Re:Nassim Taleb says Bitcoin is an open Ponzi scheme and a f...
by Jeff_Brown on Saturday April 24, 2021 @02:06PM
(#26926972)
Whether it's a failure depends on what you were hoping it would achieve, and how long you're willing to keep watching it before making up your mind. The experiment is still going. Maybe humanity millenia from now will be snuffing out whole stars to mine Bitcoin. I'd consider that a failure, but surely some miner would consider it a success.
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Re:Nassim Taleb says Bitcoin is an open Ponzi scheme and a f...
by austincheney on Saturday April 24, 2021 @04:49PM
(#26928172)
Whether it's a failure depends upon its real value, which is next to 0. Crypto-currencies instead have a high nominal value, which is to say that they are only valued as an exchange for other currencies but otherwise have no utility. As a comparison a warehouse stocked with purchased tangible goods have a real value that can be exchanged for other goods regardless of inflation or currency activity. Crypto does not have that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_versus_nominal_value_(eco...
Concretely, there are only two utilities to crypto-currency: as a speculative currency investment hoping the value of a given crypto-currency increases disproportionately to a seed currency and as a means of anonymizing currency transactions. Until crypto is used for something other than day trading or illicit purchases most people simply don't care and won't ever care as its effectively worthless in a real sense.
Re:Nassim Taleb says Bitcoin is an open Ponzi scheme and a f...
by Jeff_Brown on Saturday April 24, 2021 @07:17PM
(#26929035)
It's got at least one more use case: getting around inflationary problems. It's been a huge boon in Venezuela for that reason.