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Taleb: Bitcoin, Currencies, and Bubbles

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Re: Taleb: Bitcoin, Currencies, and Bubbles

#41

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

prepend wrote: post #33
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #10

You should look into Ethereum 2.0. And probably buy some.

It’s such strange advice to buy a currency early. Just the utterance of such a thing shows how these aren’t good currencies. Imaging how stupid someone would be to generally give advice to “buy some Euro” or “buy some Dollar.”

Buy some dollar would have been awesome advice after Bretton Woods and pretty much up until now. Now we will have a new world currency. The dollar had a good run but it has pumped as far as it can go now on money printing.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL

https://marketcap.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/WRCurren...

We are in the buildup period for the next currency. What is it we can't be sure, but a world cryptocurrency seems likely.

Re: Taleb: Bitcoin, Currencies, and Bubbles

#42

Post by tsimionescu »

sadness3 wrote: post #26
sadness3 wrote: post #22

There seems to be a real under-appreciation by the Hacker News crowd of how profound the use case of cryptocurrencies as simple money is. Perhaps because we have a sample bias towards people who are served adequately by traditional financial infrastructure, and people who are disproportionately preoccupied with blockchain as a potential component of software systems. As an example, most kids in starting school today…

Here's a contemporary example: We can, right now, hold USD equivalents in kava.io . It operates on a system which is analogous to fractional reserve banking, except with no middlemen, so your effective interest rate is better by an order of magnitude. It's relatively simple to use. Giving a bank your trust a and a big cut of your returns is going to be a hard sell when that's your normal as a kid.

Sure, you say that now. Let's see what will happen to kava.io during the next financial crisis, or simply 20 years from now.

Banking is by no means a simple or safe operation.

Re: Taleb: Bitcoin, Currencies, and Bubbles

#43

Post by lowkey »

tsimionescu wrote: post #40
sadness3 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also about the systems it's replacing, which all the careful studies I've seen have rated as even less efficient. It also doesn't take into account future improvements in energy efficiency, which in the case of Ethereum are near and profound.

Bitcoin and all proof of work systems can barely replace the transaction processing of a small bank, nevermind all of the other operations, while consuming more energy than many entire countries.

El Salvador is the example that proves you wrong. They are using Lightning Network on top of Bitcoin to scale to enormous transaction volume - enough to run an entire country with plenty of room to spare.

Proof of work pays for network security, not Tx volume - the most secure super-computer ever invented.

Transaction processing is a free side-benefit.

With Lightning, TX Processing scales to meet any arbitrary needs.

Re: Taleb: Bitcoin, Currencies, and Bubbles

#44

Post by QuadrupleA »

errantmind wrote: post #5
QuadrupleA wrote: post #2

Heartened to see Taleb taking a skeptical stance on Bitcoin and crypto - last time I looked into it he was a proponent due to its decentralization and existence outside the monoculture of mainstream finance. The sooner we can move past these staggeringly inefficient environment-destroying pump-and-dump schemes the better off we'll all be.

Something can be overvalued without being worthless. Also, the environment argument is inconclusive. Using a lot of power isn't the problem, it is how the power was generated and whether or not it was excess capacity

Even if the electricity were 100% generated by wind farms and solar panels, what a colossal waste of it - rather than helping humanity it goes to feed racks of millions of red hot machines to solve useless hash puzzles all day.

It's like feeding vast amounts of wood into an ever growing fleet of steam engines that just travel in circles all day, and once every 10 minutes one of the trains throws off a piece of gravel or a paint chip that humanity has decided has incredible value due to how hard it was to obtain.

Re: Taleb: Bitcoin, Currencies, and Bubbles

#45

Post by tsimionescu »

sadness3 wrote: post #22

There seems to be a real under-appreciation by the Hacker News crowd of how profound the use case of cryptocurrencies as simple money is. Perhaps because we have a sample bias towards people who are served adequately by traditional financial infrastructure, and people who are disproportionately preoccupied with blockchain as a potential component of software systems. As an example, most kids in starting school today…

No one is using crypto out of choice for payments. The gigantic transaction fees alone would deter any sane person from using something like bitcoin, and other coins are even less reputable.

The only reasons to use crypto are either for speculation, or for trade where traditional networks can't be used - illegal activities, transfer to/from certain countries.

Re: Taleb: Bitcoin, Currencies, and Bubbles

#46

Post by meowface »

Phaedor wrote: post #6
VMG wrote: post #4

Taleb has absolutely destroyed his credibility by speaking at the "Coingeek" conference and sharing a stage with "Craig Wright" https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Taleb%27ed%2...

And so what? I haven't watched his talk, but by the summary of it it seems like his talk was consistent with his previous statements. Did Snowden destroy his credibility when he "shared the stage" with the scammer in this video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv3UC4lz3oQ It seems to me that the only thing that matters in most of the "crypto community" is that you are contributing to the price going up. When Musk too…

Thinking cryptocurrencies are a scam and then sharing a stage with Craig Wright at his own project's conference (after being warned by many people ahead of time) is a little like thinking Trumpism is a scam and then speaking at a QAnon conference.

It's just a completely nonsensical and baffling thing to do. As someone who generally likes Taleb, it made absolutely no sense to me. Craig Wright is essentially the most archetypal and most egregious cryptocurrency scammer in history, to the point of absurdity, and basically leads a Q-like cult full of delusional followers.

It's not about being negative towards cryptocurrencies. It's the completely contradictory behavior.

Re: Taleb: Bitcoin, Currencies, and Bubbles

#47

Post by verall »

lowkey wrote: post #39
esens wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rest of your comment makes sense, but this sentence is disconnected from reality: "People El Salvador didn't get the $1200 checks that US citizens got from printing more USD, even though they both use USD in theory." Are you seriously saying that 5% inflation a year, maybe a bit more worse case, is bad compared to Bitcoin just lost 40% of its value in the last 2 months? Oh no, better not use USD then and switch t…

As most Bitcoin advocates would say Zoom Out. Yes Bitcoin looks volatile if you look at the past 2-3 months. However if you zoom out to 1 year Bitcoin is still up almost 300% y/y. Zoom out 2-3 years and the numbers look even better. As for USD, depending on what you want to buy inflation is 3-30% y/y - think asset price inflation. Zoom out further and USD looks even less attractive as a store of value. In 1933 $20usd…

The point of a fiat is that it slowly loses value, so wealth holders can't get bigger and bigger just by holding the fiat, they are forced to invest to break even.

Bitcoin is not "fixing" anything here, a currency that deflates forever is a dumb idea.

Re: Taleb: Bitcoin, Currencies, and Bubbles

#48

Post by lowkey »

haskellandchill wrote: post #38
xiphias2 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. When I'm sending money to Colombia and WorldRemit app takes 10% of my money, it means 10% less food to cook for my girlfriend and her family. She can't get a job since the pandemic, and I have other friends in Colombia with the same problem, they are desperate... some times I just send $40, and they say that it saves their life, it's so bad there right now.

Money is a just a row in an SQL table. We can update it for less than a cent. Everything else is a social problem, Bitcoin does nothing to help here. Exchanges over Bitcoin are no better or worse in principle than existing financial infrastructure. The reason for high fees are the risk in sending the money across borders. Due to fraud there are risks. Bitcoin does nothing to fix this and seems to even enable more sca…

> Exchanges over Bitcoin are no better or worse in principle than existing financial infrastructure.

In principal maybe not but in reality, Bitcoin for international exchanges is a game-changer especially if you can keep the money in Bitcoin and spend it as the recipient.

Fees on remittances to El Salvador were up to 50% in some cases. With Bitcoin they are effectively zero.

Bitcoin fixes this.

Re: Taleb: Bitcoin, Currencies, and Bubbles

#49

Post by mypastself »

prepend wrote: post #33
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #10

You should look into Ethereum 2.0. And probably buy some.

It’s such strange advice to buy a currency early. Just the utterance of such a thing shows how these aren’t good currencies. Imaging how stupid someone would be to generally give advice to “buy some Euro” or “buy some Dollar.”

In Ethereum, the currency’s role is of secondary importance. Instead, it’s intended to primarily be in the service of the “world computer”. You’d acquire Ether for its value as an asset rather than a currency.*

But even so, would you say it’s stupid to advise a Turk to buy dollars? These past few years, many of them have been exchanging lira for dollars as protection against inflation.

*In practice, the network is struggling to find a true application, and Ether’s utility as a currency is low.

Re: Taleb: Bitcoin, Currencies, and Bubbles

#50

Post by lowkey »

haskellandchill wrote: post #38
xiphias2 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. When I'm sending money to Colombia and WorldRemit app takes 10% of my money, it means 10% less food to cook for my girlfriend and her family. She can't get a job since the pandemic, and I have other friends in Colombia with the same problem, they are desperate... some times I just send $40, and they say that it saves their life, it's so bad there right now.

Money is a just a row in an SQL table. We can update it for less than a cent. Everything else is a social problem, Bitcoin does nothing to help here. Exchanges over Bitcoin are no better or worse in principle than existing financial infrastructure. The reason for high fees are the risk in sending the money across borders. Due to fraud there are risks. Bitcoin does nothing to fix this and seems to even enable more sca…

> The reason for high fees are the risk in sending the money across borders. Due to fraud there are risks. Bitcoin does nothing to fix this and seems to even enable more scams.

Bitcoin eliminates counter party risk and international transfer risk. Lightning eliminates cost, latency and transaction volume limits. In every way that matters, Bitcoin via Lightning eliminates high fees and addresses all your concerns.

As for the idea that Bitcoin enables more scams, please provide citations. I am not aware of any scams introduced by Bitcoin or Lightning.

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