From Pine View Farm

“Magical Money-Machine” 3

From time to time, George Smith blogs about the lunacy of bitcoin mania and the type of glibertarian geek who buys into it at his place. I know what bitcoins are and how they purportedly work because I move in geeky circles, which can make one dizzy at times.

Last night, at LQ, one of the regulars there delivered a masterful takedown of bitcoins. A nugget:

But someone’s already out there offering “Bitcoin mining computers,” which cost several thousand dollars apiece. (Notice that you can’t buy one with bitcoin … heh.) They’re selling you the dream of a “magical money-machine.” There’s a sucker born every minute, and that sucker … his “mark” … is you. Be aware. (One unit sells for $14,500.00 and “ooh, hurry up hurry up and buy one before they all get sold-out!”) You should know better. But they’re counting on you having gold-fever.

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3 comments

  1. George Smith

    December 20, 2013 at 3:13 pm

    Thanks. Must have been lost in the e-mail. Anyway, after I’d posted on bitcoin earlier in the week Facebook began showing me this, one of it’s new video ads.
    http://pro.moneymappress.com/NVXBITCOIN49CH2/WNVXPC37/?h=true
    You’ll notice bitcoin is disguised as “Edison’s dollars.” And it’s peddled by someone advertised as “nominated for the Pulitzer Prize,” which sounds good to idiots who don’t know just about anyone can get nominated if someone at a newspaper or magazine is willing to put their name in. The obvious take here is to con older people, those who’d been previously sucked up by Glenn Beck and company’s gold scam ads on  Fox News. 
     The only thing I’d add to the takedown is that the bitcoin nuisance demographic caters to a tech version of the right wing libertarian who views it as a way to do his part in destroying tyrannical government. And you can find the same sentiment in gold bugs, the Republican Party, the people known as “preppers.” Bitcoin is just more high button.  It’s literally a “money” for stroking the every-man-for-himself psychology.   

     
  2. George Smith

    December 20, 2013 at 3:32 pm

    Another fair assessment you can make of bitcoin is that it is certainly a “money” for our time. Although it’s dressed up as being something good for the world in its way of undermining and destroying central banking, it’s really just something that allows some people,  a very few, to make “money” without doing anything, more specifically, without doing anything that is even remotely a social good. Like the 1 percent, or Wall Street, or lots of corporate ‘Merica.

     
  3. Frank

    December 20, 2013 at 4:55 pm

    Whoops!  Left the link out of the email while I was trying to fiigure out how to go directly to his post.

     

    Based on what I hear in my various geeky podcasts, you’re quite right about the type of person these things appeal to.