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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.
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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
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 because he didn't invest into B himself.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Some critics argue that the prestige of the Prize in Economics derives in part from its association with the Nobel Prizes, an association that has often been a source of controversy. Among them is the Swedish human rights lawyer Peter Nobel, a great-grandson of Ludvig Nobel. Nobel criticizes the awarding institution of misusing his family's name, and states that no member of the Nobel family has ever had the intention of establishing a prize in economics. He explained that "Nobel despised people who cared more about profits than society's well-being", saying that "There is nothing to indicate that he would have wanted such a prize", and that the association with the Nobel prizes is "a PR coup by economists to improve their reputation". Relatedly, it has been noted that several members of the awarding committee have been affiliated with the Mont Pelerin Society.
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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
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.
There's no Nobel Prize for economics. Go look it up.
I did, and you're wrong. While Alfred Nobel himself did not fund a prize in economics, the Nobel Foundation recognises it as a legitimate Nobel Prize, and candidates go through the same selection criteria and are assessed by a legitimate scientific institution.
Really. But there is a price given by economics for economics. Nobel did not consider economics a real science... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Stupid troll gets an answer to his dumbass question in every bitcoin thread and yet keeps asking the same dumb fucking question in all the new bitcoin threads.
News at 11.
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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.
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.
The cryptography can be upgraded with a fork. So a fix is painful but possible.
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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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.
There's no need to answer his question again and again in every thread.
If he can't be bothered to read the reply once then surely we won't waste time replying to him every time.
#DeleteFacebook
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 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.
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?
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.
(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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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
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.
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.
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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.
What greater praise could one offer?
Requiem for the American Dream
God created economists so that weathermen would feel better about themselves.
-- Will program for bandwidth
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.
You got me there.
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.
The arms race between governments and forgers creating counterfeit currency has been waging for as long as paper money has existed.
It goes back a lo further than that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... for example shows one thing that was used to combat "criminals" who would shave off bits of coin,
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.
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?
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?
You might want to look it up. at one time, the US was in a long period of booms and busts on around a 2 year cycle.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.