The Normalization of Ponzinomics
concoda.substack.com
concoda.substack.com
Mostly ranting/whining, almost something you'd see posted in r/IAmVerySmart
The preferred term is tokenomics.
Quite the opposite. Bitcoin recognizes the history of the debasement of monies very well, unlike the Keynesian view. I find it ironic when people use the term 'basic economics', but have clearly never read "Basic Economics" (https://sowell.org/books/basic-economics).
> "As the financial system has slowly shifted to cater to the post-WW2 status quo, money supply has become the least important factor. It's why barely any economist or monetary official brings it up, and why they don't take Bitcoin seriously."
And it's why you're enjoying 7.8% inflation and why prices will double in just 9 years, if inflation stays at this rate and doesn't increase any further. (Hint: It will)
They don't bring it up because they're paid to push inflationism, which benefits the early receivers of new money at the expense of savers, fixed-wage earners and property owners.
> "The idea of digital scarcity is ludicrous, because you can create an unlimited quantity of digital items and now, thanks to crypto, an unlimited amount of links to those items. According to the basic laws of economics, an infinite supply will always lead to insufficient demand, which in crypto is a shortfall of increasingly greater fools willing to risk investing their money in “securities fraud as a business”. When demand dries up in this scenario, prices always go to zero, usually in spectacular fashion."
Very true about 'crypto'. Anybody can create new tokens, there are effectively infinite. However, nobody can just create new Bitcoin. Bitcoin is scarce, but shitcoins are abundant.
Overall the author is mostly correct about 'crypto'. The misunderstanding is thinking that Bitcoin is part of 'crypto'. It is not.
Why? A generic phrase is clearly not a reference to book that co-opted it for its title. Otherwise, somebody really ought to write a bit of Marxist economic propaganda called "Basic Economics."
and if the only literature on that topic you've read is a special kind(only marxist for example) than it's likely that no matter how intelligent you are, but your way of thought has been overly influenced by one school of thought.
My general position on political topics like this, is to start with reading literature that is somewhat widely adopted but foreign to your own views, like if you are libertarian leaning to force yourself to read leftist philosophers and theorists.
This guy is basically opposed to libertarian philosophy, so using the term basic economics and not reading a book with the same name, from one of the most well known academics with libertarian views(or showing understanding of it's contents) is at least weird.
I understand that crypto evangelists say that they have "fixed" the problems with physical markets, but time and time again I see crypto projects repeating the biggest failures of monetary history. Ponzi schemes, pump-and-dump, corrupt or fraudulent banks, heists, money laundering, tax havens for the super-rich. In physical economics, we still have those problems but we've built up regulation and fluency to protect ourselves over hundreds of years, and crypto seems to be back in the wild west and people are seriously getting hurt by it. I can't take crypto seriously until it accepts that the regulation that it so desperately tries to avoid actually does protect people.
> they're paid to push inflationism, which benefits the early receivers of new money at the expense of savers, fixed-wage earners and property owners.
Tell me, how do cryptocurrencies benefit fixed-wage earners over "early recievers of new money"? Who do you think benefits most from crypto? It's not wage-workers. Crypto is just an unregulated market with unpredictable volatility, and as such it will always benefit those who can accept that risk early (rich people) more than the people who cant (not rich people).
> In physical economics, we still have those problems but we've built up regulation and fluency to protect ourselves over hundreds of years...
Those regulations are a kind of advanced technology, but it's not computer technology, so too many "technologists" are blind to it.
Most cryptocurrency technologies are pretty analogous to making a car in 2022 without seat-belts and without an effective replacement, and selling that as a feature. Seat-belt technology is ubiquitous for good reason and discarding that technology is dumb (or at least blinkered).
The vast majority of the "regulations" that crypto advocates want to avoid are basically financial tools to facilitate dispute resolution.
It turns out that even if you are not dealing with explicit crooks - there are MANY reasons to have a method of reconciliation: People will break contracts (intentionally or unintentionally) and when disputes occur over contracts - we use lots of regulations to resolve those disputes.
Things like:
garnished wages,
Frozen accounts,
asset seizure,
cancelled transactions,
etc...
So - as someone who has been involved with crypto, who has had fraud occur directly, and who used bitcoin at one of the very few times when it really did facilitate mostly value exchange instead of pure speculation (I was using MtGox to buy cannabis on the Silk road when they went down, back when a bitcoin was about 4 bucks - I still get the legal proceeding emails) - I find most "crypto advocates" to basically be snake oil salesmen. They are morally repugnant - and they are only seeking to make a quick buck through speculation in the best case, and they are actively defrauding folks in the worst (and still insanely common) case.
> Tell me, how do cryptocurrencies benefit fixed-wage earners over "early recievers of new money"?
Again, not 'crypto', but bitcoin. You won't be able to grasp it until you separate these out.
Bitcoin allows people to save without their savings being deliberately debased.
Wage-workers are the people who need this most. They can't just throw money at stocks and shares to try and outpace inflation. If prices, in dollars are going to double in 9 years, how is a wage-worker supposed to save up to get a deposit for a mortgage when the value of what they've tried to save it is slashed in half?
Bitcoin, on the other hand, has seen a doubling of purchasing power on average over any 4 years of its history, and will likely continue if fiat money continues to devalue (as it certainly will with the current clowns in charge.)
w.r.t volatility, this does not matter if your goal is to save over an extended time. Bitcoin is volatile month to month, and between years, but there is absolutely no question about the way it trends over the long run. It's clear that holding dollars is a fools errand.