There are several issues with tradFi. Pointing that out is like saying the sun will rise tomorrow. In some cases, people are working on a fix. In other cases, the inefficiency and criminal activity is not ceasing because the scale is too small for overburdened regulators to care about.
Not one of these uses bitcoin as a fix. Whoever is building it has almost never been in finance. They think tech bros can easily understand finance cos numbers! Except finance is extremely advanced. It’s like trying to join a full ML team after running a single random forest regression or something. The consequence of such hubris is sentences like this:
> Bitcoin is the solution to the fundamentally broken debt-driven economy.
The debt driven economy is by design. It’s not a fucking flaw like the hard money idiots listening to Peter Schiff daily want to believe. Sometimes it goes to excess and we get 2008. Doesn’t mean the older idea was better. There is no wealth distribution in a hard money paradigm that makes sense.
For simple terms since you’re obviously not in the field, ask yourself where is money created? If you say central banks, go back to Econ 101 and study better this time.
I'd recommend listening to his interview with Lex Fridman. [2]
[1] https://capitalism.columbia.edu/files/ccs/person/cv/2015/amm...
People’s appearance on Lex Fridman shouldn’t be used as an indicator of anything. He interviews very widely and he does it well. But he isn’t very selective about guests.
Thus it appears you're merely trying to discredit one person by comparing them to another person whose views (on a totally different topic) are ridiculed/controversial (for potentially legitimate reasons).
As to Lee Smolin .. he appears rather off-topic to me in this discussion. I like his view on "There is only one universe." though [1]. Makes him stand out from the many many people who handle the meaning of words with insufficient rigor and then come up with useless conclusions.
> People’s appearance on Lex Fridman shouldn’t be used as an indicator of anything.
I was just linking to this interview because it's reasonably well done and Ammous' views come over, not because it was done by Fridman.
> But he isn’t very selective about guests.
Which is IMO a good thing.
Additionally, imagine why and how someone with an Econ degree who wasn’t very well known became incredibly famous. Enough for Taleb to write a foreword for him (although I suspect that was motivated by their ethnic common origins and less so by the rigor in the book). This is a common grift. Several professors in extremely high end Ivy League universities tried the same tactic. Including that one fucktard from MIT who claimed he’d done simulations for a million years and Terra (or some other coin, I really can’t keep all the scams straight in my head) couldn’t fail no matter what. Same motivation. New shiny thing? Let’s use it to try and increase our social capital. Less erudite crowd? The better.
Ironic since nowadays Taleb seems to enjoy trolling bitcoiners.
Whatever you're implying here, I'm too stupid to get it.
You mean: he became famous enough despite only talking trash but in a way that fools dumb people like me? Or: he became famous through illegitimate means? Or: he became famous purely out of luck? Or: he became famous because he understood how to tell these people who mistrust some official institutions what they want to hear? Or: something else?
I just think he's got a few points right that go against today's mainstream economics. Somehow I haven't yet heard sound arguments from people who oppose the "deflation is an acceptable and possibly even better state of the economy" notion. They mostly put up strawmen.
> This is a common grift. Several professors in extremely high end Ivy League universities tried the same tactic. Including that one fucktard from MIT who claimed he’d done simulations for a million years and Terra (or some other coin, I really can’t keep all the scams straight in my head) couldn’t fail no matter what. Same motivation. New shiny thing? Let’s use it to try and increase our social capital. Less erudite crowd? The better.
I don't see why this is relevant here at all. The world is full of people trying to come out on top, almost everybody is. And some people tell lies to achieve that, some do scams or criminal stuff. Humans use tactics that "work" with humans, so what?
There's no law of nature from which follows that every person who curiously becomes famous for uncertain reasons can only be telling stupid things.
Discussing the person rather than their ideas is IMO a telltale sign that the subject (and gaining new insights about it) isn't really top priority here.
Putting aside the weird trash-talking of status quo economists, in order to evaluate the correctness of his position, I would have to do way too much homework.
His prediction of human behavior under a deflational currency though does raise some flags. He says people will buy stuff regardless. If know I can use the same money to buy two cars next year instead of buying a car this year, I will not buy a car this year. He seems to say I will.
When I listened to the interview I didn't hear him say that.
My view on this: governments simply cannot help increasing debt to spend more on whatever purpose they deem right at a certain time. It's simply the easiest way (least opposition from voters) for them to enact their programmes. The only other option (cutting other spending to increase spending on what's current high priority) doesn't get them reelected.
> Putting aside the weird trash-talking of status quo economists ...
Yeah, I admit he does too much of that, not optimal. But that doesn't mean the message is wrong.
> He says people will buy stuff regardless.
You won't? If your car breaks down, you won't let it get fixed right now but next month because it's cheaper? If you're hungry today you'll wait till next week to buy food because it costs 0,005 % less? You'll wait 10 years to fly to Fiji because it'll be cheaper? Oh wow, you must be a special person then.
> If know I can use the same money to buy two cars next year instead of buying a car this year, I will not buy a car this year.
You sure? You just watch everybody drive around? Besides: same money, next year worth 2x is dramatically exaggerated. What are typical gains of efficiency through technological advances? Maybe 5 % per year? I say you're putting up a strawman here. With 5 % deflation you'll have 2x the buying power in ~ 14 years .. you're going to wait this long?
> He seems to say I will.
Nope, as I understood what he says, he just says it somewhat shifts time preference.
Which car? The one I don't have because I'm saving to buy two next year? You're changing the example I gave into something else entirely. If you're saying that drastically reducing or eliminating the purchase of everything that is not absolutely essential to have won't be bad for the economy, or if it is, it won't be bad for society in the long term -- then say that.
>> If know I can use the same money to buy two cars next year instead of buying a car this year, I will not buy a car this year.
>You sure?
Yes. (I lived someplace where there was a ridiculous price markup for electronic goods. I needed a new phone and laptop but I refused to buy them because of the ridiculous prices. Then the currency crashed a year later and I immediately bought them by exchanging US dollars before they could markup the prices or pause sales. I ended up getting them for less than the US price incidentally. Otherwise I would have waited until the old ones were preventing me from doing essential tasks. This is same for cars.)
"People consume because there's a limitless desire to consume" he says. And when Fridman calls him on it, he says yes well people economize due to constraints no matter what.
>same money, next year worth 2x is dramatically exaggerated.
Well yes that’s the point. aren’t we talking about a bitcoin economy in the end after all? If a transition from fiat to bitcoin standard starts happening, this is the path its going to take until the price stabilizes, no? People doubled their money in half a year in 2021 after all.
EDIT: his odd comment that he is migrating from anarchism towards supporting benign dictatorships doesn't exact endear him either.
So eventually you'll have two ... and what will happen? Yes, some time your car will need repairs. Will you have the repair done months later because it'd be cheaper then? Highly unlikely.
> If you're saying that drastically reducing or eliminating the purchase of everything that is not absolutely essential to have won't be bad for the economy, or if it is, it won't be bad for society in the long term -- then say that.
I think people would - as they always have been doing it - still spend money on things that aren't absolutely necessary. If not for mere hedonistic pleasure then for status or whatever.
>>> If know I can use the same money to buy two cars next year instead of buying a car this year, I will not buy a car this year.
>>You sure?
>Yes. (I lived someplace where there was a ridiculous price markup for electronic goods. I needed a new phone and laptop but I refused to buy them because of the ridiculous prices. Then the currency crashed a year later and I immediately bought them by exchanging US dollars before they could markup the prices or pause sales. I ended up getting them for less than the US price incidentally. Otherwise I would have waited until the old ones were preventing me from doing essential tasks. This is same for cars.)
You ignored what I read about the buying power doubling over not one year but rather fourteen years ... you're writing about "currency crashing" which is something completely different from a gradual steady deflationary currency.
> "People consume because there's a limitless desire to consume" he says. And when Fridman calls him on it, he says yes well people economize due to constraints no matter what.
What's the point? Of course people try to find a balance between spending now and saving, nothing new here.
> If a transition from fiat to bitcoin standard starts happening, this is the path its going to take until the price stabilizes, no? People doubled their money in half a year in 2021 after all.
Yes. But as with most such developments, there's the dynamics that you see at first glance (adoption grows --> people are more confident Bitcoin will become even more valuable --> demand increases --> price increases --> ...) and there's lots more secondary dynamics that will also happen and dampen the obvious dynamic (price increases --> too expensive for some --> demand decreases --> dynamic equilibrium). There's surely more such secondary dynamics and they're important.
> EDIT: his odd comment that he is migrating from anarchism towards supporting benign dictatorships doesn't exact endear him either.
Well, I'm not a fan of dictatorships.
I don't think it's a very useful heuristic to discard all ideas of some person because one doesn't share/like one or a few of their positions. You'd have to discard the positions of almost every person on the planet then, right?
Care to explain how one can come to this claim based on first principles?
Maybe I'm misinterpreting this sentence of yours. I read it as: a hard money paradigm will inevitably lead to a very undesirable wealth distribuation (Gini coefficient --> 1) and there's no way to fix/prevent this other than moving from hard money to soft money.
I'd refute this claim. There are completely obvious ways to prevent Gini --> 1. Effective redistribution from wealthy to poor. The only hurdle to that is political systems, voters, governments or monarchs deciding to and then enacting it. Absolutely possible.
Phew, OK, if you write so.
> You have to replace every fucking bank employee with a govt employee ..
No, all it needs is a reasonable tax system without loopholes and where taxes are well balanced and of course reasonable services provided by the state funded by these taxes.
You have a rather pessimistic view of the world that leads you to believe that while such tax systems might be possible they allegedly haven't ever been observed in the real world. So you go on to infer that what hasn't been observed is not possible.
I think it's a stretch to draw a parallel here to the unyielding character of physical laws.
I assume the world has seen reasonable tax systems in the past but since politics/science/tech/societies/culture is constantly evolving this "state" was not stable. That it wasn't, doesn't prove it's not possible. Future societies with more knowledge on the whole subject (of creating beneficial equilibria in society) might find ways to keep desirable states over long periods of time.
Care to explain why?
I like to think I can be convinced by arguments.
> If you’d told me about btc 10 years ago, I would’ve thought it was a radical attempt at a solution.
But Bitcoin has kept working mostly the same way it started, right? Miners mine. People interested trade/speculate.
The thing about Bitcoin that changed over these years is what people think it is. Digital cash, nope. Micropayments, nope. Currency, nope. Store of value, could be. (I'm assuming volatility will decline in the long term if market capitalization approaches that of gold and as it gets adopted by millions more who don't speculate short term but just hold a few years to park some money and eventually exchange back to regular currency)
Besides that, if the current wealth distribution (under non hard money) isn't all but a calamity, then what is it?
Also most states are currently doing effective redistribution of wealth so it's clearly something that can be done. One issue though in most states is that the redistribution is getting outpaced by countering effects, so it's insufficient.
The Fed itself directly created 8T USD since 2009 (QE). Some of it in the past two years even went straight to consumer's pockets via the Treasury in the form of stimmies and forgivable PPP loans (helicopter money/MMT).
https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...
That's a non-trivial amount, 41% of total M2 and 61% of the increase in M2 since 2009:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL
Where did the rest of the increase in M2 come from? Fractional reserve lending by banks -- at interest rates artificially suppressed by Fed policies specifically to encourage lending/money creation.
Before the Fed was created in 1913, USD was created by fractional reserve lending by banks at market determined interest rates and the marginal increase in monetary gold and silver from mining output (typically 1-2%/yr).
This historic monetary system was dynamically unstable as mining output was uncorrelated with natural business cycles and unbackstopped banks were subject to runs during downturns. The Fed was created to solve these problems, specifically the panic of 1907.
Over time it's mission evolved from being a lender of last resort to actively targeting employment and consumer prices. Since the 1987 crash however, this official mandate was effectively replaced with one targeting asset prices - primarily stocks and houses (wealth effect targeting).
Normal business cycles were now increasingly distorted by the fed Fed responding to (or not wanting to hurt) asset prices for fear it would psychologically affect consumer and business spending and eventually employment.
This lead to a new instability: bigger booms created or exaggerated by easy Fed money, followed by bigger busts during the tightening phase.
Each boom/bust cycle led to more micromanagement by the Fed and thus more instability. Since 2008 (QE), and especially after 2020 (helicopter money) they have gone completely off the rails as seen by the M2 chart above and soaring consumer prices. "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon - Milton Friedman"
Basically you did answer where the M2 increase is coming from but you have no idea what is the difference between M2 and real money. If you’re following the idiots on finance twitter tweeting daily about velocity of money charts, stop, pick up a modern macro textbook and read in detail.
Exactly. This is a problem. It can be so advanced that almost nobody understands it.
Now take a look at how advanced Bitcoin is:
Total circulation will be 21,000,000 coins. It'll be distributed
to network nodes when they make blocks, with the amount cut in half
every 4 years.
first 4 years: 10,500,000 coins
next 4 years: 5,250,000 coins
next 4 years: 2,625,000 coins
next 4 years: 1,312,500 coins
etc...
When that runs out, the system can support transaction fees if
needed. It's based on open market competition, and there will
probably always be nodes willing to process transactions for free.
Satoshi NakamotoThat's a ridiculous claim.
As if the development of complex technical devices wouldn't have happened without complex financial markets and inscrutable financial business models.
Complexity in finance .. up to a certain degree it may well serve the purposes of society .. beyond some level though, excessive complexity mostly serves few big players who can manage and understand the complexity and gain an advantage over other actors with less resources (that'd be most of the rest of society).
People should ask "whose design?" then. Who's the beneficiary of this design?
What do you think is more likely to be true?
A. The wealthy/influencial/powerful/elites use their (disproportionate) power to influence the design of fundamentals of society - such as the monetary system - in a way that benefits/stabilizes their position at the top.
B. The wealthy/influencial/powerful/elites just let the design of fundamentals of society - such as the monetary system - be in whatever way it's shaped by society or political processes.
These people are most vulnerable of the lot. They live hand to mouth, don't posses computing devices (may be cheap China smartphone). I cannot fathom how this demography manages bitcoin assets, manages to purchase their basic needs (which is all they can afford) using coins and not to mention this market crash when even millionaires are feeling the pinch.
Going back to the topic of the "most vulnerable", a bank that you and I take for granted is a luxury in many of Africa's nations. Bitcoin is a permission-less banking system. Does it have technological hurdles for the average person to overcome? Yes. But this is all being worked on right now by people I talk to every day. The same way that most people have no idea how SMTP works, you won't really need to understand behind the scenes of Bitcoin. There are various levels of autonomy and people will fall on the spectrum of where they are comfortable, with the level of privacy / security that most fits their Bitcoin education.
You might find this short video interesting (only 10 seconds or so): https://twitter.com/HODLneverSODL/status/1518134911244320769...
What do you know about the existing problems, that you want to solve? When were you last in the region?
Citation needed (to put it mildly). How is Bitcoin improving on e.g. M-Pesa?
Is there much adoption compared to M-Pesa, outside of fantasy?
If you're not familiar with M-Pesa, then you don't know this subject at all.
> Those people get Bitcoin instantly.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/jun/17/jay-z-bitcoin-...
M-Pesa only works in some African countries? And it relies on the benevolence of Vodafone Group and governments?
34 > 30
is that much adoption?
30 or 34 m users out of 206m isn't the whole market, not close.
Nigeria is an outlier, with low M-Pesa adoption as:
> The reason why this incredible product (M-Pesa) can’t be replicated in Nigeria with such success is perhaps due to what you and I as Nigerians enjoy today, the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS)
https://nairametrics.com/2017/09/26/why-the-m-pesa-miracle-h...
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/nigeria-inter-bank-s...
So to sum up, the huge Nigerian domestic market is covered by a SEPA-like product. It's not a bitcoin thing. Omitting that seems intentionally misleading.
Usually when describing something in the face of scrutiny, one describes a use case. If someone questions the validity of hammers, the solution isn't to say "we call this a hammer." It's to show how hammers are used.
I doubt most crypto folks have any idea of credit markets or central banking. What they have expertise in is the manipulation of money. Bitcoin, and all of crypto, is Wall Street's love interest for a reason.
They think they have deep insights when saying "banks create money out of thin air", or "there is not enough money in the economy to pay down all debt". They also use the word "fiat" as if it's bad that a currency is backed by a government.
All the above are strong indication that there is something fundamental about the monetary system that someone fails to understand.
A lot of crypto has been bought because the buyer were under such illusions.
Bitcoin, with its Austrian hard money roots, stands head and shoulders above the crazy scammy mess of all the centralized altcoins (or "crypto" if you lile) that you right to criticize. Please don't lump real technological and computer science innovation in with a the crypto rug-pulls.
Sorry this is all too vague. How do you define "broken" and what does this post-debt-driven economy look like?
>They don't need articles like this one to tell them why their needs are unmet by the traditional finance system.
Whats the use case here exactly?
Look up % of world population living in hyperinlationary environments to get your answer. The post-debt driven economy is one where a handful of people cannot devalue your labor with a press of a button.
> Whats the use case here exactly? Freedom from corrupt governments that debase your currency into oblivion, only to adopt another currency which suffers from the same ultimate fate. Financial inclusion is the use case. It's broad, it's ambitious and ultimately to entrepreneurial interpretation.
Ok so lets say the production costs increases and drives inflation. How does bitcoin make my life easier in this scenario?
Bank deposits go to 0 though, as would most savings that did not grant control of some inflation-resistent revenue-flow.
Anyway, true hyperinflation is extremely rare. The most recent case I'm aware of, was Venezuela around 2013. To my knowledge, 0% of the pupulation lives under true hyperinflation today.
It's the solution to nothing. Nothing.
This is pretty hilarious though, Bitcoin is exactly the same as a variety of other cryptocurrencies, which are carbon copies of it. Identical. But right on cue here come the bitcoin maximalists to explain that theirs is special.
Here's the only reason it's special - brand recognition. That's it. That's what you have over the various forks and clones. First mover advantage.
And this is what tells me that the technology isn't really solving anything, and nobody actually gives a fuck about it - other coins fix problems with BTC, they either make it more anonymous, or resolve transactions faster, or more of them, or all sorts of other things. But BTC still rules the roost because the whole thing is built on hype and sentiment and nothing more.
Bitcoin solved the Byzantine generals' problem in adversarial network contexts, by its innovative deployment of proof-of-work. Thus, bitcoin invented thermodynamically secured property rights, and property rights are a fundamental building block for human flourishing. Bitcoin provides a decentralized trustless source of truth, and none of the other cryptos do that because they're not nearly as widely adopted.
Bitcoin is a strong base layer that faster more anonymous payments can be based upon, such as Lightning or Liquid, and things like CoinJoin and PayJoin, which are trust less and noncustodial. You can't start with a squishly base layer and then build stable systems, but if you start with solid fundamentals, privacy and better user experiences can be built on top.
Bitcoin is also currently solving the natural gas industry's problem of flaring methane... portable mining rigs use the methane to generate electricity to provide network security to the Bitcoin network, while making natural gas extraction cleaner. Bitcoin mining is also incentivising and paying for the production of clean renewable energy on larger scales than anyone had figured how to fund. And some people use bitcoin mining to provide home heating in the winter. No other crypto is doing those things.
Its inventors came up with a solution to it, sure, and that is innovative. It's inelegant, it's massively wasteful, but as a technical curiosity it's certainly interesting.
> Thus, bitcoin invented thermodynamically secured property rights
Fucking LOL. You say that as if it tapped into the laws of physics themselves, when actually a quantum computer could cause havoc here. It's using mathematics to achieve consensus, not writing data into the fabric of the universe, and as with all of your other points, it's just first mover advantage again. All of the other cryptocurrencies do the same.
> Bitcoin provides a decentralized trustless source of truth
No, it provides consensus, not truth.
> Bitcoin is a strong base layer
Exactly the same as its clones, forks and children.
> and none of the other cryptos do that because they're not nearly as widely adopted.
They do exactly the same. Adoption is a matter of degree, not absolute.
> Bitcoin mining is also incentivising and paying for the production of clean renewable energy
No, no it isn't. Bitcoin mining is filthy and getting worse.
We don't need more incentives for green energy, the world is already full of those. Bitcoin mining, on the other hand, uses dirty coal in Kazakhstan.
> No other crypto is doing those things.
EVERY other cryptocurrency is doing EXACTLY those same things. It's all just brand recognition.
Really? How do you call something where there is no underlying product generating value, and you need to have someone else put money in to get your money out? It's literally the definition of a ponzi pyramid.
Except when someone points out it's terrible at that, its goal magically becomes something else. Which it's probably terrible at, and then the goal shifts again.
For anyone else reading these comments, HN will not let me reply to all of your as I'm posting too fast. I would love to reply to every comment here. All very valid concerns and criticisms, although misplaced, deeply misunderstood. I don't blame you. If I were a skeptic of something, I would probably not put 1000 hours of educating myself on that subject. I am not here to convince anyone of anything. Don't buy bitcoin. In fact, buy the short ETF out (today?) if you are so convinced it's not going anywhere positive. I really don't care. It would be great if more people were less emotional about Bitcoin just because it has monetary properties and seems like a ponzi, and actually took the time to think about it more deeply - but I understand that you're busy and would rather dismiss it. Fine by me.
Proshares etf to short bitcoin: https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/BITO Vote with your conviction.
No, you're using nonsense distinctions that come from the 'Austrian school', that you think make you smart and you believe gives you an understanding of economics denied to most people, even those who study economics to a high level and make careers in that space. Unfortunately it's a patchwork of old and poor ideas that don't really hold up.
By the way I love the condescending addendum, sure, the only reason that anyone could possibly be negative about Bitcoin is that they haven't learned enough about it. LOL.
> Vote with your conviction.
Any move into the manipulated casino that is cryptocurrency is a bad move.
>By the way I love the condescending addendum, sure, the only reason that anyone could possibly be negative about Bitcoin is that they haven't learned enough about it. LOL.
Another reason people might view Bitcoin negatively is because they let others think for them (reaching flawed, uneducated conclusions, passed down onto you).
Or conflict of interest. Financial privilege. Not biting the hand that feeds you. Fitting in with your peers who have the same herd mentality. Take your pick.
I don't need to. Actual mainstream economics is that rebuttal. The Austrian school is a discredited joke.
Most of your points are emotional and idealogical - you call other cryptocurrencies "shitcoins", despite them being technically identical in many cases and superior in some.
> Another reason people might view Bitcoin negatively...
It's funny, you can't even conceive that someone could understand it and come to the conclusion that it's not a perfect miracle handed down directly from saint satoshi, and then you call identical cryptocurrencies "shitcoins", perhaps you don't understand them well enough?
BTC is the same as the others, it just has the big name. They're all shitcoins, I simply understand that about one more coin than you do.
Scams can be voluntary.
>The goal is better money
There is no clear path to that goal.
>If you take on that big of a challenge, you kinda need people to participate with their "old" money.
"Old" as in the USD?
>Just like internet would have no value if nobody participated, bitcoin has no value if nobody participates.
Unlike the internet you can only trade bitcoins. You cant use them for anything else.
I disagree, a scam must involve some level of deception.
This is the single most important paradigm that will set crypto believers vs non believers. Either you get it or not. There is nothing in between.
If non believers don't get this one, then there is no point in explaining.
Bitcoin makes no such promises. It routinely had >80% drops in price.