To those with hopes and dreams in Bitcoin I suggest reading Nassim Taleb’s black paper. It does a great job outlining every major problem and (while in its current version and even a few iterations from now) it won’t succeed as a currency.
Whilst I can appreciate why people think it might not succeed as a mainstream consumer currency — do you recognise how successful it is becoming as an asset, like gold?
Worth a read: https://www.lynalden.com/gold-and-bitcoin/
And why would anyone want to own gold? It's certainly not to protect against inflation, which seems to be what everyone talks about:
> While gold objects have existed for thousands of years, gold's role in diversified portfolios is not well understood. We critically examine popular stories such as 'gold is an inflation hedge'. We show that gold may be an effective hedge if the investment horizon is measured in centuries. Over practical investment horizons, gold is an unreliable inflation hedge. […]
Bitcoin has no use other than to sell or loan to someone else; or to pay taxes levied by criminals.
> Why BTC is worth exactly 0: Gold and other precious metals are largely maintenance free, do not degrade over an historical horizon, and do not require maintenance to refresh their physical properties over time. Cryptocurrencies require a sustained amount of interest in them.
And? None of these reasons mean it is worth “exactly 0” (not to mention some of them are just plain wrong). Gold requires sustained interest too!
Bitcoin continues to be the only “currency” (regardless of how practical it is in everyday life) that’s free of direct influence from government monetary policy or insider control. That reason alone makes it totally unique and extremely valuable.
> The customary standard argument is that "bitcoin has its flaws but we are getting a great technology; we will do wonders with the blockchain". No, there is no evidence that we are getting a great technology — unless "great technology" doesn’t mean "useful". And at the time of writing —in spite of all the fanfare — we have done still close to nothing with the blockchain.
It’s a technology in its infancy, and it’s also clear that we are doing useful things with crypto:
• DeFi has incredible potential to upset the power imbalance of the banking industry. It is rapidly democratizing financial instruments which were previously only available to the big guys.
• NFTs, whilst something of a fad right now, have established means of recognising ownership of digital assets.
• A global currency like Bitcoin makes international payments possible in areas where it would not be otherwise.
Meanwhile Bitcoin is up another 50%!
Nassim has a bone to pick with Saifedean, whom he wrote the forward of "The Bitcoin Standard" apparently without understanding what Bitcoin was.
https://mobile.twitter.com/saifedean/status/1382408549343580...
I can’t see that happening, by any stretch of the imagination…
There's likely to be no need for the US Government to worry about, for example, confiscating Bitcoin as FDR's administration did with gold. Today Bitcoin is comparable to Facebook's market cap. Back in FDR's day the scale of US gold holdings in relation to the US economy and its asset base was radically greater than these entities are today (today gold holdings in the US are trivial compared to the US stock market or housing market). For that type of confiscation event to happen Bitcoin would have to become a super giant asset vs global currencies, which will only occur if the US Dollar, Euro and Yen collapse or something close to it. If that happens, all manner of confiscations will be on the table, a lot of very, very bad things will be occurring.