Previously, we have discussed the issue of a currency’s backing. From comments and emails, we realize this topic could use a bit more illumination. And there are some related concepts that should be addressed at the same time. Let’s start with an analogy, the engineering concepts of accuracy and precision. These related words are oft-confused, […]
Bitcoin is often promoted as the antidote to the madness of fiat irredeemable currencies. It is also promoted as the replacement. Bitcoin is promoted not only as money, but the future money, and our monetary future. In fact, it is not. Why not? To answer, let us start with a look at the incentives offered […]
A month ago, we wrote about the bitcoin fork. We described the fork: Picture a bank, the old-fashioned kind. Call it Acme (sorry, we watched too much Coyote and Road Runner growing up). A group of disgruntled employees leave. They take a copy of the book of accounts. They set up a new bank across […]
We have noticed a proliferation of pundits, newsletter hawkers, and even mainstream market analysts focusing on one aspect of the bitcoin market. Big money, institutional money, public markets money, is soon to flood into bitcoin. Or so they say. We will not offer our guess as to whether this is true. Instead, we want to […]
Most false or irrational ideas about money are not new. For example, take the idea that government can just fix the price of one monetary asset against another. Some people think that we can have a gold standard by such a decree today. This idea goes back at least as far as the Coinage Act […]
Last week, we said: It is commonly accepted to say the dollar is “printed”, but we can see from this line of thinking it is really borrowed. There is a real borrower on the other side of the transaction, and that borrower has powerful motivations to keep paying to service the debt. Bitcoin has no […]
So bitcoin forked. You did not know this. Well, if you’re saving in gold perhaps not. If you’re betting in the crypto coin casino, you knew it, bet on it, and now we assume happily diving into your greater quantity of dollars after the fork. You don’t have a greater quantity of bitcoins; bitcoin has […]
That’s it. It’s the final straw. One of the alternative investing newsletters had a headline that screamed, “Bitcoin Is About to Soar, But You Must Act by August 1 to Get In”. It was missing only the call to action “call 1-800-BIT-COIN now! That number again is 800 B.I.T..C.O.I.N.” Is it about to go up? […]
During the recent exponential rise in the price of Bitcoin, there were jokes all over the Internet about the fall of the dollar—more than 80% in Bitcoin terms. Why not measure the value of the dollar in terms of tulips? One must measure the more variable unit with the more constant. Dollars are used to […]
