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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.
Cash should be outlawed too.
If the government can't control it, it should not exist
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.
The times that governments printed money to 'sustain its false value' are long over.
Money is now moved into the economy via credits etc.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
People don't "trust their currency," they use it because they have to. And "Responsible central banks adjust the money supply to the size of the economy so that its value is relatively stable," really? Pumping 4 trillion made-up dollars into the world to keep failed banks and investment houses tottering along as zombies is keeping it "relatively stable?" And allowing derivatives, made up by investment houses and pushed into every nook and cranny of the world of finance, to be used as bank reserves, that is, real money, just to see them collapse due to the rotten housing loans they are based on "is adjusting the money supply so that its value is relatively stable?" No, it is not. It almost collapsed the world financial system. It is not reasonably stable because it is controlled, it is reasonably stable because people have to use it and there is no alternative. Like Roman money, fiat money is debased generation after generation by governments overspending, governments with no need to show restraint as there is no limiting backing to their currencies. And speculation and fraud and criminality are rampant in fiat currencies. It is a phony issue with regard to Bitcoin. It is holding it to a higher standard, a standard of perfection. The speculation in the beginning of Bitcoin is temporary; it is an ac voltage of speculation riding a DC voltage of "use value," which is being determined by the market now.
E Proelio Veritas.
I would love to see you trying to educate an Afghan elder in some isolated mountain village about how to use his brand new MasterCard. Should be good for weeks of entertainment!
A MasterCard would be stupid yes, but not a mobile SMS pay system used to pay government employees as well as rural transactions, such as a tribal elder would use.
Whatever GS does is considered or will eventually be considered legal. There's a big difference, if the FBI comes knocking at your door, you're going to jail for a long time before you even get a trial, if the FBI comes knocking at their doors, they're going to make a press release and the laws change.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
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?
No, worse.
Cash, has serial numbers, thus it can actually be traced by optically reading the money as it is dispensed or deposited. Bitcoin however has a public ledger, which means everyone can look at the ledger, and see exactly what is going on. If you know a certain wallet is a drug or arms dealer, you follow the money easily.
That said, the potential for circumvention is more about circumventing financial controls, like Argentina or China. Anyone who "invests" in it, is a god damn idiot, because it's illiquid, you can't simply convert 1 bitcoin into 10,000 USD at a moments notice. Someone has to give you 10,000 USD for 1 bitcoin, and if there are no takers, you either wait and hope it doesn't go down more, or you take whatever value is there. That value can fluctuate anywhere from 0.01$ to 1,000,000$ in a blink of a second. Unlike the stock market and futures markets which typically can't fluctuate more than 0.1% in a single trade. Even if say JP Morgan dumps a billion dollars of potato futures on the market, they're not going to get a billion dollars for it, because there will be people who under-sell what JP Morgan asks for, and thus get traded first. If only 100 million of futures get traded, JP Morgan still has 900 million of unsellable potatoes that have to be delivered somewhere, but they can be "dumped" somewhere.
Which is the problem with bitcoin. There simply is no way to "dump" bitcoin. You either sell at any price, including negative prices, or you delete your bitcoin wallet and walk away from it. Because people will forget their wallet credentials, bitcoin has a "decay through scarcity" problem where the bitcoins just start disappearing as people forget about them. Should someone manage to unlock someone elses wallet, you can't quite cash out due to the same illiquidity problem. So anytime you see bitcoin prices plummet rapidly, that was likely someone's stolen coins/proceeds of crime being dumped on the open market.
Realistically, bitcoin and other crypto-currencies should be relegated to being an intermediary for currency exchange, as it would make forex exchange simpler. Instead of looking for people to buy or sell in X and Y currencies, you simply buy or sell into bitcoin, and then immediately buy or sell out to your target exchange, all without the intermediate value of bitcoin changing, and no fee's or commissions being charged in the process. Ultimately that's what it's useful for.
But it does result in circumvention of currency and banking regulations, which is why any transaction into bitcoin or out of bitcoin should be reported to the tax agency in the respective country, and having a "reconciling auditor" in each country to check that ALL your transactions were done legally would solve this.
You need to visit New Hamsphire sometime. While you may not be seeing it where you are I'm seeing new businesses come on board right and left. There isn't a day that goes by that I'm not conducting at least one Bitcoin or other crypto transaction. Even when traveling I'm paying for plane tickets and hotels with Bitcoin. And I don't buy Bitcoin. I accept Bitcoin. I don't have any accounts on any exchanges. There are a few crypto vending machines in my town, but I actually have only tried them out with smaller amounts of money.
We have a ton of lunch places in my town which take Bitcoin and a few that take Dash. I'm actually about to hit up Local Burger for lunch and what-do-you-know they accept Bitcoin. There are lots of others though nearby. From car repair places to gift shops. Nearby there is a theater that takes it. My chiropractor takes. And a bunch of other places. A few dozen places take it here and the town's population is only 25,000 people. In nearby towns 1/3 of the business are taking it though admittedly smaller. Portsmith recently seen a rapid rise in Bitcoin and crypto adoption and even has a store that exclusively accepts crypto.
OK, maybe I *completely* misunderstand the theory of Labour in Action [and do please correct me if I get this wrong] but I thought that was the theory that said that if you took a labourer and had them perform a unit of work [for example, a factory worker produces a product with a cash sale value] then, through the theory, we can take the productivity of the worker, equate it to the cash/currency/barter value of the goods produced, and thus equate the labour of the factory worker to a cash value and hourly rate...
Now I have a nasty feeling that you're going to correct me and tell me that I'm wrong... ?
and what real value do you think bitcoin has?
Bitcoin has the same real value as U.S. Dollars: none! The dollar is no longer guaranteed by anything, not gold, nor silver, nor land, nor oil reserves, or anything else. Thus, we need to judge its value on other criteria, not real value. Things such as trust, or scarcity. If the value or your currency lost 98% of its value, would it still be scarce? If you don't trust the people in charge of the currency, why should they be in charge of the currency?
It's the ultimate "fiat currency", created by wasting enormous amounts of electricity to produce absolutely nothing of any value in the physical world.
Electricity consumption ensures that it cannot be created without cost, thereby preventing anyone from artificially increasing the supply. Those who own a currency prefer this. Those who do not own a currency, and would like to AWARD themselves the currency through some unearned mechanism dislike this feature of bitcoin.
It's digital fucking tulips - something that has little or no actual value, but an over-inflating price just because people think they can buy it at any price and sell it on for more...
You are perhaps correct, in that any scarce item can be accepted by a society as a medium of exchange, and then if the acceptance shifts elsewhere, then the previously accepted item will lose its value. However, this argument can also be said about dollars, and most other government-backed currencies. In fact, all fiat currencies throughout history have eventually failed. Once again, bitcoin is in no way inferior other currencies, and you must look to other measures to determine its worth. The concept that bitcoin seems impossible to debase makes it considerably desirable.
Complete nonsense, gold jewelry was already highly valuable when currency was first invented around the time that the first large cities formed.
Humans all around the world have consistently been able to see the value in gold for both personal and formal decorative and ceremony purposes.
The only people in history who didn't value gold have been people without access to it.
Gold plated jewelry isn't "as pretty" forever. It starts out looking the same, but that doesn't last. Also, you can't melt it down into a commodity. In many places people buy gold as an investment, but in the form of jewelry, not in the form of coins. So it has dual use. Gold plated jewelry is merely decorative, and not valuable.
Price history is a thing. Information has value, and price history has value in doing value analysis. If your analysis doesn't even take into consideration known information that is relevant, what chance does it have to be correct?