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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Taleb may just be annoyed that he missed the biggest black swan in the last decade.

Possibly, but does that make him wrong?

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.

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.

It's got at least one more use case: getting around inflationary problems. It's been a huge boon in Venezuela for that reason.

He does not really state any good points to support his claim.

Ponzi one is baseless (in this piece).

Volatility one is incomplete. Clearly people use volatile currencies. Usually people avoid ones that are in downward spiral. If he (or even majority) can not wrap their heads around the question of how to transact under current conditions, it does not mean nobody can.

Isn’t the ponzi designation entirely correct? Nobody gets rich holding USD - it’s a medium of exchange. People get rich holding Bitcoin iff they can generate more future demand. This sounds like stocks, except with equities you also can get rich by claiming your stake of cash flows (ie dividends or buybacks), but there’s nothing of the sort with Bitcoin. What am I missing?

No, because a Ponzi scheme is one in which early investors are fraudulently paid "returns" out of the contribution of later investors. This is just speculation or a bubble (which I guess you could call "open Ponzi scheme", but that's a self contradicting term.)

I think pyramid scheme is what he means

It is not a pyramid scheme either. Nobody promises "payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme".

Tulip Bulb then

No, not that either. Anyone can plant more Tulips. There's no way to dilute the supply of Bitcoin.

I mean, miners could agree on a different set of rules to apply and increase the supply.

It's harder/unlikely, but its not "no way to".

You're describing a fork. Bitcoin has already been forked uncountable times. They don't carry over the users, so they don't carry over the network effects either.

Planting tulips isn't an instant thing. It takes a season to grow. Not that different from mining? And not really part of the tulip thing; that was all about the bubble.

I see, but if we are responding to NTT’s accusation, is that addressing the substance of the argument? Seems like there is a small change in terminology and everything else holds.

You are missing the definition of Ponzi scheme, which Bitcoin simply does not fit. Satoshi was not luring anyone into Bitcoin by promising gains.

Actually he owned it for a few years [1] before liquidating earlier in 2021 [2].

* [1] https://medium.com/opacity/bitcoin-1537e616a074

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

That's such a classic coiner reaction.

Actually, I'm not a Bitcoin fan. I thought it was overpriced at $20.

He needs to read about that 'antifragile' thing, someone sends him the book.

he says he had bitcoin but sold it at $45,000

I guess he doesn't have "skin in the game" anymore?

Or he's trying to push the price down to buy more

Dogecoin?

The crazy part is the ,,I missed the boat'' saying that I heared from people at $200 and at $50k.

Bitcoin needed more than ever.

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