Tag Archives: Bitcoin

HowMuchThis Chart Reveals the Centralization of Bitcoin Wealth

Are blockchain and cryptocurrencies as over-hyped? Michael Roberts thinks so and explains why.Michael Roberts BlogBlockchains and the crypto crazeMichael Roberts

This is a no-brainer. Large-scale money laundering. The push to delete cash to control crime is quickly being met by the rise in use of blockchain "currencies."As Yves Smith has said, "prosecution futures."Liberty Blitzkrieg The 1% Has Started To Embrace Bitcoin - Why It Matters Michael Krieger

I wrote a piece on Forbes recently in which I described a bimetallic system of coinage and suggested how such a system might work - or rather, fail to work - for Bitcoin. These are the relevant paragraphs: In a bimetallic system, there are effectively two currencies which are linked by a fixed exchange rate set by fiat. At the end of the 19th century - the time of Bryan's speech - Britain's copper penny was worth 1/144 of one pound. Other denominations of coin were created by...

Here is a very familiar financial bubble, in pictorial form: And this is what it looks like, charted: In those days, of course, tulips at least had to be able to flower. But things have changed since then.There are three key stages in the lifecycle of a financial bubble:The "Free Lunch" period. A long, slow buildup of price distortion, during which investors convince themselves that rising prices are entirely justified by fundamentals, even though it is apparent to (rational) observers...

I have been following with some amusement the death and resurrection of the Bitfinex exchange. Bitfinex was forced to suspend trading after losing nearly 120,000 BTC in a hacking on 2nd August. But instead of going into liquidation, as we might expect, it reinvented itself - as a bank.Bitfinex had been doing bank-like things ever since its creation in 2012. It accepted deposits from some of its customers, and lent out those deposits to other customers - with the depositors' permission,...

I can't resist this. Blithely ignoring the utter mess he and his developers have managed to make of the cryptocurrency Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin has written a post on inflation and monetary policy. Wow. Is there no end to his talents? In this case, there is most definitely an end. Economics 101 is the end, pretty much. I don't claim to be the world's greatest economic expert - not by a LONG way - but the errors in this piece leapt out at me.  Firstly, inflation. Here is Buterin on...