Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Author of Black Swan, on Bitcoin • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by simias » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 6:57 PM UTC

kbutler wrote: post #28

simias wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

There are already more than 2000 bitcoin ATMs https://coinatmradar.com/

Right but as far as I can tell there's nothing "crypto" about that, it's still a privately owned ATM which offers financial services, like every ATM does. You still need some private entity to provide the service, like the parent wants his bank to provide a service to transfer cash to his account.

One big difference with crypto is that if you actually own your coins on an address you control then you could have several third party services competing instead of having your money "stuck" in a bank, but again I don't expect most people to do that.

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

#82

Post by jstandard » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 6:59 PM UTC

lucozade wrote: post #71

zeesh wrote: post #56

Don’t you all think insider trading will be significantly easier with crypto? Why is there little talk about this?

Not sure why insider trading would be a thing. What information would affect the price? Most aren't based on anything substantive. Front running and pump & dump are pretty easy currently. That's not a fundamental thing though. More of a fact that the cryptocurrency environments, especially exchanges, tend to be exceptionally opaque. Somewhat ironically.

Employees at major exchanges can trade on insider information about whether a major exchange will support a new coin. Employees at token-funded companies can insider trade on that same information.

There's already some evidence these schemes are happening at major exchanges. Coinbase's launches of Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash come to mind.

https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/coinbase-insider-trading-lite...

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

#83

Post by pjkundert » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 7:01 PM UTC

jgh wrote: post #79

pjkundert wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While claiming the principles of Liberty for yourself (deciding what kind of "utopia" you want to be part of), would you deny that choice to others? This is perhaps what separates libertarians from liberals, conservatives, socialists, etc.: we simply do not deny others the liberty we claim for ourselves. If a monetary system that cannot be debased/controlled by government is available, does that not allow you to elec…

> This is perhaps what separates libertarians from liberals, conservatives, socialists, etc.: we simply do not deny others the liberty we claim for ourselves. Oh cut the self-aggrandizing horse-shit. Libertarianism is 100% about denying others liberty while taking as much as you can for yourself. > If a monetary system that cannot be debased/controlled by government is available, does that not allow you to elect to c…

I think we probably agree on most things re: utopia, cryptocurrencies vs. gov't control.

I'm not sure about your claim that valuing liberty for myself and others is about "taking as much as you can for yourself", though...

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

#84

Post by 16th_hop » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

sergiosgc wrote: post #32

yasp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Read this as a comment from a cryptocurrency lurker. > Bitcoin Cash, which is the true bitcoin. I see this statement repeated often, to the point of sounding like a strategy of "if you repeat a lie enough, people will believe it". Isn't Bitcoin Cash the minority result of a Bitcoin fork? Isn't the majority result by definition the true Bitcoin?

Bitcoin cash is much closer to the original implementation by Satoshi Nakamoto. It's simply a much smaller, and IMO, cleaner codebase that just increased one parameter to achieve scaling.

Bitcoin core (what we call BTC) has many more lines of non-Satoshi code that was added to facilitate off-chain scaling.

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

#85

Post by htormey » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 7:05 PM UTC

rwmj wrote: post #21

htormey wrote: post #13

"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 w…

Really though? Unless you're a millionaire you can store gold yourself - in a cheap bank deposit box or (if you're daring) even at home.

True, but if you are going to be that paranoid how easy is it for you to take your gold across the border?

“According to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), it is legal to travel with any amount of cash or other monetary instruments in and out of the United States. However, you must declare your cash to customs if the amount exceeds $10,000 or its foreign equivalent.”

http://traveltips.usatoday.com/travel-airline-cash-9937.html

Traveling with more than 10k of gold or cash is much more noticeable than 10k plus of BTC, aka a piece of paper Wirh some words scribbled on it.

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

#86

Post by _e » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 7:06 PM UTC

soneca wrote: post #45

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?

I think he just isn't a very good communicator (nor cares to be one). He was recently a guest at the excellent podcast Econtalk and you really needed to know his ideas from other sources to properly understand what he was talking about. I don't think is arrogance or anything, it is just a skill that he doesn't have naturally and also doesn't care enough to practice and improve. I think his ideas are strong enough to…

Nassim Taleb wrote in one of his books that he intentionally articulates his beliefs in a somewhat difficult to understand fashion otherwise people wouldn't take him seriously.

Malcolm Gladwell and Daniel Kahneman (author of Thinking, Fast and Slow) both credit Nassim Taleb for a lot of inspiration in their books.

Someone mentioned to me that Benoit Mandelbrot (author of (Mis)behavior of Markets) inspired Nassim Taleb for a lot of his thoughts.

So there... read Mandelbrot, Gladwell and Kahneman to understand Nassim Taleb.

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

#87

Post by runeks » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 7:08 PM UTC

jgh wrote: post #44

ordinaryradical wrote: post #9

This utopian streak running through the crypto community is what convinces me most that it’s going to be a heartbreaker. > But Hayek used the notion of distributed knowledge. Well, it looks like we do not even need that thing called knowledge for things to work well. Nor do we need individual rationality. All we need is structure. Irrational exuberance is a good thing! And while these ideologues are busy demonizing t…

I honestly hope the utopian dream is smashed in the cryptocurrency community. It's not the kind of "utopia" I want to be a part of. I like the technical ideas behind cryptocurrency, but the terrible political views are off-putting.

> I like the technical ideas behind cryptocurrency, but the terrible political views are off-putting.

Which political views? I read the article and only saw a view on money, not politics.

What’s being criticized is the very idea that money should involve politics.

The argument is that we should be as free to choose which kind of money we use as we are to choose which kind of car we use. There should be no law giving competitive advantage — in the form of legal tender law, and the absence of choosing which numeraire to use as the basis for calculating capital gains tax — to currencies issued by central banks with whom the government has an account.

It’s entirely possible to deliver an argument for the separation of government and money without criticizing either in and of itself. It’s very much like arguing for the separation of church and state without saying anything negative about either of the two in isolation.

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

#88

Post by _e » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 7:08 PM UTC

ABCLAW wrote: post #48

dxbydt wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I always feel bad when I read some of Taleb's work and come away empty Took the words right out of my mouth. His recent thoughts/tweets on Deep Learning were even more confusing.

Taleb is a deeply intuitive, sharp individual - this is his weakness. Like all the smart kids in school who rushed through math problems and wrote out the final answer rather than all the work to get there, he often skips key steps in his chain of reasoning. Since he skips them, he doesn't notice when those key steps are demonstrably wrong. I feel he's gotten worse in this respect over time.

...or maybe he is just tired of trying to get people to understand.

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

#89

Post by deevolution » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 7:13 PM UTC

Two things are constant in this world: tax and death.

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

#90

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 7:13 PM UTC

Changu wrote: post #55

matthewbauer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting thoughts but I think "the sum of transaction fees people will spend in the future" is better as a value for mining (after rewards go to 0). "Holders" really aren't wanting anything to do with transactions. My Bitcoin valuation: Bitcoin is worth as much as it costs to move to another blockchain. That's the "first-mover advantage" basically and I'm afraid it's much closer to $200 million than $200 billion.

That seems to imply that the BTC market cap is the result of speculation. Of people holding BTC because they think some greater fool will buy them later. Personally I believe in efficient markets. I think the $200B is the best guess the market came up for the intrinsic value of BTC. Independent of speculation. My feeling is similar to yours though. That BTCs value is closer to $200m then to $200B.

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