Tag Archives: Bitcoin

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. First a word from my sponsor – IPA’s kind enough to let me use some time writing these links up almost every week for the last 2.5 years, but there’s no such thing as a free link. If you’d go to www.poverty-action.org/donate and help us make our end-of-year budget I’d appreciate it. And, I’ll draw up a few winners (at random of course) for your choice of a) a tote bag from Ghana (long story), b) a very cheap lunch with some of...

Optimism is high with the price of the cryptocurrency up 1,438 per cent over the past 12 months, but the very factor enthusiasts like most about bitcoin is also one of its biggest drawbacks.…Enthusiasts like bitcoins because their supply is limited. The pace at which bitcoin “miners” can create new units automatically declines over time, with the maximum possible number of bitcoins fixed at 21 million. To converts, that limit means that bitcoins, unlike the fiat currencies issued by the...

Say what you want about the backers of Bitcoin, they managed to create a currency unit that acts in the insane fashion that matches the way money works in mainstream economic models. For anyone with any attachment to reality, it offers a very good real world explanation why the DSGE approach to economics is inherently useless. It is an extremely safe bet that this lesson will be completely missed by the mainstream economics profession.... Bond Economics Bitcoin As A Vindication Of...

Is Bitcoin a bubble? It's a natural question to ask—especially after Bitcoin's price shot up from $12,000 to $15,000 this week. So we decided to ask a couple of experts on bubbles what they thought: Brent Goldfarb is a business professor at the University of Maryland, and William Deringer is a historian at MIT. Both have done research on the history and economics of bubbles, and they talked to Ars by phone this week as Bitcoin continues its surge. Both academics saw clear parallels...

The skyrocketing value of Bitcoin is leading to soaring energy consumption. According to one widely cited website that tracks the subject, the Bitcoin network is consuming power at an annual rate of 32TWh—about as much as Denmark. By the site's calculations, each Bitcoin transaction consumes 250kWh, enough to power homes for nine days. Naturally, this is leading to concerns about sustainability. Eric Holthaus, a writer for Grist, projectsthat, at current growth rates, the Bitcoin network...

The Bitcoin mining industry consumes 22.5 TWh of energy annually, which amounts to 13,239,916 barrels of oil equivalent. With 12.5 bitcoins being mined every 10 minutes, that means the average energy cost of one bitcoin would equate to 20 barrels of oil equivalent....Bitcoin transactions are secured by computer miners, who are competing for rewards in the form of coins from the network. The more computation power they use, the better their chances. The drill rig is a computer, and hydraulic...

The Woz is apparently a nice guy. I hope he doesn't lose all his money storing it in Bitcoin.Zero HedgeSteve Wozniak: Bitcoin Is Better Than Gold And The Dollar Tyler DurdenSee alsoHere Comes Bitcoin Gold: Bitcoin Rally Falters On Latest Blockchain "Hard Fork"Tyler Durden Gold Is Better Store of Value Than Bitcoin – Goldman Sachs

Everything you wanted to know about cryptocurrencies from an MMT perspective.Modern Money MattersCrypto-Shilling Neil WilsonSee also Bitcoin transactions use so much energy that the electricity used for a single trade could power a home for almost a whole month, according to a paper from Dutch bank ING. Bitcoin trades use a lot of electricity as a means to make verifying trades expensive, therefore making fraudulent transactions costly and deterring those who would seek to misuse the...

Goldman has yet to speak. The billionaire banker tweeted on Tuesday that he wasn't completely sure about his stance on the red-hot cryptocurrency.Blankfein said he's "still thinking about bitcoin" and that he was not flat out endorsing or denouncing the digital currency.... Business InsiderLloyd Blankfein says he's still studying bitcoin, people were also 'skeptical when paper money displaced gold' Frank Chapparo

MMT Foolishness: Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) suggests that debt does not matter and governments can print at will creating a virtual utopia of constant growth. MMT, Keynesian, and Monetarism all suffer from the same fatal flaw: They promise something for nothing, in various ways. For discussion, please see Debunking MMT, Keynesianism, Monetarism: Reader asks “What theories do you believe?” Mish Reading List. Those who believe in the absurdity that a benevolent government would spend the...