Looking forward to another thread that goes nowhere useful
Nobody is forcing you to read this thread so you have zero cause for complaint.
Just as cryptocurrencies.
The trillion dollar asset in a $2.5 trillion dollar asset class with a growing user base (
currently estimated at 100 million people ) is going nowhere? Okay.
No attempt to address his damning criticisms other than the usual whataboutery of civil war ravaged basket cases.
No attempt to address something that you agreed bitcoin couldn't be classified as? Just for clarity, I don't recall ever giving an example of wayward monetary policy and currency mismanagement relative to a 'civil war ravaged' country. They're simply countries where your Keynesian economists and central bankers have mismanaged the currency. I did refer to
this article which describes the 'bank-run ponzi' that has led to the collapse of the Lebanese pound though. Lebanon hasn't seen civil war for over 30 years.
He makes a new point to me. It is about the enormous amounts going down the drain in electricity usage. This is not the usual somewhat hypocritical eco warrior point but a reflection that when this all ends at zero, unlike Madoff, it will not be a question of a zero sum game but a very expensive negative sum endeavour which has poured billions of dollars worth of energy down the tubes.
There is no major revelation here. You were well aware of the fact that miners provide a service and that they are
rewarded for providing that service. I've bolded out the word as you have referred to it 22 times in discussing bitcoin mining here over the last few years. The rest is complete nonsense. We've been over this a 1000 times already - earlier this year, you clarified that bitcoin couldn't be a ponzi scheme - so where is there a point in giving oxygen to this bunkum from the lifer from the Bank of Central Banks?
The other point McCauley makes is that unlike a wholesome Ponzi scheme where the people defrauded have legal recourse (70% successful in the case of Madoff) when the dust settles on this crypto mania those who have lost up to a trillion dollars at these prices will have absolutely no recourse.
See above.
@tecate There is so much wrong with that link to Bitcoin magazine (a bit of a clue there) but I will start with only one.
It's Christmas so here's a clue right back at you - the FT is an old world establishment rag that should be embarrassed at what it's churning out. Beyond bitcoin, there are crypto projects that are going to disintermediate the entire industry that it concerns itself with. Up until recently, it was clear that nobody there had a notion. Pieces like this one suggest that now people are beginning to feel a tad uncomfortable. /clue
Otherwise, the 'much wrong' claim is a bit of a nothing burger given that you can't articulate your criticism beyond this one point ->
If none trickles down that it will not be inflationary. Of course it does not suit a leftist narrative to suggest that there is any of this printing going to ordinary folk.
You're the first person I've come across that denies the validity of the
Cantillon Effect with regard to Quantitative Easing. As regards the 'leftist' comment, not sure why you've reached that conclusion as just as many folks from the right have been subject to this inequitable policy.
That another highly respected academic damns bitcoin is, I suppose, not news though he does it even more convincingly than Prof Roubini or the various Nobels.
As Mo Salah says of vaccines he respects the learned doctors, he would no more expect them to be able to tell him when to pass the ball than he would question their learned and professional opinion. Similar to me on crypto, I respect the professional economists. Oh I am sure
@tecate can wheel out a maverick just as I am sure there are some anti vaccers in the medical profession.
So a bunch of academics whose area of expertise doesn't extend beyond Keynesian economics - an economic model whose flaws bitcoin has been a direct response to - is whom you're depending on? Did I introduce you to Upton Sinclair?:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
The bit about being worse than Ponzi was a valid and new angle to me, though again it is probably well trodden terrain in cultist circles.
See above - you're contradicting yourself - given that you acknowledged earlier in the year that bitcoin doesn't qualify as a ponzi.