Gates, Buffett: Bet Against Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency
newsweek.com
newsweek.com
As an "Asset Class" - which this article makes principle - cryptocurrency is absolute insanity.
But having a trustless, semi-distributed, potentially anonymous, and global currency that we can send to anybody in the world via the internet in a few seconds - or even via an offline mesh network - is an incredible, exciting innovation.
And the sad thing is that point is of course not lost on Gates who - buried far under the lead - "touted its ability to push out third-party intermediaries, such as banks, while also keeping a secure and permanent record of transactions between two parties."
The Star Trek replicator is also an incredible, exciting innovation. It is also as real as a cryptocurrency that does what you describe.
wait.. gold is a productive asset now? This is contrary to economics literature.
Gold and bitcoin are very similar. They don't produce anything. Golds history is longer so is safer, but nonetheless, it's just something we've all agreed to use as a store of value.
I would be very interested in what Buffett thinks gold produces as it sits there. He's a smart guy, so I'm going to assume he misspoke.
http://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-compares-stock...
> "The asset itself is creating nothing," said Buffett, comparing bitcoin to "productive" assets such as gold or a farm.
That actually wasn't the quote, the remark about gold and farm was made by the article's author.
Edit: here[1] is the actual quote and video
"When you buy non-productive assets all you're counting is whether the next person is going to pay you more because they're even more excited about another next person coming along. But the asset itself is creating nothing. One of the interesting things for example is gold ... and it doesn't produce anything"
He compared Bitcoin to Gold directly as they are both non-productive assets. He then goes on to explain how a farm is a productive asset.
But anyway, it also produces a unique currency system with many benefits.
-Warren Buffet
I haven’t had my coffee yet but I don’t think Buffet himself even says the word “gold” in the included video.
https://avc.com/2018/05/is-buying-crypto-assets-investing/
"It is clear from those words that Buffett sees crypto assets like a baseball trading card or some other form of collectible. And if that were true of Bitcoin, Ethereum, EOS, Zcash, or many other popular crypto assets, I would agree with him.
But what these crypto tokens are is entirely something else. They are the fuel that powers a new form of technology infrastructure that is being built on top of the foundational internet protocols."
And what value is that new infrastructure actually delivering? People keep talking about blockchain this and that but I've not seen any compelling use case yet. Maybe this is just shortsightedness on my part but every time I hear a proposal for a thing to build on the back of cryptocurrency, it always sounds like a very suboptimal solution.
Article date is 5/7/18 AT 11:53 AM ?
Despite the hype and the early days, cryptocurrencies have a very similar usage pattern as credit cards. I would argue that credit cards and the way we use them are pretty much digital currency. That being said, there is a huge amount of improvements needed and the over-hype is just a turn-off for most.
Just the usual media outlet reporting about rich people.
Make sure you click on the link though. Clicks=more articles about cryptocurrency. I started doing this on CNBC and they became the leader in mainstream cryptonews despite all of their articles being anti-btc to begin.
I'm sure your personal clicks on bitcoin articles are what made CNBC focus on cryptocurrency news more. :\