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Nassim Taleb: Bitcoin failed as a currency and became a speculative ponzi scheme

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Re: Nassim Taleb: Bitcoin failed as a currency and became a speculative ponzi scheme

#151

Post by anonytrary »

klyrs wrote: post #40
narrator wrote: post #24

Stocks: * You buy them because they increase earnings and eventually produce dividends at a very high yield to your initial investment. * The company can issue shares suppressing the price. * The company can do stock buybacks, increasing the price. * Brokers can naked short, suppressing the price. Fiat currency * You need it to pay taxes and debts. * Endless Printing. Gold * Bought because of limited supply. * Supply…

You missed the part about fiat where you can carry it in your pocket and exchange it for goods nearly instantaneously, which isn't true of the other three.

You can only transfer what's in your pocket instantaneously when the recipient is right next to you. The real value of cash is that it is able to be nearly anonymous. Venmo and other services break this anonymity. The only thing cash has on crypto is stronger anonymity.

Re: Nassim Taleb: Bitcoin failed as a currency and became a speculative ponzi scheme

#152

Post by isoprophlex »

127 wrote: post #150

Bitcoin is new technology. Internet took 42 years from 1967 to 2009 to get from zero to Bitcoin. How long for Bitcoin to get zero to Arguably, the technology is much more complex and slow moving because it has to store value instead of just random bits.

> Arguably, the technology is much more complex and slow moving because it has to store value instead of just random bits.

What does this even mean? Writing ones is faster than writing random integers?

Re: Nassim Taleb: Bitcoin failed as a currency and became a speculative ponzi scheme

#153

Post by another_sock »

arcticbull wrote: post #99
christiansakai wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course! How else we gonna get rich?

Well you could build a business. That's a postive-sum investment. I hear there's even a seed stage startup accelerator that can help fund you. Something about combinators, I don't know.

It's not positive-sum, you are taking away capital from a competitor or exploiting somebody down the line.

Re: Nassim Taleb: Bitcoin failed as a currency and became a speculative ponzi scheme

#154

Post by kolinko »

roenxi wrote: post #93
throw0101a wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps there is an argument to Bitcoin being a kind of "digital gold" even if it is all but useless as a currency. Gold is less useful than most people think: > In a 2012 paper entitled "The Golden Dilemma",[1] Claude Erb and Campbell Harvey examined some common assumptions about gold. First they looked at gold as an inflation hedge, analyzing gold returns from 1975 (the year the U.S. came off of the gold standard…

> I don't think most people would accept a shiny rock as anything special. Gold isn't being treated all that differently to the other period 6 or 11 elements. Although it does sometimes get randomly good tax treatment due to its history which keeps it entrenched as the first choice for a monetary metal. But fundamentally it is being sold at cost to mine + a margin, same as everything else. My memory is anything with…

Alternative is that the price would drop far below $50k, mines would shut down and people would just trade gold that is already available on the market.

Just because something is expensive to produce doesn’t mean that it’s worth that much.

Re: Nassim Taleb: Bitcoin failed as a currency and became a speculative ponzi scheme

#155

Post by McScroogy »

matkoniecz wrote: post #117
McScroogy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you point me to an alternative investment that can not lose its value, please?

There is not such thing. Every single thing can lose its value. In addition: Real estate can be bombed in a war or confiscated[0] and is not mobile for obvious reasons[1]. Gold can be stolen, confiscated - and it happened already more than once. Companies can go bankrupt. Items - either productive like machinery or various stores of value like art are not immune. Cash/bank accounts - well, money printing will get you…

I thought as much. I suppose some things are riskier than others, but at the moment I really don't know which ones.

Re: Nassim Taleb: Bitcoin failed as a currency and became a speculative ponzi scheme

#156

Post by throwaway4good »

rualca wrote: post #148
throwaway4good wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a number of Bitcoin variations out there (Bitcoin Cash and BSV) which are tuned in manner that gives faster and cheaper transactions. None of them seem to have caught the eye of investors. My interpretation is that investors like their ponzi and don't really care about whether the technology is useful. I could try and scold them but I don't think it works, therefore I choose just to accept them as they are…

> None of them seem to have caught the eye of investors. That's the problem with this doublespeak, where people intentionally fool themselves into cognitive dissonance. The whole point of currency is not investment. It's the exact opposite of investment. Currency is intended to have stable value over time, because it's whole point is to serve as a unit of account, store value, and serve as a medium to exchange value…

Not to go into too much detail. But in a debt based system you have bonds and currency. A bond has the risk of not being repaid, speculators speculate in the likelihood of that and their individual decisions give a market price for that bond. Likewise bond may have repayment price-indexed and speculators then speculate indirectly in the currency's price stability.

Point is that even with stable prices, there is plenty of room for speculators.

Re: Nassim Taleb: Bitcoin failed as a currency and became a speculative ponzi scheme

#157

Post by toyg »

ChainOfFools wrote: post #68
SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #22

That "article" doesn't add anything beyond the fact that "this guy wrote a tweet and here's what it said". Why is such low quality filler getting traction on HN? Is it because anti-crypto posts push people's buttons? Every day there is something like this posted, and like clockwork the comments are full of the same arguments both on the pro and anti crypto sides. Am I an idiot for expecting better from HN?

there is a wonderful irony to Taleb saying this because his ideas, especially the concept of having 'skin in the game,' have been extremely popular among the most ideologically orthodox of the Bitcoin crowd. This remark smarts only slightly less than if someone like Satoshi or Nick Szabo came out and called Bitcoin a failure, or at least admitted it was fated to become a naturally occurring Ponzi all along. unfortuna…

Or he needs the price of Bitcoin to dip a bit so he can invest more.

I’m sold on Bitcoin as “digital gold”, but for highly-visible entities it’s way too easy to game without repercussions. E.g. Musk likely has a bunch of patsies ready to buy and sell before or after one of his outbursts. You do that with actual commodities or companies, you go to jail; you do it with bitcoin, and people just shrug, “oh well, anyone in that market knows it’s wild”.

Re: Nassim Taleb: Bitcoin failed as a currency and became a speculative ponzi scheme

#158

Post by faustlast »

strogonoff wrote: post #149
narrator wrote: post #24

Stocks: * You buy them because they increase earnings and eventually produce dividends at a very high yield to your initial investment. * The company can issue shares suppressing the price. * The company can do stock buybacks, increasing the price. * Brokers can naked short, suppressing the price. Fiat currency * You need it to pay taxes and debts. * Endless Printing. Gold * Bought because of limited supply. * Supply…

> Stocks: you buy them because they increase earnings and eventually produce dividends at a very high yield to your initial investment. No, you buy them because you want to support good, non-nefarious companies with sound business models. (I know that’s idealistic, but focusing purely on speculative uses of stocks is another extreme and paints a very incomplete picture.)

> No, you buy them because you want to support good, non-nefarious companies with sound business models.

No, you really are buying the company stock because of current and future profit prospects. None of this supporting thing... a shareholder is just the owner of the share, nothing more.

Re: Nassim Taleb: Bitcoin failed as a currency and became a speculative ponzi scheme

#159

Post by chii »

petre wrote: post #120
dmichulke wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold maybe. But gold is not a currency either, so hmmm. In all earnest, I wonder when the mainstream will realize that in a digital world the store of value and a currency can be different because they are easily interchangeable. Just like bonds or gold for long term investment (store of value) and dollar (currency).

Good luck transporting and securing larger quantities of gold and also exchanging it for money. One basically has to declare any quantity in excess of six ounces / 170 grams of gold because it exceeds 10k US dollars / euros.

what's wrong with declaring? It's not like it'd be taken from you...unless you illegitimately obtained it.

Re: Nassim Taleb: Bitcoin failed as a currency and became a speculative ponzi scheme

#160

Post by throwaway4good »

grey-area wrote: post #142
throwaway4good wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a number of Bitcoin variations out there (Bitcoin Cash and BSV) which are tuned in manner that gives faster and cheaper transactions. None of them seem to have caught the eye of investors. My interpretation is that investors like their ponzi and don't really care about whether the technology is useful. I could try and scold them but I don't think it works, therefore I choose just to accept them as they are…

You are describing speculation, not investment, and yes there is a difference, though people often lose sight of that during bubbles when the price is all that matters.

Speculator, investor ... I don't want to pass judgement. I listen what ARK Invest says, I think they are smart people, but I also think they overshoot.
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