I thought this was kinda funny...
I've been a bit of an "armchair economist" for quite a few years, I guess. And I've always leaned a bit toward the Austrian School. I've done a lot of reading of Ludwig von Mises' work. I was first introduced to him by "The Anti-Capitalist Mentality" quite a few years ago. Of course I don't take everything von Mises (or any economist) says as a religious text, but he had a lot of great ideas and an understanding of markets and monetary systems few possess.
Since I enjoy a lot of von Mises' work, I inevitably ended up reading quite a few articles from the
Ludwig von Mises Institute. There's a lot of good/interesting stuff to read on there. But of course, Ludwig von Mises is dead and this site is run by a group of libertarian-ish folks based in Alabama. So of course, the content on the site is not necessarily the views of von Mises himself. I've run across a few articles that made me double-facepalm...
I ran across one such facepalm inspiring article today, titled
"The Bitcoin Money Myth". For those with short attention spans, I will give you a tl;dr summary of it...
tl;dr version:- Bitcoin is not real money
- Bitcoin can never replace fiat money
- Bitcoin is not superior to fiat money at all
- Bitcoin isn't a "true currency"
- Bitcoin isn't a new currency because it's just a way to spend existing currency
- The increase in Bitcoin's price is simply because it has good features/tech and provides new ways to transfer existing fiat currency
The author doesn't directly say it, but the article gives you the impression that he thinks Bitcoin is just a short-lived "hype bubble" and that it won't be around much longer...
But after I read the article, I noticed something funny... On the right-hand column of the page, near the bottom of the article's text, was a little box entitled "The Quotable Mises" that features a random Ludwig von Mises quote each time you load the page. And what did the quote say?
"Only stilted pedants can conceive the idea that there are absolute norms to tell what is beautiful and what is not. They try to derive from the works of the past a code of rules with which, as they fancy, the writers and artists of the future should comply. But the genius does not cooperate with the pundit." -- Ludwig von Mises
Ha!