, technologies evolve, and albeit bitcoin may find its end in government interventions, sooner or later other alternatives that are even harder for governments to control will appear. It was the same with file sharing and it will be always like this. People resent control and given the means to avoid it most will.
He's right, but in the wrong way. All currencies are doomed to fail. As long as people are willing to exchange something for something else, both have value. Most FIAT money has value because governments are willing to exchange it for taxes, so then it has value to almost everyone. When a government collapses, or people lose faith in it, it's currency becomes worthless. Seashells are no longer values as currency, but they once were. Gold/Silver have boom/bust cycles. BitCoin had value because of SilkRoad, and the silk-roaders were willing to accept it for... something. Frankly I'm surprised BitCoin still has value after SilkRoad's demise. If something significant replaces SilkRoad, BitCoin will remain valuable. Until then bitcoin's going on momentum. May crash soon, may not. Will crash eventually.
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
The only problem I have with BitCoin at the moment is that it isn't something you want to hold on to. Buy it, do your transaction immediately before the value changes. Somebody pays you in BitCoin, immediately cash out before the value goes down. With most currencies, you can put it in the bank, or under your mattress, and be reasonably sure that in a week it won't have lost half of its value. There are lots of people making sure that the value of the US dollar doesn't do that kind of stuff, because it would be terrible for the economy, to have money changing value so often.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
This is utter crap. With very, very few exceptions, money has always been issued by government. Governments have always imposed currency by requiring that taxes are paid in using it. Governments have always set standards for the production of money. Governments have always punished those who attempt to interfere with money.
Gold and silver standards were exactly a system of money imposed by governments, effectively legislating the price of the underlying metal. Such standards caused problems exactly because it was a government attempting to impose money at a fixed price to a commodity where the market (ie the people) tried to push to a different price for that commodity.
I guess you're thinking of 19th century banknotes, issued by private banks, but they are not money as such, just a promissory note which the bank would exchange for a fixed number of coins which were the state-imposed money. Once they became government-backed legal tender they were subsumed into the existing money system (although you might argue that eg UK bank notes are still only promissory notes redeemable for coins, at least in theory). They were never an independent, floating-exchange currency like bitcoin is.
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The author doesn't seem to understand how Bitcoin works. He seems to think that some mysterious computer programmer is the "issuer" of the currency. He says that governments will "take control", without explaining any mechanism for them to do so. His grasp of economics is questionable as well. He says that governments have always controlled currency. But prior to the American Civil War, private currency circulated. His claim that governments are better at protecting us from "monetary excess" made me laugh. Bitcoin may fail, but not because of the reasons he gives. But he hedges in his last paragraph, and says bitcoin will thrive "until the authorities do better", which means it may be around forever.
I'm just waiting for the first tax audits of BitCoin users who get dinged for not having paid capital gains tax. I give it a few years.
If it can go from $1 to $1000 in the space of a year, it can go from $10,000 to $0 in the space of a few miliseconds.
Moreover, even if bitcoin fails as a currency, it still works very very well as a means of money transfer. Which is one of the reasons I support it. Paypal takes a large chunk of any money transfered, Visa and Mastecard take a large chunk, etc. All can (and have) cut off payments to undesirables. Etc. There are so many issues with centralized payment processors.
Bitcoin though, is brilliant. Being decentralized, it is strongly resistant to attempts to prevent donations going to "undesirables". The fee charged is a small percentage of that the major companies charge (and is not even required at the moment, as most miners will still process transactions without a fee). Etc.
And, if you don't keep your money in bitcoin (which does mean you have to trust a thirdparty "exchange"), you don't have to worry about exchange rates either. Just have the bitcoin changed directly to the currency of your choice, and withdrawn immediately from the exchange.
Also, obviously this economist doesn't know enough about bitcoin to pass judgement. It is not an anonymous currency, at most it is pseudonymous. And, just as obviously, this economist doesn't know about history. As an AC has already said, private currencies were very popular before the 20thC. Around the world.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
Economists who don't tell banks and governments what they want to hear don't have jobs for long. So, obviously, most of what they publically spout is complete nonsense.
Bitcoin is just alternative currency. There are plenty of that around - most of them are pegged to some other currency though, but they are, for the most part alternative currency.
Think: Gift Cards (Amazon/Apple/Steam/Google/etc), alternative store currency (Canadian Tire Money), etc. Then there's non-traditional currency, like WoW Gold.
If anyone says Bitcoin isn't a "money" they're plain old lying. It can be used to facilitate trade (which is the purpose of currency).
Of course, there are a few fundamental problems with Bitcoin, but there are problems with all currencies.
When any economist, banker, etc., says Bitcoin is doomed, the real reason is them saying is "we haven't figured out a way to make money on it yet". No currency is invulnerable to making money by doing things of little value, Bitcoin included. It just means the quants haven't sat down to figure out schemes to exploit to get bitcoins for little effort. Either it's because the entire bitcoin market is too small so the benefits of skimming 1/1,000,000th of a Bitcoin from every transaction is barely worth the effort, or other reason.
That's the real message.
Many years ago I compared the general economic forecasts of economists to those of the astrologers in what when then American Astrology magazine, a semi-scholarly attempt at presenting astrology as a legitimate field of scientific inquiry. I followed each of their predictions form five years. The results revealed that economists were right less than 1% of the time while astrologers were right about 10% of the time. Since we all know that astrology is bogus the results say a lot about economists. Maybe it's time to do the study again.
No, BitCoins are not backed by valuable goods (there's no guarantee from anyone that you'll get this or that amount of this or that valuable good for it). It's just that they are traded for valuable goods (that is, there are people willing to give you valuable goods for them — or money in other currencies for which other people will give you valuable goods —, and therefore people will only give them to you for valuable goods — or other currencies —, too). In that respect they are no better than the usual fiat currencies.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
If they aren't reported lost then how would they know if I didn't just put them under my mattress? If they have been reported lost, can they be reinstated later when they are found?
The value of Bitcoin fluctuate depending on demand/supply.
Currently the supply of bitcoin is low and only slowly increasing (only 25 BTC per mined block are shared across all the users of the mining pool which successfully validated the block, and the total number can be computer around 12 mio).
Currently the demand is expanding (bitcoins can be used as payment medium in an ever increasing number of shops. The days where Silk Road was the main place were you could buy/sell using BTC are long over [and in fact, during some time, Silk Road was down due to being seized by authorities. At that time the BTC market barely noticed]. Also BTC are in demand by traders [although again given the low impact of various pump-n-dump attempts, traders don't have as much an influence today as back then] ).
Hence currently the price is globally heading up (with more or less some small very localised perturbations).
But globally, BTC evolve according to demand/supply AND ONLY demande/supply. (Unlike fiat currencies which can be manipulated by printing more or less bills by the controlling state).
If some coins stop circulating (either because you destroyed the harddrive cointaining the private keys to spent them, or simply because you forgot about them, or because you're hiding them as a reserve for later) the total number of "coins currently available on the market" will get a bit lower (a bit under the current 12 mio). Because of that, simply following the demand/supply rule, the price of bitcoin will increase a little bit.
If suddenly you brought them back into circulation (you remembered that damn password, found the old laptop that you though was thrown away, or simply decide to use your reserve) the number of circulating coins increases, and because of the slightly increased supply, its price decreases a bit.
Now the "magic" of bitcoin is that its a decentralised currency.
- In a centralized currency, the issuer can massively print new money. Or destroy gigantic amount of bills. Such large scale variation of the supply can cause big changes in the value of the money, and thus the state can manipulate its own money. Create inflation or deflation depending on needs. Thus value of money is not only influenced by pure demand/supply rule in the market, but also very directly by government and politics.
- In a decentralized currency, *nobody* owns the system and nobody in particular decides, instead all agree. (Nobody will accept your mined block if you granted yourself 1000 BTC instead of the current 24+fees)
Also, most of the people only own a small part of the whole amount of bitcoins. So any "bitcoins pulled out of circulation" by 1 single individual will only concern a very small amount, a small fraction from the whole stash, and thus barely have any registrable effect (the theoretical effect of you not spending your 100 BTC on the value of the whole 12 mio will be smaller than the noise).
A single individual (or government body) can't influence much the value of bitcoins. (For influence to be successful, that would require massive coordination of a sizeable proportion of all bitcoin holder. Which would be near to impossible given how much the money is spread).
The only influence of bitcoin going in and out of market that can be sizeable is the total influence of all bitcoins getting lost.
If over the first 10 years of bitcoin lifetime 1 million total of coins get completely lost for ever, the overall price will jump up by 5-10% accordingly.
So it's a situation of "the market will heal itself".
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