Bitcoin vs. Ben Bernanke
online.wsj.com
Bitcoin vs. Ben Bernanke
1–10 of 94 posts
Re: Bitcoin vs. Ben Bernanke
#2Every article I read about Bitcoin has a picture of a metal bitcoin in it. I guess that is to make sure very few people get the point of what bitcoin is.
Re: Bitcoin vs. Ben Bernanke
#3Every article I read about Bitcoin has a picture of a metal bitcoin in it. I guess that is to make sure very few people get the point of what bitcoin is.
It's obviously a coin made out of a bit of metal.
Re: Bitcoin vs. Ben Bernanke
#4Every article I read about Bitcoin has a picture of a metal bitcoin in it. I guess that is to make sure very few people get the point of what bitcoin is.
I'm sure people that read Bitcoin articles make their judgement through the articles' content as opposed to a picture.
Re: Bitcoin vs. Ben Bernanke
#5I'll admit that the WSJ here is not as laughably bad as some quotations from their infamous op-eds had led me to believe. Maybe I was too harsh with them. They seem to do the balance thing, or more correctly here, the common sense and economics thing, at least passably well. Either way, there are some real pieces of work here, misconceptions about economics that were dispelled before, again and again. You're going to have a laugh, I promise.
Of course, let's start about some inflammatory comments about Mr. Leftwing Strawman, as per usual: did you know that hyperinflation is inevitable because ZIMBABWE!?
"I'll use a visual aid," says Mr. Andresen. "He opens his wallet and presents me with a gift: a 10-trillion-dollar bill once issued by the government of Zimbabwe."
Deflation is good, because SAVING! (Here the Calvinist roots of old-school good Flemish capitalism start showing again, with careless disregard to any theory of supply-demand equilibrium. How do I miss Schumpeter/Marx...)
"If prices are falling, he says, it does encourage people to save instead of spend, because the currency will be worth more later. It encourages people to lend instead of borrow. [and that's a good thing]" (Yeah, because as we know, in a given economy at a given time there can be more lending than borrowing. Or that saving > spending doesn't mean a contraction in the economy, by the magic of Austerian Economics. You people...)
A classic: fiat currency is a FAITH! Heathens!
"Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher calls the U.S. dollar a 'faith-based currency.'"
(Not pictured: other things based in "faith", like civil oversight over the military, the Constitution, the enforcement of laws, the concept of credit itself, the currently overpriced exchange value of gold... basically anything that isn't enforced by AK-47's, except of course those enforced by the promise of AK-47's)
"[...] what about a digital currency programmed to maintain stable prices, avoiding mischief by central bankers as well as the possibility of deflation? He says the engineer in him likes the simplicity of Bitcoin's fixed money supply."
Yeah, great engineering dude, let's disregard things like, you know, minimal acceptable performance for simplicity ;) You know, Unix was simple, but at least it didn't crash every five minutes. And the Apple II was simple, and it even had color!
Had many laughs. Would read again.
Re: Bitcoin vs. Ben Bernanke
#6Every article I read about Bitcoin has a picture of a metal bitcoin in it. I guess that is to make sure very few people get the point of what bitcoin is.
They need a picture of something. The articles are laid out such that there's a hole labelled "insert illustration-team piece, falling back to relevant stock-image" on them before they ever get written.
Suggest what else it could be for a Bitcoin article. Perhaps a visualization of a block-chain? A hash with a lot of zeroes in it? Satoshi walking away from his computer with a wheelbarrow of money?
Re: Bitcoin vs. Ben Bernanke
#7I'll admit that the WSJ here is not as laughably bad as some quotations from their infamous op-eds had led me to believe. Maybe I was too harsh with them. They seem to do the balance thing, or more correctly here, the common sense and economics thing, at least passably well. Either way, there are some real pieces of work here, misconceptions about economics that were dispelled before, again and again. You're going to…
I liked the anecdote about the delays in wire transfers for renting a house overseas whereas with Bitcoin "the whole world is your market". I'm going go out on a limb and suggest there's a bigger proportion of the world willing to accept rental deposits in dollars than Bitcoins...
Re: Bitcoin vs. Ben Bernanke
#8It's almost time for Mr. Andresen to get back to work. He shares some useful advice about Bitcoin: "I tell people it's still an experiment and only invest time or money you could afford to lose." If only investors could as easily follow that advice with fiat currencies.
Re: Bitcoin vs. Ben Bernanke
#9Isn't anybody else afraid of the implications of basically the equivalent of easily trackable cash? The government can easily mandate that each individual declare their wallets and track every single penny you spend and where you spent it.
Sounds like a nightmare scenario to me.
Re: Bitcoin vs. Ben Bernanke
#10Isn't anybody else afraid of the implications of basically the equivalent of easily trackable cash? The government can easily mandate that each individual declare their wallets and track every single penny you spend and where you spent it. Sounds like a nightmare scenario to me.
You can make it fairly difficult to tract the movement of money through different wallets. Verging on money laundering at times.