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Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Says Bitcoin 'Ought to be Outlawed' (cnn.com)
Bitcoin "is drawing harsh criticism from Wall Street investment firms," writes Slashdot reader rmdingler -- and even from some prominent economists. CNN reports:
The harshest assessment came from Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, who said that bitcoin "ought to be outlawed. Bitcoin is successful only because of its potential for circumvention," he told Bloomberg TV. "It doesn't serve any socially useful function." Robert Shiller, who won a Nobel for his work on bubbles, said the currency appeals to some investors because it has an "anti-government, anti-regulation feel. It's such a wonderful story," he said at a conference in Lithuania, according to Bloomberg. "If it were only true."
Wall Street titans were getting in on the action, too. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told Bloomberg that the currency serves as "a vehicle for perpetrating fraud." Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said on CNBC that it "seems like a bubble." The digital currency previously attracted the derision of JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon, who called it a "fraud" that would "eventually blow up." Warren Buffett has warned of a "real bubble."
Wednesday the price of bitcoin shot past $11,000 -- just ten days after rising past $8,000.
Wall Street titans were getting in on the action, too. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told Bloomberg that the currency serves as "a vehicle for perpetrating fraud." Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said on CNBC that it "seems like a bubble." The digital currency previously attracted the derision of JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon, who called it a "fraud" that would "eventually blow up." Warren Buffett has warned of a "real bubble."
Wednesday the price of bitcoin shot past $11,000 -- just ten days after rising past $8,000.
" Bitcoin is successful only because of its potential for circumvention,"
Like cash?
Whereas Goldman Sachs is a vehicle for what exactly?
Companies making big bucks out of traditional currencies are upset when a currency they're not making big bucks out of appears on the scene, totally unpredictably!
Yes, of course Bitcoin is a scam. But that isn't all there is to it, there is a need that it fills: we currently lack any kind of digital cash. Banks and other payment processors are currently taking about 3% of all the money spent on the internet, and this is an enormous amount of money that's just disappearing with virtually no return. A lot of internet vendors with thin margins jumped on the Bitcoin bandwagon for just this reason.
What we really need, of course, is a real government-backed digital currency. I can think of a few reasons why this hasn't been implemented yet, but it will happen eventually.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. - Mahatma Gandhi
We're at step #3 now.
#DeleteFacebook
Not at all like cash. Governments do maintain a deliberate level of control on cash. They control the supply, which is significant. Further, as they charter the banks, they can control it at that level too. Counterfeiting and running large volumes of cash can be maintained at a tolerable level. This is a solved problem.
Wallstreet is upset that tech is cutting out the middle man and getting directly into reckless financial speculation game.
Neither do you, or just about anybody else brought up in this conversation.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told Bloomberg that the currency serves as "a vehicle for perpetrating fraud."
Pot, meet kettle.
Bitcoin is successful only because of its potential for circumvention
If he doesn't know it has an open ledger and every transaction can be scrutinized, (ie the basics) what value is his opinion in this topic?
It doesn't serve any socially useful function
He's a typical economist, in 'theory' it's useless, but in practice plenty of people are already using it...
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told Bloomberg that the currency serves as "a vehicle for perpetrating fraud."
If anyone should know about perpetrating fraud, it would be Lloyd Blankfeind. And his buddy Jamie Dimon as well.
The fraud that is being perpetrated is not Bitcoin but the fiat money cranked out by scammer governments that seem to think they can do anything they want to to the public, including ruin the concept of money itself. Bitcoin is connected to nothing? What is the dollar connected to now? Huh? Less than nothing. Bitcoin at least is limited and if the dollar is accepted now it is only because people want to accept it. There is no basic "value" to it. It is not connected to gold. It is not connected to national economic output. I feel a good deal of the interest in bitcoin comes from it being a vote of no confidence in the phony, scam financial system that the finance and investment community and governments have worked so hard to create. Oh, and Schiller and others are terrified that this possibly disruptive technology will obsolete their knowledge base, prizes, and destroy their income. They no more get it than Buffett got microcomputers or the internet.
E Proelio Veritas.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told Bloomberg that the currency serves as "a vehicle for perpetrating fraud."
Well he would know...
JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon, who called it a "fraud"
Ditto
Looks like a time to sell.
It happened several times already. But the hype pulls it right back up, and people love it, because on every crash, you buy em because you know the stupid hypers will pull it up again.
Just some would-be price from a bank. And runs one himself. Who is really surprised that he is opposed to things that go against their business?
Just because he didn't invest into B himself.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
[Quote] Wall Street titans were getting in on the action, too. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told Bloomberg that the currency serves as "a vehicle for perpetrating fraud." [/Quote]
I'm sorry, but isn't *any* currency a vehicle for perpetuating fraud when a Goldman Sachs CEO is involved?
Stiglitz believes those who endeavor to protect their rights such as privacy must be doing something illegal. It's the old "it shouldn't matter if you have nothing to hide" defense of infringing on civil liberties. He also claims bitcoin has no societal value - the fact people are using it in society is prima facie evidence he's wrong about that as well.
A good currency should do a few things:
- Have low "friction" in transactions (in terms of ease, time, and transaction costs)
- Be near-universal in acceptance
- Provide a good store of value
- Be difficult to counterfeit
Bitcoin does very well on the last point and, in some senses, also does well on the first point due to the fact that it is a digital currency.
These properties are generally achieved by currencies through some form of artificial scarcity. Gold, for example, is valued well above its utility in industry.
Bitcoins version of artificial scarcity is poisonous, in the sense that its mechanism invites society to waste resources (electricity, silicon chips) on generating scarce integers no one else has. The world will be far better off once we are using digital currencies with different forms of artificial scarcity.
I think it's hard to argue Bitcoin is treated much as a currency even now, except perhaps by the ransomware authors. Generally it is being purchased as an "investment", which lately bears similarity to some historical crazes and bubbles.
There's no Nobel Prize for economics. Go look it up.
The economics establishment created a prize for themselves and tried to pass it off as a Nobel Prize when it's not.
That sums up the economics establishment.
Of course economics should be studied scientifically but what we have today is professional justifiers for statists on one side and plutocrats on the other - not scientists.
It happened several times already. But the hype pulls it right back up, and people love it, because on every crash, you buy em because you know the stupid hypers will pull it up again.
Reminds me of the old housing bubble. Amazing that people would sign up to lose everything, but humans do it again and again.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The amount of bitcoin being used as a currency is diminishingly small, the vast majority is being held by speculators.
Swedish Banking Prize has been successfully hijacking the name of prizes established by Alfred Nobel since the 60s
It threatens their stranglehold on the economy and it completely circumvents the establishment they represent, the entire justification for which it to exist is skimming all economical transactions so the filthy rich and insatiable greedy can get even richer.
And seriously, "vehicle for perpetrating fraud"? Was that the best they could come up with? I wasn't aware that Enron, or Goldman-Sachs for that matter were into bitcoins already. /sarcasm
Fuck 'em.
Has anybody acutually converted it to cash? Has anybody walked into a store and said give me $11000 for this 1 bitcoin I have.
Bitcoin isn't useful for circumvention, every single transaction ever made in it is publicly available. All it takes is seeing where someone spent it on something real to connect people together, it's much more traceable than cash. It's not even harder to enforce save for the fact the central banks aren't the ones controlling it, which for that alone they hate. Governments and banks take a percentage of every single transaction, be it purchasing food, paying rent, being paid income, even sitting idle in a checking account via inflation, etc - they have huge mechanations in place to orchestrate the whole scam yet while it is just as simple to do so for Bitcoin, they don't have those systems built at present and the huge number of cryptocurrencies available means if they try people will just switch to another one, while they are too fucking greedy to make an exchange without swindling everyone until they leave before they reach a critical mass. Economists are their own worst enemies.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein daring to speak unironically about "perpetrating fraud" is probably the funniest thing I've read here today.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Really. But there is a price given by economics for economics. Nobel did not consider economics a real science... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
is that this comes from a representative of a profession thatâ(TM)s ought to be outlawed due to itâ(TM)s lack of net positive contribution to humankind - an economist.
Bitcoin is successful only because of its potential for circumvention," he told Bloomberg TV. "It doesn't serve any socially useful function."
Circumventing governments is a socially useful function. Virtually all modern governments have grown to be far too powerful. Bitcoin represents a small but important struggle against one, small aspect of this power. Likely it will be either squashed or (worse) absorbed, but...maybe not. There's also a vanishingly small chance that people will realize that modern governments need to be massively reduced in scale, focusing on the essential needs of their constituents, rather than the global fantasies of the elite.
Geez, that doesn't sound half bad. Maybe I should become a propaganda writer :-/
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
They hate a currency that they donâ(TM)t control that they canâ(TM)t monitor.
Corporatism != Free Market
Technically there is only one correct answer to your question, "What is it backed by?"
... ]
As you know the distributed ledger and transaction mechanisms that provide the blockchain that underpins Bitcoin are derived from compute-intensive functions and are created through the process commonly known as "mining". When Bitcoin was originally introduced, the 'value' of a Bitcoin was set in such a way that it was worth slightly less than the cost of the electricity it would take to "mine the coin". [This was entirely intentional - had this not been done Bitcoin would have immediately suffered run-away "inflation"
However, Bitcoin also has a built-in scarcity model, in which the value given out for mining is being progressively reduced [in fact halved] as more coins are mined. Originally this was set to take place approximately once every four years or so, although with the amount of purpose-built ASICs now operating vast mining farms, it is entirely possible that the four year value has shortened somewhat. Each time the milestone is passed, the value of Bitcoins paid halves. I am not sure if this was done to forestall the effect that Moore's Law would have on mining or done specifically to provide a built-in scarcity value for the coins being mined.
So, in an attempt to answer your question, the "value" backing a coin was originated as the cost of producing it...
What has happened since then is that a raft of different speculators have piled in to Bitcoin and are now treating it like a commodity, not a currency. In other words, different rules apply. Now the driver of "value" to Bitcoin is driven by the perceived scarcity. In this sense the discussions relating to Bitcoin being a bubble are much closer to the market reaction in years past to treating classic cars or rare works of art in the same way. [ In those cases, the thinking was that since it simply wasn't possible to create "more" classic cars, so their scarcity value made them a trade-worthy commodity. This idea may well last for a time with Bitcoin, but - in exactly the same way was true for classic cars and works of art - if the "market" decides that it no longer has an interest in cryptocurrency, then the value will crash.
Detractors point to this and declare that this automatically means that Bitcoin is a fraud. However, it is important to note that we could say the same thing about a $100 bill, or a £100 note if you had one in your pocket. There is no way that the paper/polymers/ink/plastic that comprise the bill or note are worth the currency printed on them. The only reason they have that "value" is because an entire system - propped up by governments and banks - is willing to support them.
It hasn't happened for a long time - perhaps since the end of the Second World War - when we saw a total collapse in a major national economy. [ Although look at the currency in Zimbabwe for an example]. However, in the closing days of WWII, currencies such as the Chinese Yuan devalued so quickly that more money was being printed on recycled newspaper, and it took a wheelbarrow of currency [by volume] to buy a few vegetables. In this regard it would be ignorant and dangerous to argue that there are major differences between Bitcoin and other major fiat currencies.
Bit of a long-winded answer - sorry for that - but in essence the summary is: your question is irrelevant.
IF ONLY there was a moderator who could direct me where to "invest" all my monies in this riverboat of luxury that is bitcoin!
Seriously. Kill yourselves you whores.
Nobody here is going to buy your magic beans.
FYI, housing is back at the levels it was when the "bubble" burst.
It is not currently in a bubble (in the US) overall.
People that can afford loans are getting them, the people who cannot, aren't. That's the difference. Real estate prices today reflect true "real" demand by people that can afford them, and supply.
The major "representatives" of the financial world object to anything which is beyond their control. No telling how much wealth has been transferred from the people of the world to the banking industry and their respective controlling governments. All fiat currencies eventually go to zero value - i.e. fail as a store of value. When governments print more base currency than there is actual value (or wealth) to back up the currency, the currency goes into inflation. In our current times, do some research on what has happened to Venezuela and their financial problems with their fiat currency.\n Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are outside of the banking system, Thus they are outside of the control of the central banks. The only way the governments of the world can stop bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is to shutdown the Internet. And that won't happen since the Internet is too valuable as a source of propaganda and spying by the governments.\n Lastly, while the governments of the world can outlaw cryptocurrencies in general, all they will accomplish is to deny the good citizens access to the benefits of cryptocurrency and have little or no effect on illegal activities.
Nobel prize? I believe they must be thinking of the Swedish National Bank's Prize in Economic Sciences. There is no Nobel prize in economics.
You are saying processors are taking about 3% (which is not true, most of my merchant friends get about 1% rates with their processors - with the exception of amex giving around 2%, so the only 3% is paypal which, ironically is not a traditional processor), while offering "no return". Well, hate to break it to you, but the traditional processors are offering an instant and high capacity transaction platform with that 1-2%. On the other hand, the bitcoin network has a slow, low throughput and transaction fees can go through the roof especially if you want reasonable transaction time!
It is exactly the opposite situation of what you are describing.
The cryptography can be upgraded with a fork. So a fix is painful but possible.
The Nobel Prize in Economics is a scam set up by the Bank of Sweden to lend credibility to the neoliberal snake oil sellers.
That said, I've more respect for Joseph Stiglitz than for many of his other fake laureate colleagues.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told Bloomberg that the currency serves as "a vehicle for perpetrating fraud."
I have to believe that this is true, if for no other reason than that the speaker is an expert in fraud.
or any other digital currency is that I wouldn't want to hand over cash or a cash equivalent online. I can dispute any charge on my card. I can't do that if I hand over cash. In real life I can see the merchandise and who's selling it to me. Even at a Walmart I can see if a box is beat to hell and the contents likely broken. Sure, most online places take easy returns, but that's not out of the goodness of their hearts. That's because I've got leverage.
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Economists server a very, very useful function. We've got a tax plan being ram-rodded through right now and thanks to economists we know it's a bad bill. That's useful information.
You could argue this particular economist isn't useful; but you didn't. I know we're not supposed to complain about moderation around here but since when does a blanket attack on a branch of mathematics (yes, economics is a branch of mathmatics, which anyone who's taken a real course in it can tell you) made it to +4 insightful, even briefly?
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Bit we should just ognore the corporations behind the curtain right Strat?
WHORE.
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Looks like someone sold too soon.
I use Bitcoin to buy legitimate goods. I could use rocks, or literally anything at all, as long myself and the seller agree on the currency. If I choose to use a digital currency, back by nothing, and the sellers accept it. That is our choice and our risk. What I don't understand is the backlash against Bitcoin. Why does anyone care? If it's stupid, call us stupid and move on. I see Bitcoin as a free market currency I can use without the interference of government banking systems to purchase goods around the world with fast, secure, transfer between buyers and sellers that is backed by the users trust in the system. If you see it differently, then stay out of it. I ask the naysayers to stay out of the debate. To all the people who say Bitcoin is just a vehicle for nefarious operations, cash is used everyday at a much higher volume for nefarious operations. To say Bitcoin should be outlawed because a criminal element uses it ,is to say cash should be outlawed as well.
And economists do?
Have gnu, will travel.
Let all major governments outlaw BC and see if its value rises or falls. There's economic theory supporting both trajectories.
Organization? You must be joking..
The arms race between governments and forgers creating counterfeit currency has been waging for as long as paper money has existed. With the arrival of cryptocurrency less effort is required to mine legitimate "coins" than to print counterfeit currency. With less counterfeit currency in circulation we all benefit.
If you flip the definition and in place of bitcoin put the dollar you have the same outcome.
hmm ..
The problem with Bitcoin is power, and not the political/economic kind of power, but electricity.
As the value increases, more mining hardware is devoted to Bitcoin and more power is used to process the transactions. The complexity of the transactions increases automatically as more hardware is available. Adding more hardware or decreasing the cost of electricity doesn't lower the value of Bitcoin, it adds to the value. This is opposite of the way scarce commodities like gold work. We're to a point now where this infrastructure growth is being taken to an extreme.
It probably costs over 200 kWh and rising to process a Bitcoin transaction. Bitcoin value is now somewhat tied to the cost of electricity in China (or other places that have the combination of computing infrastructure and low cost power to process transactions at large scale).
If all you're doing is financial modeling this sounds great (really great!). However, this value is dependent on access to large scale infrastructure that itself depends on multiple governments and power utilities (whether or not the governments and utilities acknowledge it or even realize it). It's a lot easier to centralize, tax, regulate, and dismantle when transactions require so much power.
Bitcoin won't go away if infrastructure is removed, the value will just tank for a few years and a bubble will start again.
But it will blow on your faces, and I'll feel the world will become a better place... It was already to easy for fraud, corruption... Before a official crime coin, do you really want to be a part of it... Which world are you promoting?
Interesting:
"There's nothing good about currency debasement, it most certainly steals wealth from the rest of the economy and funnels it to those closest to the central bank, and has been a mainstay of brutal empires in their final chapter throughout history."
"The need for every working [person] to be a speculator just to keep their retirement savings from losing value is insane and has played a major role in fueling these repeated asset bubbles."
So sick of these fucking authoritarians everywhere. Why does everyone hate freedom so much. Just die already you pieces of shit and stop trying to control the rest of us.
The amount of bitcoin being used as a currency is diminishingly small, the vast majority is being held by speculators.
If anyone is doubting this statement:
Bitcoin is stuck at less than 10 transactions per second. Total value of all bitcoins is somewhere close to 200 billion USD. This makes Bitcoin practically useless for actual transactions. The ratio of transaction capacity to value just isn't there -- it only works if most of the money sits still the vast majority of the time.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
ah, irony!
nobody trusts it, i wont use it, you cant go buy gas or groceries with bitcoin, you cant use it at amazon or any other online retailer i know of, i am surprised bitcoin is still around, it should be a dead issue so demanding bitcoin be made illegal is sort of pointless,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
"doesn't serve any socially useful function"
Bitcoin is a medium of exchange - nothing more. The entire purpose of a medium of exchange is to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. That is the very foundation of civilization.
What more "socially useful" function exists?
Statists like this nobel idiot dislike anything that takes away power and control from the state. By that measure, crypto-currencies perform the most socially useful function there is - limiting the power of government over free people.
Maybe the fact that I can transfer money quicker and also not worry about reversed transactions is part of the usefulness of it?
Maybe I DONT want to arbitrate my electronic transactions. Maybe I don't want to get screwed by the financial sector. Maybe I don't want the government freezing or seizing my money and having to carry the burden of proof myself?
Bitcoin is useful because the government can't just steal it from you without going through the trouble of suing you. Also, my transactions are more private. Thanks, but I like my better expectation of privacy with bitcoin. 4th Amendment, you know?
Maybe I don't want the government making my money less valuable by printing more and more and more of it. Bitcoin solves this problem.
I'm no criminal, I just prefer bitcoin to the US dollar.
(ca. 2008-2009). So why would anyone listen to this asshole?
The law is not an ass. No really.
Economics is all just smoke and mirrors piled onto some basic fundamental concepts. Maybe if we stopped pretending it was some sort of science, we'd be able to come up with actually-better systems of wealth.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"Tulips...get your tulips here!"
What specifically does Gold bring to the table? Are you using it to conduct electricity? (Its not the best conductor btw) Or are you using it in your nail polish? (its great you think its pretty... until its not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) Perhaps you mean its ARTIFICIAL scarcity? (Great news, Bitcoin is limited and scarce by design) Or how about cash... what specifically does the cash provide you other than an assumed unit of value? (good napkin? Great way to perform "off the books" transactions....)
Apparently CNN doesn't like to cover news like Argentinians using Bitcoin to protect themselves from their own countries Fiat Tanking:
https://cointelegraph.com/news...
Or Zimbabwes Fiat tanking:
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.co...
Cryptocurrencies have value from at least 4 specific areas:
1) Distributed Work Trust – Transactions are validated through a system of Distributed “Miners” that create a linked chain of parent child relationships leveraging consensus and Entropy of scale to build in protections against Fraud and Forgery.
2) Transactional Integrity – Transactions are signed in such a way as to make them quickly verifiable both in internal integrity to each block, as well as each blocks’ place in the chain to create an immutable sequence and protect against Fraud and Forgery.
3) An Immutable Data Store – Referred to as a “Distributed Ledger,” values can be added to the signed and verified transaction chain becoming part of the distributed, and immutable record.
4) Distributed Logic Processing – Ethereum provides the benefit of executing functions in a Turing complete language across the distributed node and mining network. These functions (commonly referred to as contracts) are added to the chain (or Ledger) as Libraries which will exist so long as the chain does. For reference, “Contracts” are also available in Bitcoin though under a non-Turing complete implementation. Either way these are executable "contract" code libs built into the chain... does your dollar do that?
Why is gold even a competitor? Its like comparing Apples and Teslas.
Its frustrating seeing so many people falling for the lines of a bunch of crooks and fraudsters that are just trying to manipulate markets so they can continue to profit from ignorance.
Some more resources for those that are having a hard time Googling Bitcoin Value and want to learn more:
https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin...
http://www.google.com/
of protecting privacy. It's incredibly traceable. That's sort of the entire point of blockchain. And no, it's not hard to track down somebody by their wallet Id.
Also, when he says 'social value' I think the word 'positive' is implied to proceed that. Voter suppression tactics have social value, Marijuana being illegal, and heck good 'ole fashion slavery all have social value, but not a positive one.
The jury's still out on whether cryto-currencies have a net positive impact. Right now their value is underpinned by money laundering, drugs, ransomeware and now speculators. That's not really debatable. There's too few places you can actually spend crypto-currencies on legitimate items to say otherwise. When was the last time you bought milk with bitcoin? Or what is the real, practical advantage of a store letting you use bitcoin.
I guess you could say you'll avoid credit card fees, but will you really? Do you think the folks who facilitate those transactions aren't going to take a cut? Do you think they'll be no risk involved in the transactions? And besides, while credit card fees are high debit fees are negligible (why do you think businesses try to get you to use debit). We've already got a reasonable solution to that problem?
Right now I just don't see a viable use case for bitcoin that doesn't end badly. But Let me know if you do.
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than the old ones. I remember reading a story about new opera houses not matching the opera houses of old because you couldn't get an entire civilization to bend it's will to the manufacturing of an opera house. You just couldn't match the amount of resources and lives spent on the old ones. That was government at work, specifically the aristocracy. They didn't really call themselves government though.
Like most things we're better off than our ancestors are. The solution right now isn't less government, it's more involvement. Start with mandatory voting. Yes, I know folks are scared of a census (DPRK uses it to keep tabs on it's civilians). But there's already a census and 99% of adults have driver's licenses. Face it, that ship has sailed.
Government, particularly central government, is a tool. Like fire. Or guns. If you don't use it, somebody else will. You're never going to get away from it. It's just too powerful and useful a tool. Use it or lose it.
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I'm sorry, I didn't hear you over the sound of me buying my third house with bitcoin.
We are told there are about 12 million BTC in existence. Although they weren't all bought for the current going rate of around $10k, let's make that assumption since they will probably rise further in value.
That means that BTC is "worth" about $120 Bn and it's a reasonable assumption that most of that value has come from criminals. So, at some time it wouldn't be beyond belief for someone with the technical knowledge, backing and infrastructure to either hack it or destroy it completely. This would be a modern day equivalent of the USA's "war on drugs".
It would reduce the amount of underworld money in circulation drastically. Hopefully this would have a large detrimental effect on major criminals' ability to fund their activities. If a few speculators get to "take a bath", well: that might not be such a bad thing, either!
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Spanish American war - 1898
Gandhi didn't say that.
Better than cash, BitCoin has no fixed value against local currencies. You can take advantage of cashouts to bid at a lower value than median and possibly get it (not that much lower though). You can use it internationally and its not tied into the banking systems, so no middle-man taking a cut to translate from one nation's currency to another before you actually buy something with it.
Heck yes it has potential for circumvention! And he damned well knows it, that's why he said it that way. It could circumvent a lot of middlemen and keep money out of their hands!
And yeah, that does include governments.
Stiglitz' Nobel Prize was for successfully demonstrating that profit is made through "assymetry of information". That's a euphemism for "lying". While his research on that topic is legitimate, that's not to say that he is even an expert in macro economics. His politics have always been very far left. Since Bitcoin, among other things, is an insurance against fiat currency destruction (due to bad policy) and he is the guy who believes that the only way the system works is through government putting its thumb on the scale off the resources management, this statement from Stiglitz is exactly what one would expect. I wouldn't necesserily tie any one economist's Nobel to their view on some particular issue. Those prizes are given for specific studies which explore important topics. But expertise in 1 topic does not translate into a valid opinion on any public policy involving economics. Especially since his Nobel was not for a problem directly responsible for public policy.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Most of the time. Gone are the days when Hayek won the Nobel for explaining business cycles. These days, statist shills are the only ones who win Nobel prizes in economics. Just ask Paul Krugman, the greatest shill of all:
http://contrakrugman.com/
Stiglitz isn't known for being thrilled with anything approaching individual liberty and self-determination. Hayek and Friedman probably would have supported Bitcoin? So I'll take your Nobel-Prize winner and raise you two.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
...to know what's right ("socially useful") and what's wrong. Is there a Nobel prize in theology?
Dear Mr. Stiglitz, you are right. And here is how to cure most of those infirmities: all transfers traceable to a conversion bitcoin/dollar or reverse will be fiscally considered donations.
"Nobel prize winning economist on crack,billionaires don't want to lose control."
Anything Goldman Sachs has to say should be ignored. They were the ones primarily responsible for making the housing crises worse. They benefited from the fact that money isn't "real" at all (e.g. fiat currencies).
The economist is clearly on crack or simply acting as a stooge for others. You can't outlaw a mathematical function. The impacts of even trying to do so are wide ranging. I don't even want to imagine the havoc this will cause.
The entire US economy and probably the economy of almost every nation is nothing more than a bubble based upon the mood of the public. Anyone that has ever seen a bank run will understand. The mob losses confidence in a bank. The mob rushes to get their money out of the bank and the bank totally collapses. That can happen to a nation easily and not just to banks. The nonsense brokers will try to push gold and silver. to some extent gold and silver can protect you a bit. But if times get really hard you will be willing to give quite a bit of gold for a dead blackbird to ward off your starvation. In other words a big bag of gold might not take you far at all. The naked truth is that we are hurdling through space on a rock that it is in itself unstable and doomed. human life collectively is not designed for a happy ending. There is no security in this universe.
What greater praise could one offer?
Requiem for the American Dream
Hi guys, posting under AC,
I am having major troubles with Coinbase, they have held my money ($10,000.00) for a whole month. I have not been able to buy any BTC or ETH, my wife is freaking out, and phone/customer support has yet to give me any reply whatsoever.
One month ago, I signed up to Coinbase. I went through all the steps exactly as requested:
I signed up with my phone, and added my email address and confirmed both. Then I scanned and sent them my passport and another form of photo ID. Both were accepted, with green ticks or marks next to them. Then it said the final step was to send the money, with a unique identifier. I sent $10,000.00. Two days later I got an email saying they had received my money, but my personal details had not been verified (due to my passport being from a different country as my bank), and that my money would be returned in two or three days. Even though the details had already been verified, clicking "verify" now showed that is was unverified, ie it had turned red. They had retroactively unverified my passport, after receiving my money.
I felt annoyed, the price of BTC was low, ie just over $5700.00 and I had no chance to buy. But I thought I'd wait one or two days for the money to be sent back, then I could buy BTC through a local company. Two days came and went, then a week, with no money being returned. I called the support phone number, and was told they had no power to help, that I should open a support ticket. I did that, then got no reply for 2 weeks. Nothing. I called again and after two hours of waiting was told again that they had no power to help, and to send a request by email. I told them I had done so 2 weeks earlier, and they said they would escalate it and I would receive a reply in 2-3 days. That was a week ago, still no reply, no money, no anything at all. They have held my $10,000.00 for one month, promising to send it back, but I have not heard one word from them.
In short: I opened an account with Coinbase, was confirmed to be verified, was told to send money, sent $10,000.00. Coinbase said they would send the money back to me within 2-3 days due to my passport not being of the same country and my bank account. That was one month ago. I have not been able to buy any BTC, I have not received my money back, I have received no emails about the status of my money, customer support is useless and I am really worried because $10,000.00 is all the money I have in my life.
In my country there are places to lodge complaints against companies like this, even for foreigners. Is there such an option in the USA? I am not American. What options do I have? $10,000.00 is a lot of money, surely there must be some recourse, some regulatory body that oversees companies like Coinbase?
Please help, any advice would be very much appreciated.
Maybe I don't want to arbitrate my disputes. (like credit cards)
Maybe I don't want to have my cash stolen by the US Government without due process.
Maybe I like the privacy of bitcoin better.
Maybe I like how the government doesn't print bitcoin.
Maybe I like how bitcoin doesn't let crooks reverse my transactions.
Maybe I like how bitcoin isn't a fractional reserve system and my bitcoins will always be there.
Maybe I like how I can move around bitcoin while the banks are on holiday or after hours.
Maybe I like how bitcoin is harder to counterfeit.
Maybe I'm not a crook and I still like bitcoin better than the U.S. Dollar!
God created economists so that weathermen would feel better about themselves.
-- Will program for bandwidth
may well become history's greatest scam.
Like most massive financial scams, it is not backed-up by anything solid and has no intrinsic value. There's simply no diffrerence between buying a bitcoin and buying the Brooklyn bridge from some guy in a dark alley; if you both agree they have value and both agree to the transaction, it all seems so very normal and real and the illusion of normality continues for as long as people are willing to pretend the fraud is not a fraud and they keep trading - but eventually somebody is left "holding the bag". In the case of the Brooklyn bridge, there actually is such a physical object, but if one of the buyers at some point goes to lay claim to it he/she will be not-so-politiely told they have been scammed and are out of luck and have a worthless deed. In the case of bitcoin, nobody is even pretending there is a physical asset. On the day people stop buying bitcoins, nobody will be able to sell them and anybody who thinks he has tousands (or by then millions?) of dollars in bitcoin will suddenyl find that he has NOTHING and all the money he spent on bitcoin and any time wasted on it are LOST. Gone Forever. Zip. Zilch. Also as with most scams, there's no governmental support so there's nobody to appeal to for help and no insurance on your bitcoin "funds". Bitcoins have absolutely no inherent value - evey bitcoin in existence gathered together are worth less than a single tomato seed if people stop being willing to buy bitcoins - a tomato seed can at least be planted in the ground and watered and will evenyually bear food that IS worth actual money.
Nobody who supports Bitcoin has ANY right to ridicule the late Mr Ponzi, or Enron, or Pets dot com all of which were far more legitimate and viable.
That's a great idea, I think from now on I'll always ask the naysayers to stay out of every debate. I'll let you know how that works out for me.
Oh no... must be bad!
What kind of idiot spends Bitcoin? No one has bought anything with Bitcoin since that moron and the two pizzas. And that's the problem with it going forward: it's useless as a currency if it continues to appreciate in value.
Surging house prices is a world-wide phenomenon, and they move somewhat in concert.
So, there's something more going on here. I think it has a lot to do with concurrently surging global central bank balance sheets. Finding a chart of "central bank balance sheets" (including the Fed, PBOC, ECB, and BOJ) should be informative.
I bought some quite awhile back and held it. It is now worth six figures. Others choose to not participate at all, which is also fine.. What's the point of all these heated arguments? Either buy some or don't, and shut the hell up.
God damn it, there is no Nobel Prize in Economics! But there's money involved, so the foundation recognizes it.
A number of crooks and criminal organisations want Bitcoin to "go away".
That sounds like the strongest possible reccomendation for the increased use of cryptocurrencies. The CIA, GS and the rest of the Wall Street Gang are thr prime causes of most problems in the world. If they had less control and influence, there would be fewer famines, war s etc.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
he told Bloomberg TV. "It doesn't serve any socially useful function [...]"
Just because YOU can't think of something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, only that you lack imagination. Put another way, "oh yeah? Well, that's... uh, just like, your opinion, man." I'm not a fan of Bitcoin, but I understand essentially what it is and how it works. Outlawing it is insane on its face. Think about what you'd have to outlaw to outlaw Bitcoin: 1. math, 2. computer networking, 3. exchanging messages over a computer network... that's a bit like outlawing people whistling or banning turning your head while walking... just insanely stupid ideas. If they want to stop Bitcoin trading, what of all the other exchanges of value, electronic messages, etc.? Going to ban people holding potluck dinners and bringing bottles of wine TO those dinners?!? After all, there's an EXCHANGE of things of value going on there. If the exchange was set up online, via COMPUTERS... Yeah, this is stupid. Happily, I'm sure it will fail. Or at least I hope it will, given what's going on lately, one can't be too sure of ANYTHING.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
This clown is just the latest bootlicker in a long line since that Nazi-fluffing faggot, John Maynard Keynes. He's not an economist at all, he's an astrologer like Krugman, who gets money and undeserved prestige for concocting asinine excuses for more and more government interference in our lives. Fuck him, and fuck anyone who considers him an intellectual.
An economic system backed by immutable truth.
Bitcoin as a currency is fine.
Bitcoin as a protocol is somewhat flawed.
Blockchain as a technology may possibly save the human race from the illogical extremes of corporations.
Replace the word "Bitcoin" with the word "Cash" in the Summary and TFAs and you'll see what these people are really after - they want to outlaw cash.
If there is no cash, and the big banks control everything, they can charge per-transaction fees just like digital currencies. These oligarchs want to a) eliminate the competition that decentralized digital currencies provide and b) take over all movement of value and impose their own tax on it.
That's all there is to it.
The Federal Reserve IS a bubble.
So you speculated an won? Just remember when it pops there is always someone left holding the bag - do you want to feel responsible for someone losing their savings?
If you want mine your own crypto currency, you need a motherboard with 19 PCIe 1X slots to plug in 19 GPUs and a couple of 1200W PSUs.
This is the major reason why they don't want anything to do with a centralized blockchain. It will make the money laundering the banks and other financial institutions perform so much easier to detect.
and I think they're just pissed they missed the opportunity.
Once upon a time, "Nobel prize winning" was a mark of some distinction. More recently, the Nobel committees have blessed some enormous turkeys. Paul Krugman, former Enron adviser, for example.
And even Lawrence Peter, inventor of "The Peter Principle", notes that expertise in one field does not imply distinction in other fields, not even fields closely connected.
Don't get me wrong; I think Bitcoin is an enormous scam on the scale of the Dutch "Tulip Mania". But since I don't really understand what's going on, perhaps I'm not the right guy to criticize it. But then, I've never lost the credentials of a Bitcoin wallet containing a few thousand Bitcoins, so I'm at least that far ahead.
After the bubble pops.
They always do.
Have fun with your South Sea shares, comrades.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
When the hammer comes down, there shall be much weeping in the land. Wait for it.
Seriously, Wall Street hates the Bitcoin casino because it's sucking up potential "investment" money from their stock market casino. They're just hating on their competition. It's the same reason that the TV industry spent so much time demonizing video games in the 80's and 90's. The latter reduces the demand for the former.
It was mostly for international trade, so if you didn't have enough gold. You would sell stuff to other countries and then have more gold for yourself. Or just mine the stuff, it's not like there is a fixed amount of gold.
Because we've had no more booms and busts since then?
The Nobel Prize recipients in recent decades have been an uneven bunch, at least the ones for Peace and Economics.
Don't know about his prize-winning work in economics, but clearly he's having rather wide of that mark now.
It's a little harder to screw up the ones for the hard sciences.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Scumbags like Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, Robert Mercier, Boris Epshtyn, Mitch McConnell snd all the rest of those traitorous leaches should be outlawed.