From Pine View Farm

“The Weed of Crime Bears Bitcoin Fruit”* 2

In a long and closely reasoned article, McGill University’s Reuven Brenner sees one possible redeeming aspect to BitCoins.

More important perhaps, Bitcoin’s mere existence may draw attention to the fact that its birth is due to the utter mismanagement of monetary and fiscal and regulatory affairs around the world, and thus may speed up the search for lasting solutions and re-establishing trust.

Follow the link for the full discussion. Summary cannot do it justice, especially as no one really understands how bitcoins work. Nevertheless, like any other fiat currency, bitcoins have value because (some) persons believe bitcoins have value.

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*With apologies to The Shadow.

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2 comments

  1. George Smith

    February 16, 2014 at 3:03 pm

    Interesting. I still think Bitcoin is of and perfect for our time. Take the “experts” called to testify to its goodness by the state of New York: the Winklevoss twins.
    Why are the Winklevoss twins so wealthy? What have they materially contributed to society that is so valuable that makes them so? 
    They were born into the upper class. By dint of association/connection with Mark Zuckerberg, they were eventually able to extract a settlement fortune from Facebook to go away? Are they programmers? No. Would such a legal option have been open to average Americans without the resources of an upper class? No. Why did they get a pistachio commercial offer? Because they were famous for being semi-famous in the Social Network movie and extracting a payment from Zuckerberg. Why were they able to become Bitcoin “experts.” Because they had the money from the upper class and extracting payment from Zuckerberg to buy up 1.5 million or something in Bitcoins. And why are they successful at getting others to invest in their consulting services, hedge funding and so on? Because they are famous to semi-famous for being famous or semi-famous and people see the money sloshing from here to there in news articles in which the Winklevoss twins appear. So the Winklevosses are wealthy because they were born to it and became adept at extracting more money from large pools of it as the opportunity presents. Bitcoin, which is for hoarding and speculation, is a perfect match with them. The great majority of people cannot do anything with Bitcoins except pay, still, too many dollars for one. When I entered my name to create an account at Coinbase, the Bitcoin exchange, I was offered, as everyone is, a button and mechanism to sell goods or accept donations in Bitcoin. To sell, the service conveniently auto-filled a good I might want to sell for Bitcoins: alpaca socks. I asked Google whether I could buy Colt 45 or King Cobra malt liquors with Bitcoin. The internet did not provide an answer. I take that as a ‘No’.

     
  2. Frank

    February 16, 2014 at 3:42 pm

    Bitcoin is Monopoly for the elite.  The technically and economically poor cannot touch it.  It is polo for tech plutocrats who don’t understand the multiplier effect.

     

    Like real estate in 2004,  God ain’t  making any more of it, so it is also bubblelicious.