Topic: Bitcoin is NOT a Currency - Etsy Labs, Brooklyn - May 14th - page 2. (Read 7574 times)

I think one of the most interesting things the speaker said is the following:


(This was in response to a question starting at 45m5s.)

I think he uses "corporations" here to mean the same thing as "large institutional investors".

Here's a strange idea: It seems that bitcoin can actually solve some of the problems that motivate the massive amount of international currency exchange and the need for these large institutions to hedge. I wonder if bitcoin could solve problems for currencies in a way that is analogous to the way that currencies solve problems for the barter system. In other words, "bitcoin is to currency as currency is to barter." Maybe we shouldn't be calling bitcoin a currency, but a "currency's currency" (or currency squared).

If that's true, bitcoin could be more than a potential "equal" among major currencies; it could be a serious threat to the fundamental viability of those currencies.

Of the many insightful things that have been said in this thread, I think this takes the cake.

Well they certainly were laid right to the door of that lecture hall, thundering through every other minute, I really don't think that he gets it at all - he's trying to say like how the Internets etc may not catch on from the prior perspective of state regulated mail, telecoms & broadcasting & even if it did it would be such a threat to them that they would just have to try & destroy it rather than adapting, he seemed to me very smug & more interested in intellectual ego tripping than actually making a coherent open minded analysis of what Bitcoin is & could be

Just a few facts were of interest, like that the fx market is ginormous & bitcoins being just a small part of that would be huge, though that's already fully known so hardly news & he failed in any objective way to prove his assertion that Bitcoin is not a currency - imo

edit: currency, commodity, virtual trading units, whatever - I have done more international tx with bitcoins that any others over the last year, more purchases & sales (this has nearly all been bitcoins themselves rather than tangible goods - for those I still ex back to fiats), loans & receivables, investments & speculations, even charitable gifts than in any other currencies (fiat), commodities (PMs mostly), or even any other funds used for any purpose that I can think of

I guess he's saying that the government bond yield defines the risk free rate of return, which all other interest rates are based off.

So because there is no risk free return for holding bitcoins, it is therefore an investment instrument rather than a currency.

His reasoning may be correct. But it is not useful. As far as Im concerned if Bitcoin can be used as money, then it is money.

I didn't get the sense that the presenter was a particular fan of our current fiat monetary solutions or unaware of the disadvantages and limitations of them.  If anything I got the opposite sense.  But this particular presentation did not seem to have at it's focus any special advocacy role one way or another.  Seemed to me to be mostly just an intellectual exploration.

I found it troubling that his thesis rested on the assumption that deposit and interest bearing accounts can only come from government's ability to print cash and pay such interest in perpetuity. The man seemed smart, but that theory is so darn silly I'm not sure what he's thinking.

Any deposit markets that rely on government fiat interest are built on much poorer a foundation than deposit markets built in a profit-seeking marketplace which is unable to "print."

If his theory is that Bitcoin can't be a currency because accounts will never yield returns, then I think he just proved Bitcoin is a currency. 

Great presentation, and one of the most compelling pro-Bitcoin presentations I've seen.

I'm sure I feel this way in part because I and the presenter seem to share a lot of philosophies on certain things.  I found plenty to disagree with in the presentation but that is almost always the case in any presentation about almost anything.

I have a new signature.

Yes, and they're options too, in mpex. As you say, everything may be really brand new, and not yet completely established, but everyday new things are emerging.

It's actually an really interesting video and the critique at 54min is very concise and powerful and I have a lot of respect for Bromberg for conceding as much.

Curiosity got the best of me and I'm actually glad. The video is quite decent and his points have a lot of merit and I suggest people to at least listen to this presentation. Of course he is completely oblivious to the invisible regulations by strictly market consumers (i.e. the free market) and wrongly thinks we must have governmental regulatory tools to avoid volatility which is a shame since I got the feeling he is pretty intelligent.

Wow 54:40 guy presents a beautiful counterargument to Kenneth Bromberg's argument that Bitcoin is not a currency because it doesn't have sufficient future value guarantees to which he doesn't have an answer for.

The central plank of his criticism was that there is no deposit market in Bitcoin, which means institutional investors cannot park money in it, sell futures, or hedge volatility.

This is false as demonstrated by BTC lending threads on this forum. The market for Bitcoin deposits is very new but it will only grow in time.

Ty, I was 2min in and paused reading this thread. I closed the tab now.

I think he was referring more to bonds. "Buy money; get more money guaranteed!"

The gist is no bonds, no taxes, not a currency as these are the two things that keep the fiat cycle running. And since governments are unlikely to ever accept bitcoin for taxes because it reduces their power, and bonds can't be hand, bitcoin will never be a true medium of exchange for the world. It's an opinion and he said as much.

One would hope that if enough of the people demanded bitcoin payment for taxes that governments would eventually acquiesce. But I think it would be pretty unlikely with what world governments have been doing lately.

"If you don't want to go to jail, bitcoin can't be your currency." It makes sense.

What a waste of time that was.

nice vid, interesting to watch, too bad they disabled comments or at least it didn't work for some reason for me.

the guy is pretty objective and honest in his views. first half of video i had a feeling he was pretty much endorsing bitcoin, but his stance that it won't work long term only because that the powers that may be will never give up their powers.

another of his points was that we don't have any developed investment vehicles with which i pretty much disagreeing as seeing GLBSE picking up pace in real investments sector

BK Tech Talks - Bitcoin is NOT a currency
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NULPfp0Zu5g

A currency is $DEFINITION_OF_CURRENCY_THAT_SUITS_MY_ARGUMENT.

Bitcoin, therefore, is/isn't a currency.


Bitcoin is what it is; let's leave semantics to the future historians.

If it merely has a special legal status, that does not necessarily mean that the politics can influence the production or distribution of it. But you're correct in that the definition is a statist one. Its purpose is to be usable for tax and accounting, not for economic or financial analysis.

If special legal satus is a requirement for a currency, then currency is subject to the winds of political change and not something with long term storage of value.