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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?
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. - Mahatma Gandhi
We're at step #3 now.
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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."
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
This is fine, I see nothing wrong with customers choosing to pay with credit cards as a value-added service. I do see something wrong with payment processors siphoning money off because they're the only way to do business.
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.
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.
You really don't have a clue.
Try again.
The value fluctuates wildly because it's being bought and sold by people, who don't always act logically. It crashed a bit after reaching $10K because a lot of people had sell orders for that price. It's already back up to $11K.
Not cash stored in computers. If someone attacked the country with EMP bombs, they'd wipe a lot of "regular cash" too.
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What is it backed by? Precious metals are rare enough plus they can be used for other purposes.
Industrial use of rare metals is a distraction. Only 10% of the mined gold goes to industry. The rest is hoarded. Gold is also not accepted by most legitimate business establishments.
Plus the only people making any money are the ones who got in early. That's a pyramid scheme.
People who got in early on AAPL or MSFT also made a ton of money. Does that mean these are pyramid schemes ? No. People got in early because they understood how some cheap things have a great value.
In theory, no one should be stupid enough to fall for a pyramid scheme. In practice, people fall for them. Bitcoin is one.
Bitcoin is not sustainable because the crypto in it will be broken some day. Notice that every cryptographic system in the past has been broken at one day or another.
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.
Slashdot really needs to either fix this apostrophe problem or at least convert the character to one it can display when we submit comments.
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> ding ding ding! Gold is also a fiat currency.
I don't think you quite understand what that term means... gold is a commodity currency.