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Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Author of Black Swan, on Bitcoin

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Re: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Author of Black Swan, on Bitcoin

#11

Post by coffeeacc »

ABCLAW wrote: post #8

I always feel bad when I read some of Taleb's work and come away empty. The guy is clearly smart, but I feel like he skips too many steps in his mental algebra and then misses his own mistakes altogether too often. >This gives us, the crowd, an insurance policy against an Orwellian future. Here's a great example. Does it really, Nassim?

Is the preceding sentence not useful?

> But its mere existence is an insurance policy that will remind governments that the last object establishment could control, namely, the currency, is no longer their monopoly.

Re: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Author of Black Swan, on Bitcoin

#13

Post by htormey »

"When you trade gold, you trade “loco” Hong Kong and end up receiving a claim on a stock there, which you might need to move to New Jersey. Banks control the custodian game and governments control banks (or, rather, bankers and government officials are, to be polite, tight together). So Bitcoin has a huge advantage over gold in transactions: clearance does not require a specific custodian. No government can control what code you have in your head."

Regardless of what you think of BTC and its ilk, I think this is a pretty good point about investing in gold.

Re: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Author of Black Swan, on Bitcoin

#15

Post by huphelmeyer »

zengid wrote: post #7
focom wrote: post #4

A pretty correct analysis imo > [Bitcoin] not good enough to buy your decaffeinated expresso macchiato at your local virtue-signaling coffee chain. Plus he has some humor.

His books are also quite funny, particularly Antifragile .

Was Antifragile supposed to be funny? I thought Taleb just came off as stuck-up.

Re: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Author of Black Swan, on Bitcoin

#16

Post by ballenarosada »

conanbatt wrote: post #5
the_gastropod wrote: post #2

> But it is the first organic currency I'm guessing Taleb hasn't heard of Cowry shells [1]... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowry#Human_use

Im pretty sure he means there is a central design with a distributed behavior on monetary policy. That is actually a very interesting thing as an economist. I would have loved to see Hayek and bitcoin in the same era..

Cowry shells are also at least as organic as Bitcoin in this sense.

Re: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Author of Black Swan, on Bitcoin

#17

Post by tantalor »

coffeeacc wrote: post #11
ABCLAW wrote: post #8

I always feel bad when I read some of Taleb's work and come away empty. The guy is clearly smart, but I feel like he skips too many steps in his mental algebra and then misses his own mistakes altogether too often. >This gives us, the crowd, an insurance policy against an Orwellian future. Here's a great example. Does it really, Nassim?

Is the preceding sentence not useful? > But its mere existence is an insurance policy that will remind governments that the last object establishment could control, namely, the currency, is no longer their monopoly.

Bitcoin is no more a currency than gold.

Re: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Author of Black Swan, on Bitcoin

#18

Post by yasp »

fra wrote: post #12

Sadly, NNT gets a key detail wrong: Bitcoin isn't controlled by its users, it's controlled by the miners.

And yet ultimately the users can move to a fork if they are unhappy. To wit: Bitcoin Cash, which is the true bitcoin. (With Bitcoin Cash, Nassim's coffeeshop transaction would indeed be possible, and without needing to wait for 10+ minutes, contrary to popular belief.)

Re: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Author of Black Swan, on Bitcoin

#19

Post by Changu »

I was hoping to read his thoughts on Bitcoins market cap of about 200 Billion Dollar.

I have the theory, that the value of a cryptocurrency is equal to the sum of transaction fees people will spend in the future, discounted for inflation.

Currently Bitcoin users pay about $5m per day on transaction fees. That is $1.82B per year. At this rate, it would take 109 years to reach those $200B.

So by that logic, the market predicts a strong future for BTC. Either it will be around for very long or its usage will grow.

Personally, I am skeptical. I think there will be too much competition. It might be hard to replicate the BTC ecosystem but I don't think it is $200B hard. Especially since there will be rapid changes to the whole crypto space in the coming years (offchain transactions, alternative mining forms etc).

I expect we will end up with a currency that does not need mining at all. I think we will end up with a currency that uses signed transactions that are simply broadcasted. The receiver asks a bunch of trusted nodes "Is this a double spend?" and if they reply "no" then the payment is accepted.

That is simple, instantaneous and free. And has almost no real life downsides compared to Bitcoin.

Re: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Author of Black Swan, on Bitcoin

#20

Post by simias »

eggy wrote: post #10

I hope Bitcoin perseveres. I missed the boat on buying it when it was valued at ~$200 USD. I am more into the decentralization of currency. I don't buy the fear-mongering. And today, I am even more resolved. Bank of America rejected my father trying to deposit $250 USD cash into my account at a local branch while I was out of town. They made him go home to get his checkbook to write a check (money order was an option…

I see many people complaining about the banking system (often for a good reason) and mention cryptocurrencies as an alternative but I'm not sure I see it.

Take your anecdote for instance, what would be the equivalent in the crypto world? If you actually need to deposit fiat you'll have to use an exchange and it's basically the same problem (good luck getting an exchange to accept $250 in cash).

Of course the whole thing is that if everything switches to some cryptocurrency then everybody will be able to manage their own money directly without needing an institution. Well, in theory at least, in practice it seems as likely as expecting everybody to host their own email servers instead of relying on gmail & friends. In practice people won't want to risk losing their funds because they made a mistake, lost their hardware token or got a virus on their computer. In practice people will still want loans and insurance. So I think crypto or no crypto banks won't go away.

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