Topic: Krugman & Greenspan said: "Bitcoin is evil," and lacks "intrinsic value." - page 2. (Read 2213 times)

I get confused on this catch 22 of BTC being both a means of exchange and a digital store of value.  It's terrible that we must fear the reprocussions from the US government in both scenarios.  Maybe we shouldn't since it chains us to a broken system of wealth/power distribution, and is a stumbling block for new technological innovations.  Let's just keep getting the free world on board and let legislation catch up.  For what it's worth, I'll cast my vote for deregulation on the local level.

"Fiat money is backed by men with guns; Bitcoin is not. So why should this thing have any value?" Krugman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOSSnKmrSmo

Of course not.  See "Fiat Currency", definition.  I don't think Greenspan ever claimed it did. 

Bitcoin is a very peculiar value proposition.  Technically it's fiat, per the definition of having value as a medium of exchange unrelated to its intrinsic value if any, but it is not government fiat.  It's a community fiat.  It's sort of a throwback to "things used as money by mutual consent" like wampum, etc, as opposed to the modern definition of fiat which is almost exclusively taken to mean government fiat.

Yeah sure, Bitcoin lacks intrinsic value just the USD lacks intrinsic value. The concepts are just mediums that function as tokens in terms of bartering.

Sure, one can say that USD has the backing of the US government and military force, but BTC has backing too. The community, set up markets, and use as a medium of exchange; not to mention its built-in protocol features such as a ledger/accounting system and double-spend prevention gives BTC a backing in and of itself.

We place value on intellectual design, and innovation. So therein lies BTC's value.

And the dollar has intrinsic value?

What a joke.

bitcoin will fail long term, it is just a fashion. When people will lose interest price will drop.

so that is a good thing then, not an evil thing? 

I think Greenspan was just reporting economic facts when he observed that Bitcoin's value is not intrinsic.

Bitcoin is bluntly not a physical object, therefore it has no "intrinsic" to be valuable.  It is a pattern of information, valuable only in the context of the Bitcoin network.

As for Krugman saying Bitcoin is evil, he's making the same category error that's made by people who think guns and knives and lockpicks are evil.  Bitcoin itself is not a thinking entity; as such it has no capacity to be evil or good.  It simply is.  I don't know whether he's speaking about the current community, or about the set of uses he himself imagines for it.  But whatever, it's irrelevant as a category error.

Depends on what one means by 'elites'.  Bitcoin valuations are highly concentrated to a small number of people at this time, and probably always will be.  It is not at all unfair to classify these people as 'elites' themselves, and they are free to play a variety of classic market cornering and manipulation games, extreme fee structures, outright theft, etc.  And they do.  A lot!  Bitcoin itself is, of course, not 'evil', but it certainly has the potential to be used as an instrument in 'doing evil' (to use ridiculous short-hand) and this is the case and it will continue.

One of Bitcoin's biggest draws to me is that it currently serves as a mechanism providing a 'balance of power' between corp/gov interests on one hand and other entities on the other (which, again, includes a healthy contingent dirt-bags.)  It is 'disruptive', but against interest who I personally don't mind seeing some disruption.  How long this will last I'm not sure.  In short, ya, Bitcoin is very political to me.

To Stross' comment:


Hell ya!  I'm not a Libertarian but I don't mind some balance to the power of the central banks which increasingly exercise their power to manipulate governments on behalf of their owners and in ways which I consider negative for the rest of us.

Separately, I very much don't wish all of my financial transactions to be monitored for the same reason I don't want this to be the case for my contact lists, porn viewing habits, choice of parking spots, etc.  It is very dangerous to submit to fine grained monitoring and collation of information into persistent individual dossiers.  It's very much a case of 'when' and not 'if' these databases are abused.

Corp/gov is increasingly opaque about their affairs and interactions even while greatly expanding their visibility into ours.  This is not a good trend.

Basically I feel that it is futile to sit around and wait for privacy to be granted to us citizens out of the goodness of the hearts of 'the powers that be.'  It is correct and fair and ethical to fight for privacy, and doing so is basically our only chance to obtain it.

when an investor wants cheap coins they usually tell people not to buy. as other people buying will cause a price rise. so if you were about to buy in a couple million dollars would you rather buy in at under $700 or at over $1000.

of course you would prefer under $700 and so you too would be tempted to spread FUD to keep coins cheap. i personally don't feed the propaganda machine because im already in the community and with my day trading abilities i can gain on the rise and the fall. so i do not have to stoop to krug and greens levels.

if krug and green don't think bitcoin is a value that could risk their gold/stocks/bonds being affected. if they truly thought bitcoin had no value and was worthless. they would not even care about it to make a statement.

Of course they say this, Bitcoins are not in the interests of the elites.

I say: Fuck you and piss off.

Krugman also said the internet would become obsolete...

I think the elites are doing anything they can to protect their system that they set up.  It only makes sense for them to do that. 

According to this article Mr. Krugman and Mr. Greenspan once said: "Bitcoin is evil," and lacks "intrinsic value."
http://politix.topix.com/story/10429-in-math-we-trust-a-reply-to-krugmans-and-greenspans-bitcoin-bashing


What do you think?