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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

#181

Post by Sammi »

ykevinator3 wrote: post #58
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…

Right but you can make a new crypto out of thin air, you can't do that with gold. There is no value in it because you can just make a new one. It's more fiat than the fiat the kids complain about.

There are uncountable Bitocoin copies, but none of them are worth anything because of Network Effects, also called Metcalfe's Law:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law

The value of Bitcoin comes from the same place as the value of any network. The amount of connections in the network is the value of the network. E.g. any social network. A Bitcoin copy has no connections in it, so it doesn't have any value.

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

#182

Post by vmurthy »

jacquesm wrote: post #169

So, now we know Nassim Taleb missed the crypto boat. As did I and many others. Because if he didn't he wouldn't have posted this. And what nonsense. "A currency must earn interest" It's perfectly possible to lend your bitcoins to someone and generate a return on it, that's what contracts are for and has nothing to do with the currency itself. Coming soon: one NT's own crypto coin.

Um , Taleb was a supporter of BTC a couple of years ago [0] and has owned BTC and is now selling it [1]. I think what he did falls in the category of "When facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

[0] https://news.bitcoin.com/black-swan-author-pulls-a-180-nassi...

[1]https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1360276917992230919

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

#183

Post by dmitriid »

emteycz wrote: post #134
dmitriid wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some coins like tezos and cardano or a similar coin will be a creative destructive force for many institutions. They allow for truly decentralized authority. Think passports without an issuing country. Think money without a central bank. These are all just words that amount to nothing but marketing. To be all that these coins need to painstakingly re-create all the institutions that make passports, money etc. possi…

I remember thinking thoroughly about stuff like this in 2009 as I was very interested in political and economical philosophy back then - and back then the core idea of Bitcoin - a token that can be sent to anyone, semi-anonymously, completely out of governmental control - would be laughed out of the room, a silly theory pondered by Austrian school economists. That is a fundamental societal concept it introduced and t…

> a token that can be sent to anyone, semi-anonymously, completely out of governmental control - would be laughed out of the room, a silly theory

You realize that this a) doesn't constitute a fundamental societal concept and that b) sending secrets outside of government control isn't even a novel idea?

> and fundamental development of the society.

There's still nothing new or fundamental introduced by cryptocurrencies, and they rely on existing concepts old as time to even function outside their bubble.

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

#184

Post by PicassoCTs »

matkoniecz wrote: post #100
throwaway4good wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the idea that money is credit / debt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_theory_of_money As for Bitcoin. Who cares if it is a bubble or a ponzi? People make money and gambling is a part of human nature. People are stuck at home and cannot go to the cinema. Investing in Bitcoin and watching Elon's twitter is an ok replacement for now.

OK I will bite. > As for Bitcoin. Who cares if it is a bubble or a ponzi? People make money and gambling is a part of human nature. People who want to use it as a currency and people preferring to avoid losing their investment in a dumb bubbles. (it is more OK if it is a dumb gambling with what someone is considering as entertainment funds, but nearly noone is doing that)

Honest, successor crypto-currencies, who work for their money will have to fight the fallout once the scheme collapses and people who lost everything demand government to regulate "rogue" currencies? Distrust will also prevent a whole generation of investors to invest again?

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

#185

Post by IAmEveryone »

jacquesm wrote: post #169

So, now we know Nassim Taleb missed the crypto boat. As did I and many others. Because if he didn't he wouldn't have posted this. And what nonsense. "A currency must earn interest" It's perfectly possible to lend your bitcoins to someone and generate a return on it, that's what contracts are for and has nothing to do with the currency itself. Coming soon: one NT's own crypto coin.

I’ve accidentally made a fortune on Bitcoin when, for a while, I had set up a small e-commerce payment flow to accept BC and forgot about it.

I noticed when it broke because transaction fees at some point escalated to €50 or so. Looked up the address and there had been a few dozens transactions on it over the years, paying €100 with 20 BC or something like it. The total was a little over 900 BC. I found the private key in an email I had sent to myself.

So trust me when I write, from a beach on a Corona-free island in the Atlantic: Taleb is right. BC sucks. The only thing worse than BC are the greedy halfwits promoting it.

As an experiment in economics, Bitcoin is pure genius. The inventor quite obviously deserves a Nobel. Due to two flaws (its inability to seamlessly scale and its environmental impact), and due to its community which specifically failed to fix those issues and just generally failed in life, Bitcoin ended up as the red-hot carcass of a spent star it currently is.

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

#186

Post by ckastner »

lindy2021 wrote: post #77
diego_moita wrote: post #66

> Nassim Taleb called him an “imbecile”. This is why I disgust this Taleb guy: he usually has good insights but defends them with the worst arguments. Or no arguments at all. I felt his "Black Swan" book is a very good idea stretched into hundreds of pages of arrogance and condescendence.

“To figure out if someone is an idiot, call him an idiot and check if he gets upset.” It’s intentional: https://mobile.twitter.com/nntaleb/status/129716309534169907...

I don't recall Taleb calling others idiots much in his book.

I do recall Taleb admiring himself, though. A lot.

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

#187

Post by GlennS »

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…

> The company can issue shares suppressing the price.

> The company can do stock buybacks, increasing the price.

It's not obvious that these should be true.

There are more or less shares around, so we have a change in supply, but the company also has more or less money, which should counteract that.

Likely to vary depending on whether or not people believe the company can usefully spend and grow that money.

(Not sure what the actual evidence says on this.)

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

#188

Post by serial_dev »

matkoniecz wrote: post #100
throwaway4good wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the idea that money is credit / debt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_theory_of_money As for Bitcoin. Who cares if it is a bubble or a ponzi? People make money and gambling is a part of human nature. People are stuck at home and cannot go to the cinema. Investing in Bitcoin and watching Elon's twitter is an ok replacement for now.

OK I will bite. > As for Bitcoin. Who cares if it is a bubble or a ponzi? People make money and gambling is a part of human nature. People who want to use it as a currency and people preferring to avoid losing their investment in a dumb bubbles. (it is more OK if it is a dumb gambling with what someone is considering as entertainment funds, but nearly noone is doing that)

I often hear: investment is good, gambling is dumb, speculation is risky.

In my opinion, in most people's dictionary, these things describe the same things and when we use these words, there is no good, measurable way to classify them, we just act on our instincts, yet when we use words like investment, we feel safe and clever.

Good point about the currency part, I don't think BTC is going to be a good currency, it's expensive, slow, traceable, public.

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

#189

Post by ABeeSea »

tim333 wrote: post #179
throwaway4good wrote: post #84

The full tweet is actually easier to read: https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1382446478539550727 WHAT WE WANT CRYPTO & CURRENCY FOR: 1) Currency w/o a government 2) Stable/reliable for contracts 3) Inflation indexed store of value -- basket of items representative for me. 4) Rapid transactions Can we do it? #BTC failed to be currency, open-Ponzi speculative game. A currency must earn interest: currencies weren't bor…

Economically it's much more like gold than a ponzi scheme: Gold: Asset that goes up and down in price according to demand. No central body controlling it. Some utility as jewelry though we could get by without that. Massive dollar and environmental cost from mining the stuff. Ponzi scheme: Fraud where insiders take money from investors and use it to pay other investors. Collapses and the fraudsters run off or go to j…

It’s a decentralized Ponzi scheme. It’s why Bitcoin owners are so aggressive in convincing others to buy Bitcoin.

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

#190

Post by [deleted] »

ABeeSea wrote: post #189
tim333 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economically it's much more like gold than a ponzi scheme: Gold: Asset that goes up and down in price according to demand. No central body controlling it. Some utility as jewelry though we could get by without that. Massive dollar and environmental cost from mining the stuff. Ponzi scheme: Fraud where insiders take money from investors and use it to pay other investors. Collapses and the fraudsters run off or go to j…

It’s a decentralized Ponzi scheme. It’s why Bitcoin owners are so aggressive in convincing others to buy Bitcoin.

[deleted]
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