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Comment by twblalock | Hacker News Reader

You're attacking the author rather than the argument. What aspect of this particular article do you have a problem with?

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There is plenty of informed criticism of BitCoin out there. I'm saying that you shouldn't bother reading it from this person.

I might even agree with him, but I don't read articles by trolls as a matter of personal policy.

Other HN users might not know what he has written in the past, so I thought it was a good idea to inform them.

This is actually one of the best authors people can read from. Regarding your second link, Krugman has already admitted his prediction did not come to pass.

On a number of issues Krugman has proven a good deal more accurate than other economists, such as: -Whether or not Federal Reserve would cause inflation -Whether the stimulus in 2008 would help the economy -Whether or not Obamacare would work and more on his near daily blogging/tweeting.

Sure he's definitely made mistakes, but who hasn't, and at least he has owned up to them.

Generally agreed. Re: the markets never recovering post-Trump, he retracted that prediction shortly after making it, and admitted it was something he said in the heat of the moment, without properly thinking things through: https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/the-long-haul

I follow a podcast dedicated to his fallacies (contrakrugman). He may be an expert on some issues, but he fails in many others, some miserably. He was clueless about Bitcoin years ago perhaps he learnt some now but his credibility on the issue is rather low.

fallacies? Hardly, that is like saying I listen to Rush Limbaugh to disprove the fallacies of Rachel Maddow.

One of the hosts of that podcast is an evolution denier. Not someone I’d expect to get valuable insight from

Care to provide a reference? Also I do not think it matters. At least one of them is a prominent economist.

The thing is with modern journalism, anyone can publish anything, how do you know it's worth digesting? It's impossible for you to fact check everything in an article, nor is it possible for you know the future. Therefore trust is essential to reading and accepting an idea.

There's no guarantee of quality other than the author's credential and history. If an author repeatedly makes incorrect and outlandish claim, why would you give his future articles the benefit of the doubt?

> There's no guarantee of quality other than the author's credential and history.

Actually, a publication like the New York Times purports to have a strict editorial process. If Krugman were to write an op/ed piece claiming Martians understand economics better than Jovians but not as well as Venusians, the NYT probably wouldn't publish it.

So in addition to "credential" and "history" you can add "editorial vetting" or something worded similarly.

Right so then it's the NYT's credential that's on the line. The point is, questioning an author's history or the author's editorial company's history is completely within reason.

Well for me the title. The premise of the article appears to be "author unconvinced bitcoin is stable store of value". The title appears to be nothing but click bait.

Journalists and columnists don't always have control or final say about the printed titles of their work.

The thing is with modern journalism, anyone can publish anything, how do you know it's worth digesting? There's no guarantee of quality other than the author's credential and history. If an author repeatedly makes incorrect and outlandish claim, why would you give his future articles the benefit of the doubt?

Well, Krugman has been very wrong about very important issues, several times. To the point that questioning his bias and ulterior motives is mandatory.

https://www.quora.com/What-things-has-Paul-Krugman-been-very...

There's nothing in his article. No content. He basically quotes a couple other articles, a personal unsubstantiated anecdote, a "let's talk", and the headline is "Bitcoin is evil".

Article is noise.

He fails to understand the fact that it's not necessarily Bitcoin _per-se_ that will bring change to world economy and the banking structure; it's the underlying technology that has value and perhaps even for Bitcoin itself it's where the store of value lies.

And what exactly is the value proposition of the underlying technology?

Getting closer to frictionless payments.

Getting access to a number of services that we currently use banks for - without using banks.

Note: my reply is about blockchains, not about bitcoin.

I've more or less given up on bitcoin and think other crypto tokens have a far better chance in the long run.

> Getting closer to frictionless payments.

Pardon my ignorance. I see this mentioned a lot. What do you mean by frictionless payments?

> Getting access to a number of services that we currently use banks for - without using banks

What services in particular? And what's preferable about using blockchain technology for these services?

> What do you mean by frictionless payments?

I mean in the same way as email is frictionless compared to mail: you can send all day, it arrives halfway around the globe in seconds, fees are significantly lower.

> What services in particular?

For most people? Money transfer.

> And what's preferable about using blockchain technology for these services?

AFAIK because it is a way to make this happen without having to trust a number of institutions that are rich because of the current setup and might have a huge conflict of interest.

Again: IMO this is about the technology, not about Bitcoin.

The short answer; decentralized, trustless consensus. But I don't think Bitcoin's blockchain will be the winning platform in the future.

Bitcoin does not exist outside of modern technology. It’s very existence relies on the internet. But the internet isn’t some nebulous thing that exists in a void outside of human economy. So there’s a fundamental cost in a currency other than bitcoin that must be paid in that other currency before the bitcoin transaction may take place. In the language of Econ, Bitcoins transaction costs include interacting with another (more broad) currency. The value of bitcoin then will, must always be dependent upon another currency. Hardly seems the Libertatian panacea that it’s made out to be.

As for Krugman and predictions, one never makes a prediction without a hearty dose of humility. Predictions are the playthings of fools. Believe me, he knows that. But predictions still produce clicks and views.

Edit-

One might liken bitcoins value through Greshams law (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law ).

I got into btc in 2013 because I could plug a box into a wall and in generated value that I could then use to make purchases. There are people that exist entirely in the crypto economy and did not put cash in or out. BTC is a drop in the bucket compared to other securities in the world, but your premise of that it has to exist on other currencies isn't true in my view.

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