Posted on 07/12/2021 5:31:07 AM PDT by Kaslin
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan and other books on risk and probability is Bitcoin’s nemesis. A one-time supporter of the cryptocurrency he now calls it a “ponzi scheme.” Taleb recently posted an analytical take-down of Bitcoin using concepts from quantitative finance. He hits hard.
Many features of Bitcoin’s downside are now familiar to the public and Taleb checks them off: Bitcoin wastes energy. Its transactions are slow, costly, and don’t scale to large volumes. “(Y)ou can instantly buy a cup of coffee with your cell phone,” Taleb says, but "you would need to wait ten minutes if you used Bitcoin.” It’s been twelve years after its birth and still no prices are invoiced in Bitcoin. “It’s not even a currency at all,” Taleb jabs.
Bitcoin’s underlying blockchain technology, with its immutable ledger of transactions, must continually maintain a “physical presence” into the future. The blockchain is finite with respect to the past but potentially infinite with respect to the future. The whole system depends on the work performed by Bitcoin “miners” who are paid in Bitcoin to update the blockchain. To Taleb, this as Bitcoin’s Achilles heel. The exit of the miners would be a fatal blow.
The “fundamental flaw” of most cryptocurrencies, according to Taleb, is that the miners and the system maintainers make their money “from the inflation of their currencies” rather than from fees processing the underlying transactions. But one cannot predict if future generations will still have enthusiasm for Bitcoin or if its technology will not one day become obsolete. If that comes to pass, and if the miners exit, then Bitcoin’s present value must be zero, Taleb asserts. If Bitcoin reaches that limit, it will hit an “absorbing barrier” from which recovery is impossible. Taleb has crossed the Rubicon.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Food, ammo, precious metals and (maybe) cash, in that order, will soon be the only forms of currecy that matter.
*P
Taleb is a smart guy who understands risk management better than most. Cryptocurrencies give me the willies.
Ammo is all you really need, the rest can be acquired with that.
True. I was ttrying to avoid the marauder route.
I had the understanding that electronic currencies were to be used to pay for things on the Internet that had small economic value.
I might pay a tenth of a cent to read a certain webpage. My bank deals in dollars and cents, not fractions of a penny. I might buy $5 worth of electronic currency to pay for my Internet webpage reading - a tenth of a cent for page 1, a 20th of a cent for page 2, a fifth of a cent for page 3, etc.
In the everyday world, I might buy $50 in electronic currency to pay for a $1 hamburger, Chinese restaurant lunch special, etc. Unlike Europe and Canada, merchant card fees in the USA are high.
Ping!
Pm me if you want to be added to the secretive FR Crypto Ping List.
I don’t always want to use my debit card online since it is tied to my checking account.
By buying $X of cryptocurrency, my online financial risk is effectively limited to that $X.
Given the frequency of operating system updates, I suspect hackers frequently find security flaws in the software of the computer I’m typing on.
The chicoms fear Bitcoin enough try to destroy it.
No, I don’t promote Bitcoin, but I’ve seen enough evidence, as have any of you following it, that is it “real enough”. Whether it is the right decision for you is, as freedom suggests, up to you and you alone.
I’d place more value in something that a free people valued more so than what a bunch of execrable f@tard commies did.
“only forms of currecy that matter”
Yes, Mr. Griffin, I can replace your roof. My family will need a place to stay from August until November.
Do you have enough Euros for the shingles?
“only forms of currency that matter”
Miss B’s Academy is now accepting students whose fathers or mothers are plumbers, painters, landscapers, car mechanics, CNAs, dentists and doctors.
“only forms of currecy that matter”
Nice walnut tree you got there, you’re going to lose an inflamed appendix and that tree.
Money is a good, readily acceptable in exchange by everyone in a given geographical area, and is sought for the purpose of being re exchanged. Of course, one of the properties of money, which helps to make it universally acceptable is its divisibility into small units.
With money, those for whom the individual produces, and those by whom he is supplied can be, and almost always are different and distinct parties. With money, a process of indirect exchange takes place, about which no one needs to be concerned. It takes place virtually automatically and without cost. Each produces for others, though not the others, by whom he is supplied. The individual produces for anyone who has money to offer and then uses the money to buy from anyone who has the goods he wants.
So fun to read stories about cryptocurrencies and see the same logical errors and resulting conclusions. As the number of goofs roll up I imagine the author gleaming about the check they got from Visa and Mastercard.
Unless the people who have food, and ammo (and night vision and lots of training etc.) just leave lazy thieves - like you apparently - in puddles of their own body fluids.
In! Secret hand shake and 7 bitcoins coming by email.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.