Bitcoin Forum

This guy may have made sense, though I suspect he's a Democrat. Apart from early holders making a killing off Bitcoin, how has it benefitted the world economy? Your opinion though...

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said that Tech-bro's support for Trump and Vance seems to be related to cryptocurrency/ He said that in reality. Bitcoin is still economically useless and useful just for money laundering and extortion. He described Trump's call for the creation of some kind of national Bitcoin reserve as equivalent to the government rescuing a scandal-ridden, value- and environment-destroying industry.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/29/opinion/vance-trump-cryptocurrency.html 

I do not expect a nobel prize-winning economist to say something like this. They will not know anything about bitcoin but prefer to start misinforming people and feeding them with wrong information.

Bitcoin pave ways to other cryptocurrencies. Exchanges then were created. Wallets were created. Many other businesses were created. These businesses employed people. The people they employed buy things which is an indirect means of helping economy.

If you hold bitcoin and earn money from it, that will indirectly help economy.

How about miners. There are bitcoin miners. They create job and pay money for electricity.

If that man know how bitcoin and crypto has created jobs and opportunities to people, he will not say such thing.

Bitcoin does not only benefits the economy, bit its a life changer currency in which has many applicable uses in satisfying the entire financial needs of the people in this dilapidating economy all around the world, there are many opportunities and benefits that comes with the adoption of bitcoin for use in which we cannot start mentioning now, because they are numerous, those that have accepted to use bitcoin knows about many of the advantages and benefits in which they got served through bitcoin adoption in the economy.

First time on this forum, but this economist only exists to support the current scam that is known as fiat. That's basically any mainstream economist. I haven't trusted an economist since Milton. Milton had some sound arguments, but he never thought of dissolving the dependency on the government money supply.

If financial inclusion of the poor does not benefit the economy then what is?
If the creation of job does not benefit the economy then what is?
If technological advancement does not benefit the economy then what is?
If the increase of ability of an individual in purchasing power does not benefit the economy then what is?

I believe the person who stated that Bitcoin is economically useless failed to understand the features of Bitcoin and the technology behind it.

It is worth reading this article: https://www.pelicoin.com/blog/what-is-the-economic-impact-of-cryptocurrency that explains the economic impact of Bitcoin and its features.

I think the world has moved past the point where people would cling on to the word of a man just because of his title, degree or awards. Politicians, economists, and some so called financial experts have always labeled bitcoin as a scam and a currency used only by criminals and terrorists. Their story hasn’t changed one bit. I think they believe that if they can paint Bitcoin to be bad then people wouldn’t get involved in Bitcoin.

Before, he's right. Even so, there's been a small economic contribution already from the Bitcoin community.

But he should look at the actual scene on how Bitcoin is being used right now. There's so more to what he said but I disagree to what he has said.

Anyway, no matter what the title of someone has. It seems that it's no longer wisdom that they're saying but he's entitled for that.

Lol, and that's why we really love Bitcoin, everyone has it's own opinion, from a nobel price winning economist to a simply average joe you can find here. And with that, it's obvious that we have seen the effect of Bitcoin. We have the pandemic and there are reports that it has been used as a hedge by some wealthy people. So there's a lot of pros and cons of Bitcoin that even if it has existed for the last 10 years, everyone's opinion is totally different. Or every one is opinionated about it, even if they don't have the experience (I assumed that Paul Krugman doesn't own BTC, or at least do not understand what cryptocurrency is). So for me, his opinion doesn't matter to us, we've been here, done that and no one can take that away from us.

Why not? :D
You think highly of the prize because of some of those who won this award named after the inventor of the first weapon of mass destruction. If you check the whole list, you'll see it's filled with people who not only didn't deserve the prize but also they should not even be free!

As for Krugman's prize, it's in something very silly and not exactly economy related. It's not surprising he's saying some nonsense about Bitcoin at all. Not to mention that his statements are more political (bashing a candidate in the upcoming election) than being about Bitcoin itself.

"Environment-destroying"? It's 2024 and the crypto haters are still bitching and whining about crypto mining polluting the environment, even though many crypto miners moved to green energy.
Krugman and most macroeconomists are crypto haters. I get their point and I totally understand that Bitcoin/crypto has a questionable utility.
However, they are missing the point about "being your own bank" and holding a valuable asset in your own wallet, without relying on third parties and middlemen. I also agree that Trump's idea about a Bitcoin national reserve is kinda stupid and pointless.

It's a personal opinion and every individual can have a personal opinion on everything under the sun. I don't see any issue here. Bitcoin has a long list of influential haters. That includes people like Warren Buffet, Jemie Dimon, Almost all Democrat senators in US etc. It's just one addition to that list. It has no impact on Bitcoin whatsoever. The environment things a long-standing narrative against Bitcoin. So that's all fine. Haters gonna hate!

But one thing I agree about Trump. He is seeing that Bitcoiners in US need support due to the actions from various enforcement agencies and ongoing harassments. So Trump is very cleverly targeting this community and promising to become their support system. It is true that Trump will eventually win this election. The chance is very promising after the attack on him. But never trust a politician unless you see some actions in reality. Take a cautious approach in proclaiming yourself as an ardent Bitcoin supporter in US. Might not go well with the enforcement agencies in case Trump looses the election.  

If you’ve never been in a situation where you have your money held hostage by banks or governments, you might not appreciate what Bitcoin has to offer. If you haven’t lived long enough to watch inflation change people’s quality of life, you might not appreciate what Bitcoin has to offer. If you’ve never had to send funds quickly to another country, you might not appreciate what Bitcoin has to offer. I’m guessing the author has lived a life void of real world experiences.

A 71-year-old economist who won the Nobel Prize in 2008 because of his work on economic geography and global trade patterns shouldn't be taken seriously. The field of economics is broad and dynamic, and an individual, no matter how intelligent he is, cannot understand all its intricacies. Maybe he does not know about cryptocurrencies, and instead of learning, he chooses to throw shades.

This attack might also have a political undertone since Paul Krugman is a well-known critic of the Republican party. He once called it the "party of the stupid". He is still in the dark and might be disappointed by the steady growth of Bitcoin's popularity. Let him check the statistics of the currency that is highly used by criminals and his perspective will change.

Bitcoin is actually able to provide quite good changes to economic progress. For example, in El Salvador, after the country adopted bitcoin, the country's economy slowly experienced quite good improvements. Apart from that, if someone says that Bitcoin is widely used for fraud or used for money laundering. I think this is a very inappropriate opinion for this person to express. Because did he know that paper money is much more often used to do these evil things? The reason is that in 2022 the US Treasury Department and Europol also said that fraudsters were targeting paper money more than virtual assets. So with these facts, it means that saying that crypto or bitcoin is an asset that is widely used for criminal acts such as money laundering is very wrong.

Source: https://www.unit21.ai/blog/combat-crypto-fraud-via-fiat

So in my opinion, people who say that crypto assets or bitcoin are often used to commit criminal acts, I think those people only see the case from one side. Plus it seems like the person doesn't like bitcoin and doesn't study it at all. That's why this person only talks about Bitcoin from the bad side, which is actually very small.

It is wrong to say that Bitcoin is "economically useless". Everything new is attacked; this is how things go. But emphasising issues like money laundering ignores the whole picture. The truly big picture. Bitcoin is about financial freedom, folks. People can utilise Bitcoin in nations without sophisticated banks. Their pass to the marketplaces of the globe. That is actual economic value just there. Blockchain is amazing; its security is unchangeable. That is enormous for every type of company.

This goes beyond just money, folks. Its about empowering people and tearing down obstacles. Bitcoin upends the old systems, links us all, and generates new employment. Although some people might not understand it yet, that is normal. Bitcoin seems to me to be an innovation and a real tool for good. Believe me.

I would object if someone said that bitcoin has a big impact on the world economy but I also disagree when saying that bitcoin is completely useless for the economy. Bitcoin can create profits for many people, bitcoin-related services such as exchanges, ETFs, investors...all these things not only create jobs for some people but also bring significant tax revenue to the government. How can we say that bitcoin is useless for our economy?

I have no idea who this guy is and I suspect he doesn't even know what bitcoin is. In addition, I think we can see for ourselves everything from bitcoin, the advantages and disadvantages that bitcoin brings us. We don't need to ask someone to evaluate bitcoin for us, especially someone who doesn't know what it is.

I totally agree with you. Bitcoin can introduce a sustainable financial system regardless of rich and poor in today's mostly capitalist state system that advocates financial independence and ownership of its valuable assets. In his opinion, if useless, he should explain why Bitcoin's price skyrocketed in such a short period of time and that its upward trend is increasing. Bitcoin has emerged as an important hedge with any financial system.

Due to the decentralized system, investors are so interested in Bitcoin that it can create separate economic zones beyond the borders of different countries, which is happening now and will expand in the future.

Anything that has a value can be used for money laundering and extortion, actually it's harder for Bitcoin to be used for money laundering and extortion since the blockchain is public and can't be deleted, unlike traditional ledger in banks where they can delete or manipulate the data, if it's trade in physical, it has no trace and better than Bitcoin for illegal usage.

Speaking about economy, it's really a wide subject. If someone earn profit by investing in Bitcoin, it already has economy beneficial.

An economist making such a statement about an asset such as bitcoin fails from the standard of economist practice, because if he can make such a statement about bitcoin not having economic value how much more will he say about gold and other none non-transferable assets?

Trump's support for crypto was born out of his convictions about the technology and what role bitcoin can play in increasing the economic values in the state, take El Salvador for example, how far they have gone in their bitcoin state reserve.

Although bitcoin has a public blockchain but tracking it is not easy and we cannot deny that bitcoin has been a favorite medium for criminals. That's why the government has cracked down heavily on coin mixing services over the past year, as it's difficult to track criminals when they use bitcoin in conjunction with mixers. But we cannot blame bitcoin because criminals are also using fiat currency, banking system, cash for their crimes. After all, all illegal acts originate from human behavior, not the fault of fiat or bitcoin.

I agree with you, if someone can make money by investing in bitcoin then it means it has a positive impact on the economy. Bitcoin is creating many millionaires and billionaires in the world, so saying that it is useless is a stupid statement.

Where did you read that Bitcoin was ever supposed to do anything for anyone's economy? Bitcoin was supposed to help ordinary people (individuals) to have an alternative to the existing financial systems in order to be able to be their own bank and to be able to make transactions anytime, anywhere and with anyone. This "so-called" Nobel laureate thinks he can talk about Bitcoin because he got his prize before it even existed, but he is just another one of those who talk a lot, but in the end say nothing.

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After Obama, I no longer think that the people who give these awards have any credibility, so I think that they are obviously not motivated by sincere and honest intentions, but are influenced by politics and money. Of course, there are strange decisions even when you look at the past, which only confirms even more that something is rotten in the countries of Sweden and Norway (especially the latter).


Obviously, everything is allowed in the battle for power, and how much does it cost today to put a Nobel laureate on your payroll? They are probably cheaper than a good PR manager.

You are absolutely correct and I completely agree with you 100 %, people are only being judgemental towards Bitcoin merely without having a second thought of what they are talking about. However, I will personally assume that it could only be being Short sighted/failing and refusing to see the true potentials that Bitcoin holds over this years of it's invention, the importance of Bitcoin as one of the best if not the best when it come digital asset class can not be overly emphasis as it is too numerous to mention, but well those who antagonise Bitcoin in the past are still regretting and the same will surely happen to those doing it now that is if they don't come in good term with Bitcoin at the long run

It seems that this economist for more interested in the political side of things than in an unbiased and focused overview of the usefulness and uselessness of cryptos. Crypto projects create whole businesses, businesses create jobs and revenue, whereas revenue one way or another makes it into the global economy (after all, all those people employed within the industry are spending money on goods and services). And while perhaps Bitcoin and other major currencies are not primarily used as payment, that doesn't make them useless. It's like arguing that stocks are useless economically because they are seldom used for transactions.
It is an opinion piece, so it's allowed to be subjective. But that doesn't make it a fair assessment.

  Yes of course, we feel that Bitcoin is much more useful in an economy like this, Bitcoin is the main investment that we feel now with the existence of Bitcoin, most people can use Bitcoin to help their economy, this can help their needs that they may understand with Bitcoin.


  those who used to, and now adopt Bitcoin understand the Bitcoin cycle and also understand its path very well, we think this is a very good option in improving their economy, because now Bitcoin has a very broad market where investors will continue to invest in a fixed period of time.

I don't really care if bitcoin have benefited the world economy or not but what I know is that bitcoin have benefited lots of people,  not just only the early adopters but Real holders. There is no doubt that bitcoin serves as a store of value real holders and it has really improve alot of people financially. Only people who don't have understanding of what bitcoin is will criticise bitcoin and think it has no value to someone financially.  For me I think if bitcoin is serving as a store of value it is solving economical problem , it doesn't mean it must be country problems . This value is what the government can't give to it citizens but bitcoin hodlers are get value in bitcoin that means it is helping the economy somehow by adding value to individuals financially.

This is what I warned people about when Trump started to promote bitcoin. I mean you may or may not like trump, it's all based on your preferences but that's not the point at all, if he supports bitcoin then there will be plenty of people who will hate bitcoin just because trump likes it. I literally met with people who hate crypto just because they dislike all these tech-bro type of people, and that's why it's quite important to realize that we are talking about something that will hurt us on the long run.

This isn't really about just Trump, like lets assume Trump hated it but Biden/Harris loved it, even in that situation we would be talking about crypto being hated, just the other side this time. That is why whenever we are talking about a situation where one political side accepts bitcoin and starts to enjoy it, that usually means that we are talking about another side hating it just for the sake of it. This dude obviously dislikes it because trump likes it, there isn't really any other reason, he is not providing any data, he is just talking about his opinion, he isn't a noble winner just for his thoughts, he did something to get that, but this one is just a simple opinion he has.

And unfortunately until now we do not use the benchmarks of economists on the economy, both individual and global. Because basically his benchmark is different from the benchmark that wants to escape from the centralized system. As someone who has the image and title of economist, of course Paul Krugman must express what he has learned but never compares the economic situation in depth. What is meant is that if measured globally, of course Bitcoin has not had a significant impact because in terms of market capitalization it is still below Google and gold. Will Bitcoin surpass it in the future? not 100% sure but that does not mean that Paul Krugman's benchmark is now valid in the future.

I seriously disagree with him. Especially about the "money laundering and tax evasion" part. Fiat currencies are the #1 means for criminals to perform illicit activities. Why would they break the law on a transparent public blockchain network? They would easily get caught by the authorities. The "Nobel Prize-winning economist" doesn't know what he's talking about. Although, I admit that Bitcoin is being used more as a store of value than a currency. We can blame market volatility, high network fees, and limited supply for this. Not even the LN helps.

Trump is smart by embracing the revolution. Haters will lose as Bitcoin takes over the world by storm. We can say goodbye to people like Paul Krugman, Jim Cramer, Elizabeth Warren, and Warren Buffet for good. "He who laughs last, laughs best". Right? :D

It's not something new that economists are trying to label Bitcoin as a ponzi scheme. It has been happening since the early days of Bitcoin, and what I can say is that people who listened and followed the advice of such economists have lost a big opportunity not only to make a profitable online investment, but also lost the chance of finding jobs opportunities on the internet paying in BTC.

Fact is that only time can prove who is right and who is wrong on this story. And so far, time has been at the side of Bitcoin enthusiasts. Let's see where we are going to head on the following years.

I'm pretty confident. If Bitcoin were something useless, it would have already failed and the whales who are heavily investing on it would have never adopted the idea.

Apart from Bitcoin economic development, Bitcoin has created employment opportunities for thousands of unemployed guys like us.  Besides building careers on Bitcoin, Bitcoin is playing an important role in our global economic development.  There are many economic experts who strongly oppose Bitcoin in their case that Bitcoin is having a negative impact on the global economy.  But for those who are supporters of Bitcoin, Bitcoin is not having any negative impact on the global economy. But the world's biggest politicians are now investing in Bitcoin, and no matter how much the global economy opposes Bitcoin, it won't be able to stop Bitcoin's growth for now.

Somehow people believe on things they know and ignore then talk about shit on something they don't know so don't expect on those people to say good about bitcoin since for sure they always believe on fiat.

But we should not get stressed or take those word seriously since even they don't like bitcoin still this coin earned success without their support. We see the global reach became more higher then there's a chance for bitcoin to became well adopted to more countries in the world.

Right now we see how fast the growth accumulated by bitcoin and provably we can see more for this coin especially that lots of people are showing some great interest for its profitability also the technology.

What sense? Is it when he said that ' Bitcoin is economically useless and is only being used for money laundering' ? But, I think that was only an insult if you are a true Bitcoiner. Bitcoin is a currency, so what can we expect? It is normal that it can also be used to those negative things but what about other currencies and other payment methods?

Bitcoin is only decentralized and this gives those criminals an edge but there are now solutions unto it. In an exchange, crypto casino, etc.. there are now KYC's on them. As for the question if Bitcoin helps the economy, I think this one is already obvious and that is, the answer is yes. The first one is; when people make a profit out of it and they will now have a money to avail the products and services offered in their country. That should make the economy of that country healthy.

Another one that I can think of; is when a country uses Bitcoin as their main currency because their own currency is not performing well. Bitcoin's properties E.g. its limited amount of supply can make it impossible for the currency to collapse. Bitcoin as a national reserve is I think not a new thing and many governments are already doing this even before and so far they are still doing well.

First of all, I personally do not agree with the idea of the government using Bitcoin as a federal reserve, but if it's actually being used, that's when we can see if it''s going to help the economy at large or not. But so far, I believe that Bitcoin has contributed to the financial growth of a lot of individuals, that ouldn't have been able to gain such financial profit if Bitcoin were not there, but their Bitcoin investment yielded such a lot of profit that they were able to establish a big business or company that helped in creating job opportunities for other citizens. That's to say that Bitcoin is never useless to the economy.

Well, there's nothing anti Bitcoiners can say against Bitcoin just to discourage some people from Bitcoin. What the economist forgot to mention is that the highest rate of money laundering was committed with fiat money and not Bitcoin.

How will an economist say an invention which serves as an alternative means of payment is economically useless? The young man seems more like a politician to me and will only be saying things to please his pay master. Just maybe, he should pay some under developed countries a visit then he would better appreciate the economic impact of bitcoin in those places. Despite the fact that Bitcoin was originally intended to serve as a means of payment, people still saw investment potentials in them and are utilising it so well that many, especially in underdeveloped countries are living comfortably from the returns they get on their investments in bitcoin. I do not see how this is not economically useful enough. I see no sense in all he's saying.

You are right, Krugman, that Keynesian economist, a Democrat, who made a prediction like this (https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/revolutions/miscellany/paul-krugmans-poor-prediction):


So, no matter how much of a Nobel Prize winner he is, he has also made a few failed predictions, and this is not the only one.

His opinion on Bitcoin is steeped in political ideology more so now that Trump and Vance clearly support it. Let's keep in mind that Biden-Harris at least until recently were for the launch of CBDCs, for an extra 30% tax on miners and against the right to self-custody of Bitcoin.

Didn't care to read the garbage opinion. However, on what basis shall we decide whether something is economically useless or not?

All the Bitcoin in circulation right now is worth more than a trillion US dollars. Is that amount economically useless?

Bitcoin functions as a transparent, global, immutable, immediate, peer-to-peer, censorship-resistant payment system 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Is that not economically useful?

I can make use of my Bitcoin to buy a piece of land and build a house. Is it not economically useful?

And then he continue his attacks with his latest write up,


https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/01/opinion/crypto-trump.html

But as what most of us have said, even if he is a Nobel prize winner, and perhaps he should remain an economist and not become a political pundits because he will have to lose a lot of his credibility.

So we might have another bullish inverse Krugman?

Krugman is right about a lot of things in this article, and wrong about one big thing.

He's right that Bitcoin (and generally, cryptos) do not serve any mainstream purpose outside of speculation.

Satoshi created Bitcoin for one reason: to allow people who could not use a normal bank to be able to trade numerically-delineated value. He absolutely did not envision Bitcoin being used in a mainstream way for everyday transactions, and the technical architecture of blockchain makes that impossible. Satoshi never meant to Bitcoin to be used by "everybody", or even a "lot" of people: the problem Bitcoin (and blockchain generally) solves is an extremely narrow one.

Subsequent to Satoshi and his vision, however, many Bitcoin holders started ascribing things about Bitcoin that simply weren't true, and could never be true: that it could replace the US dollar or it could replace normal banks for mainstream everyday transactions.

Paul Krugman, like many (most?) who have heard a lot about Bitcoin but don't understand computer software architecture obviously believed this misinformation, and took it at face value that Bitcoin was "supposed to" do all of these things it has not, after 14 years, done.

Hence Krugman's conclusion:


In the context in which he is speaking, he's right about this.

But Krugman is wrong to say that Bitcoin serves no economic purpose. Speculation is a valuable product, and one that has been in existence since human beings started trading with one another thousands of years ago. Bitcoin, as a meme investment, is useful for people, and will continue to be useful for people--as will meme investments in other cryptos, and other digital currencies.

Besides investing in bitcoin, I am still using bitcoin to transfer money and make payments to some overseas customers and services, so is he correct in saying that bitcoin is only used for speculative purposes?

Bitcoin was not created to be a speculative asset, but we turned it into a speculative asset. So clearly you and he are wrong in saying that bitcoin doesn't serve any mainstream purpose. It was our behavior and usage that distorted the original concept of bitcoin's creation and now we blame it, LOL.

What is Bitcoin and what it can do, we need evaluation from the world community. None of us have the right to judge anything about it, you or that guy or I don't represent other people or this world. So what you say is just a representation of you and there is no guarantee that you are right and the rest of the world is wrong.

See? He used even those words: "large scale". And also "big server farms". If he didn't think about mainstream, why he used words like that?

So, is it "a lot of people", when you think about "over 100,000 nodes"? And again, there are "the specialist server farms" mentioned.

Edit: See? When typing "for 6.8 billion people" of course he thought only about a small niche.

Exactly. Economists won't admit Bitcoin is a real currency, especially when they're tied to the corrupt Fiat money system. It's in their best interests to side with banks. Not even the institutionalization of Bitcoin will convince them. If you're smart, just ignore these jerks. Time has proven them wrong as Bitcoin becomes bigger and stronger than ever. Adoption is rising, with some countries going as far as making it legal tender. It doesn't seem BTC will be going anywhere soon.

What will fail is Fiat as inflation continues to undermine people's trust in central banks. Once the vast majority of people worldwide start using Bitcoin on top of Fiat currencies, banks will be doomed. At least, that's what many bitcoiners dream of. Who knows what the future will bring? :D

Only few will get rich from cryptocurrencies, it's just economically impossible for everyone to become rich.

Simple fact.

I don't know who those economists are and what remarkable achievements they have achieved. But I believe people like Elon, Trump, Larry Fink or Michael J. Saylor would not be stupid to invest billions of dollars in BTC for no reason. I don't think so-called billionaires are stupid enough to not know what they are doing when they spend billions of dollars investing in bitcoin.

Bitcoin is useless to those who missed the opportunity with it, who were not able to make significant profits from it and now they started spreading negative things about it with many wishing people to become like them. Those are just selfish, jealous actions of losers, not fair comments from an economist.

Don't forget that these economists are divided into two those who accept realities and support them while the others are those who are critics of evolution and advancement. Since the evolution of the financial system, some of economics are doing so much to see that its won't work out well.  The idea is that the traditional system has been working for years now and moving into the digital system they are scared that the practice of Bitcoin and another digital system of money is not safe and is dangerous to the financial system. One main reason the government funds cannot be converted to Bitcoin, USDT, or any other digital currencies is because they do not want to take a chance for scams, and hacks in their system. Few clicks and billions of moneys has been swept off from the country's treasury.

No, he's saying it is not used for mainstream purposes, e.g. replacing everyday credit card and cash transactions for instance. After 14 years and hundreds of billions of dollars, Bitcoin processes perhaps 0.00001% of the world's transactions on a daily basis.

Blockchain is a great architecture for what it was designed to do, but the problem it was trying to solve is very narrow.



I agree with all of that--and that was the whole point of my post: that Bitcoin is almost exclusively a speculation instrument today, not anything Satoshi envision.



Absolutely wrong. That was true before the Bitcoin whales started asking for government handouts.

Now that that Bitcoin is political, every citizen needs to form an opinion about it since we all have to pay for this.

Live by the sword, die by the sword...



His idea of "large scale" here was thousands of users, not billions. If you told Satoshi that he designed a system that would replace the world's daily credit card transactions he'd say you were out of your mind.

Satoshi wasn't a moron, and he knew very well that blockchain would never scale to anything close to mainstream.


Nodes are not users. The network cannot process mainstream loads no matter how many nodes are on it.


No, he's making the point that the system would never scale to that level.

Bitcoin is the worst currency for money laundering because blockchain is an open book and every transaction is listed publicly. Also, blockchain analysis technologies are advanced in tracing and if anyone tries to launder money, they are usually traced and discovered.
Paul Krugman has no idea what he is talking about and that's a huge problem with many famous people. Bitcoin has many benefits and one of them is the decentralization of this currency, it gives you the possibility to be your own bank and it also solves the problem of trusting a 3rd party while making transactions online. Isn't this a revolutionary?

I think that they are either:
1. Bored.
2. Have their own interests.
3. Someone pays them to say stupid things about Bitcoin.

Bitcoin and USDT are discussed a lot, and the economic world is divided. Traditionalists are wary about change since they've always done things a certain way. Innovators believe these new technologies can transform our banking systems.

Now I get security worries. We all know hacker and fraud horror stories. But let's not let those stories obscure digital currency' amazing benefits. Higher transparency, lower transaction costs, and global financial inclusion are our goals. This possibility to democratize finance is worth fighting for.

I've always innovated. I think digital currencies are future. But we must do it well. We need strict laws and security to mitigate those threats. People must be taught how to utilize these devices safely and ethically.

We can all give our own opinion about Bitcoin but it wouldn't make sense when we are trying to tag Bitcoin to look bad in the eyes of people that have less knowledge about it. If he thinks he hate Bitcoin, that's fine but it must not be to this extent. There are countries that are holding high amounts of Bitcoin in their portfolio and the value keep increasing as the price of Bitcoin keeps going bullish. I think he should talk more about Bitcoin not adding value but we have seen many holders that have made a lot of money from Bitcoin. Just imagine buying Bitcoin at low price and selling at a very high price, this is profits and no one wants to think that Bitcoin has no value at all when their are so many investors making huge money from it.

The benefits are small but it is only small as Bitcoin has not been adopted globally. People can use Bitcoin for buying and selling in some part of the world but it is not widely accepted yet therefore there is not much Bitcoin can do to the economy but because of the profits that people are getting from their investment in Bitcoin or from trading, they are using those profits to buy things or make establishment that contribute to the economy as they are paying taxes and hiring workers which they also pay them. Bitcoin is not economically useless, those words are just coming from an economist that do not understand Bitcoin therefore he is going to call Bitcoin useless. Bitcoin is a valuable assets and anybody that owns Bitcoin can testify to this fact because they have experience what Bitcoin can do.

Not everybody needs to see the importance of Bitcoin as a decentralized digital currency, and it's very okay for such people, because weather they believe in Bitcoin or not, it can never affect its price value, which is one quality I so much love about the currency. So regarding the statement said by the economist who called Bitcoin useless, I'm very happy another well renowned author and economist, in the person of Robert Kiyosaki was able to recognize the importance of Bitcoin as an asset worthy of investment for long term.


https://www.talkimg.com/images/2024/08/02/5PwbN.jpeg    https://www.talkimg.com/images/2024/08/02/5PdMw.jpeg

Does it surprise you? Because I am not surprised at all, modern economists have forgotten completely the role that gold had and that it can still play on the current economy, so it is obvious that when they take a look at bitcoin which is an even better form of gold, they are not really going to appreciate it and instead they will attack it, as it has happened here, however a form of money that offers the ability to buy goods all over the world with it, with an improved level of privacy and that it can retain its value way better than fiat does is without a doubt valuable for a great deal of the population.

And you are wrong as well.
Bitcoin is not for speculation. It is also not a "meme investment".

Bitcoin is a currency and a sophisticated payment system that is working globally and 24/7 without ever shutting down. That gives it the value that goes up and down then it attracts investors who see it only as an investment.

You might think that, but 99% of Bitcoin holders just see it as an investment instrument.

As a payment system, Bitcoin is terrible, costing up to $30 per transaction and taking up to 30 minutes. That's insane compared to an ordinary credit card transaction. That's why almost nobody uses it that way.

And Bitcoin isn't even private, and using Bitcoin for a payment is much more dangerous than using a credit card since your transaction is publicly viewable forever.

So Bitcoin does not have any unique practical use, thus it's only useful (and very useful at that) as an investment instrument. People buy "Bitcoin" because they thing "Bitcoin" will go up in value--and for almost no other reason.

There is no way to measure that, so that number is purely your guess.

FYI credit card transactions take months to become finalized. Bitcoin's transactions take on average 10 minutes to become finalized (aka irreversible).
As for the cost, nobody ever claimed that Bitcoin is a "perfect" payment system. It has its shortcomings but it still is a payment system that works. The only decentralized payment system in fact. That's not to mention that credit card fees are percentage wise so unless you are paying for peanuts, it is going to cost a lot more than a bitcoin transaction that with current fee rates barely surpasses half a dollar.

Only if you live in a dictatorship without certain fundamental rights ;)

What does it even mean that he calls these people "Tech-bro's" that's mocking and IMO is unbecoming of a Nobel Prize winner. So is tech investment a bad thing according to this man? Is it worse than buying bonds?
So, another guy claims that bitcoin is useless. I remember people saying the same thing about The Internet. I can tell you a story. My father used to be like that. I remember when I started going to the gym as a teenager, he found out and said that it's a useless activity. It will only make me tired, cost me time, I'll have health issues and I could be doing some house work instead. A few years later he could no longer carry heavy objects, so he'd ask me to do the lifting, but it evolved into literally every other thing that required strength. I'd unscrew rusty bolts for him and take doors of the hinges.
Bottom line, we often don't see uses of certain items and activities for a long time, until we actually get into a situation where they're needed. You think you don't need a fire extinguisher until something catches fire. Krugman has lived his whole life without bitcoin so he doesn't see the need for it, but nowadays we live in a different world than people in the 20th century.

Let's see: https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-November/014815.html
If he didn't think about billions of users, then why he used those comparisons with Visa?

Wow, seriously? You've never used a credit card before? Because if you had, you'd know a transaction takes a few seconds typically, not "months".

I really didn't think it was possible to exist in our modern world without using a credit card. Congratulations :).


Huh? All human societies have criminals in them, and they exploit public ledgers like Bitcoin's in order to victimize people.

Simply "having" rights--as all people do--doesn't mean those rights are automatically protected. That requires a good government, good law enforcement, and personal diligence--and even a little luck.




Because in terms of what it accomplishes, Bitcoin does, roughly, what Visa does--in terms of a single transaction.

In other words, Bitcoin could have been described (before the understanding of chain analysis) as, "like a Visa transaction that is resistant to government interference". That is just one narrow context though. You could describe anything like that, e.g. a bicycle is like a motorcycle you power yourself--but that doesn't mean its the same thing or has the same capabilities--and anybody, say, like Satoshi, using that analogy would assume you knew that...

Calling Bitcoin "useless" is a means to scare people away from it. After all, big banks and governments don't want to lose their cut. They want the corrupt Fiat monetary system to keep chugging along as usual. If the aforementioned entities talked positively about Bitcoin, the masses would abandon Fiat. And that's something they don't want.

Economists saying that BTC is useless, are none other than "government puppets". Eventually, all of the world's governments will recognize BTC as an alternative currency the more it grows in popularity and mainstream adoption. They wouldn't want to miss the taxation benefits BTC provides, would they? Rich people already recognized Bitcoin's potential. So it should only be a matter of time before prices skyrocket. Are you ready for the next "pump"? :D

People like this when you respect them better when you see them from afar. That way you'll continue to rate based on what they have done and the views you see than portray, but when you go deeper and see where they stand you might get disappointed.
We have a noble prize winner from my country too whom the whole country looked up to. Growing up he was used as the SI unit of intelligence (if you know what I mean). Fast forward to now, he's a strong supporter of our current government which is a disgrace. The government is so bad that whoever defends it sounds stupid and that's what this noble prize winner has turned to.

Another thing is these men are pretty old school and have refused to evolve. They believe in the traditional way of things. I read through the article and he makes sense to a certain degree and that's what I've come to conclude that it's just his opinion. I strongly always say that we shouldn't give people too much relevance in the Bitcoin space, not politicians like Trump. not Tech billionaires like Elon Musk, not Financial sector billions like Jamie Dimon, and certainly not noble prize winners like Paul Krugman.
Each of these people has their own opinions and their opinions are shaped by different things but its just their opinion, they're not bitcoin.

Absolutely correct Sir, Bitcoin renders Swift and remote access to our funds anywhere without restrictions and performs 24/7 on the clock ⌚,secures your wealth from thief and no one will even know how wealthy you are not even your spouse, it stabilizes you regardless of inflation rates even though there is a fall in price the numbers you are holding are still in tact and when there is a big rise in price you ain't gonna loose rather you may have double or multiple of your initial investment, I love transacting with BTC and cryptos and I also prefer it to transacting with banks except for reference purposes or in filing a suit or court cases when there is dispute between customers.

I've come a long way with crypto and Bitcoin to start reacting to what someone said about Bitcoin no matter who they are or who they claimed to be, I don't care, Bitcoin is decentralised in a centralised world, of cos it will look like its economically useless, only those who understand the usefulness of decentralisation will consider Bitcoin, mind you, I won't be ssurpise if this fella have some Bitcoin too but pretending like its useless.

If Bitcoin is that useless I wonder why billionaires around the world are buying, are they stupid? Let's forget this for a second and ask yourself if Bitcoin is uselful for you, as for me its more than useful, this is the most legit innovation for me since I was born, I abandoned my bank totally, I stored my money in Bitcoin and since the past years now I never regret that I did, my country's currency keeps going down and down, and I feel extremely safe, thanks to Bitcoin .

Try reading my post again.

If you are just interested in transaction being made and don't care about reversibility, then it takes a second for a bitcoin transaction to be made and propagate through the majority of the network.
On the other hand most credit card companies give you more than 6 months time to "reverse" your transaction.

Reversibility or charge-back is very big risk with bank transfers, Paypal and credit cards.

With Bitcoin, there is almost no risk of reversibility. In theory, there is risk but in reality, the risk is almost zero. Because Bitcoin network is very decentralized and cost of 51% attack to reverse Bitcoin transactions is very costly and risk of wasting money for an attack while does not succeed to gain anything is very high.

• https://blog.lopp.net/how-many-bitcoin-confirmations-is-enough/
• Calculators
  
  • https://github.com/jlopp/bitcoin-confirmation-risk-calculator
  • https://web.archive.org/web/20181231045818/https://people.xiph.org/~greg/attack_success.html

I don't understand. I've had hundreds of transactions reversed in my years of using a credit card, and it's never taken more than a few minutes after the person in charge of doing so initiates the reversal. This process is way faster with a credit card than it is with Bitcoin because the transaction speed of a credit card is 10-100x faster than Bitcoin.

And no Bitcoin transaction takes "a second", they can take up to 30 minutes which is exactly what Bitcoin and blockchain were designed to do. And each transaction can cost up to $30, whereas the most expensive credit card transaction only costs a dollar or two.

Satoshi never envisioned Bitcoin replacing mainstream credit card transactions, and the blockchain architecture makes that impossible.

The only digital currency system that can compete with worldwide credit card transactions is Haypenny (https://haypenny.net/whitepaper.html), which completes safe, decentralized, redundantly stored transactions in approximately two milliseconds of internal time. This is a system designed to handed many billions of transactions per say, and do so at a fixed price of $0.005 now and forever. But the architecture is very different than blockchain as it must be.

This is a scrapped reasoning for one who doesn't know what Bitcoin stands for and aims at.

As I have had so many useful financial encounters with Bitcoin, I can't follow others to give a condemnable remark on Bitcoin all because people are using Bitcoin for money laundering and extortion. That would be so weird of me

What I can deduce from this, people easily give negative remarks about Bitcoin when they fall victim to a scam or hear news of how people use it wrongly. They will hate it because of that, without trying to know other useful part of it of how it has helped people's financial status.

Nevertheless, the opinion of economist, Paul Krugman doesn't count and it doesn't have any single weight to disrupt Bitcoin from reaching its goal of being widely accepted globally in the future

Krugman is a hack.  "I’m on the transitory side, although not with high certainty" - May 2021.  He dismissed concerns about a housing bubble in the 2000s.  Duh.  Krugman keeps arguing that deficits (and consequently debt) don't matter.  He opposed letting people keep more of the money they make.  Trump's election in 2016 "would trigger a global recession “with no end in sight.”"

And the best (most idiotic) from 1998:

He is a good contrary indicator to what is good for the world and freedom.  "Do the opposite."

I don't know much about Paul Krugman, but scientifically it seems that he is indeed an economist and is famous for his accuracy in his predictions. I read on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman.

Is his opinion correct? I think that's just a small part. There are still many users who are helped by crypto. There are still many people whose economic conditions are getting better. We just need to see evidence of how Bitcoin develops in the future.

This goes beyond that, economists are part of the system and most of them do not see how the economy could work other than by employing the same concepts governments implement right now, so bitcoin that does not follows those principles is alien to them, and if we add that many governments still view bitcoin with suspicious eyes due to its nature, then it is obvious the majority of the economists will be against it too, so I am not surprised when reading someone like him making those kind of statements.

Paul Krugman is the economist who predicted that the internet would have no more impact on the economy than the fax machine and that it would die out by 2005.

I think Krugman should be forced to return his Nobel Prize for making such an idiotic statement. The internet has had a massive impact on the worldwide economy, and it has certainly not died out.


www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-internet-quote-2013-12

Einstein very had bad marriage advice. Should he return his Nobel in physics because of that?

Many millions of people failed to predict... thousands of things. What did you buy your Bitcoin at, anyhow? If it's anything more than $0.10 per Bitcoin, then you are the same as Krugman.

This man is a Bitcoin hater. He has been spreading negative statements about Bitcoin since many years ago. So, it is not surprising if he keeps criticizing Bitcoin until now. There are some big questions related to this article, why the media blow up his statement? and why the media asks him about Trump-Vance strategy supporting Bitcoin? I smell something suspicious with the media, they are likely trying to reduce Trump-Vance popularity. This is all related to the political issue of the American presidential election.  :-\

Here are Paul Krugman's statements since many years ago:
1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/markrogowsky/2014/10/05/krugmania-as-bitcoins-price-falls-the-nyt-pundit-takes-a-very-premature-victory-lap/
2. https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/news/2014/10/06/why-economist-paul-krugman-still-hates-bitcoin.html
3. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/paul-krugman-nyt-bitcoin-crypto-digital-payments-fraud-ponzi-scheme-2022-9
4. https://www.investopedia.com/news/what-paul-krugmans-problem-bitcoin/

By the way, it is non sense if he said Bitcoin is economically useless. There will be no big players in Bitcoin investment if it is useless. Microstrategy, Tesla, and other big companies won't be interested in holding Bitcoin if it doesn't bring any value in economical aspect. Just ignore any statements of Paul Krugman, he only wants to spread the hates and negative perception on Bitcoin!

Yeah, with all that fancy learnin book knowledge.

Opinions are opinions. What matters is what Bitcoin truly is and what benefits it provides to holders. I believe most so-called experts and wealthy individuals tag Bitcoin as a "useless cryptocurrency" out of pure hate. They don't care if BTC continues to grow in mainstream adoption and market price. All these people want is to destroy Bitcoin so Fiat continues to dominate the world as usual. They're all sided with banks and governments.

I'd just ignore these jerks and keep buying and holding Bitcoin as usual. We'll be the ones laughing at the end once the world becomes "hyperbitcoinized". Who knows if BTC will go as far as becoming legal tender in every country in the world? With how fast Bitcoin's been growing since day one, anything's possible. Hold on tight as this is going to be a wild ride. :D

Looking at the OP's topic, I was forced to open the thread and go through the message he was trying to pass and all I've got to say is that the so called economist and noble price whatever is saying thrash I'm even wondering how he won the noble price, I think he's a one of those Bitcoin haters who can't stand it's decentralization and is still hoping it would be controlled by the government. Well, if my instincts are right about him then he's a loser cause Bitcoin is a decentralised crypto asset that is ran by it's miners and everyday users without the control of any institution, financial sectors or the government and that's one way it's benefited the world economically not to talk of the transaction speed when carrying out transactions anywhere at any point in time. Moreover when it comes to asset class Bitcoin has proved over time to be a very good asset for investment and I won't be suprised if such hypocrite called Paul Krugman is holding Bitcoin currently.

What a dumb comparison, even dumber than Krugman's prediction about the internet.
Marriage advice has nothing to do with Einstein's profession which was physics. Dear God.

Did you flunk out of kindergarten? You have the reasoning and intellect of a 2 year old.

he would rather not have it and be a slave to the bank forever.
his view on Bitcoin is valid, because he may not like Bitcoin. but of course, it will get strong opposition from all of us who have felt how to get economic benefits from investing and using Bitcoin.
I wonder how he would feel if in the future the government would finally legalize Bitcoin as legal tender in most parts of the world. would he still hold on to his opinion?

For real, this guy is making a point, but the issue is that people do not look at it from the economics perspective but from the investment perspective that can only enrich some sectional individuals (if it works because there are risks involved) but not a country. Can Bitcoin be used to adjust a country's inflation? No. Can it be reasonably used to secure a national reserve? No.

Trump is just a desperate person who is using people's weakness against them. I wonder how a country would feel if it had a $100B domicile in Bitcoin in its reserve and Bitcoin dropped significantly as it does during the bearish season. Such an amount could have devalued to $25B in some situations if we consider the past record to judge. Now tell me, do you think the National Reserve is a joke? Think of it, some central banks are using the reserve to adjust their FX deficit most time where they could remove about $2B at times for the national economic stability.

How would they feel if they were selling their Bitcoin at a cheap price when they bought it expensive and they couldn't wait because the matter is of pressing national need? These are just a few of many reasons to discourage any economist from going in the way of Trump and Bitcoin bigots. Notwithstanding, Bitcoin still has its usefulness aside from what Paul Krugman claimed.

Krugman is often wrong.  And not just because he is anti-liberty, but because his predictions are often way off-base.  Of course he has to say certain things because his masters want power and they need people like him to help them obtain it and keep it.

I'm not going to educate you here because the more things you say, the better.
I've already proven how little you know about politics in other threads (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5505391.msg64401828#msg64401828) and now I see you ranting about bitcoin.

Technically, you can pay a million dollars for a bitcoin transaction, but it won't change the fact that you can get a first block confirmation for under $10. The tx will get propagated within seconds. If you think it's reversible after a few seconds because it hasn't been confirmed yet, just prove it. Send me some BTC, pay $6, which is going to be 5x lower fee than what you claim it costs to send a tx, so you'll have a very slow confirmation time and then reverse it, because according to you it takes up to 30 minutes to send a tx paying $30, so you'll have 5x that time of time to get your money back. More than enough if you ask me, should be easy ;)

Certainly for very large transactions, Bitcoin can be cheaper than a bank transfer sometimes. And faster. But that is perhaps 0.01% of the world's daily transactions.


Bitcoin transactions are "reversible" in the same way credit card transactions are: you issue a new transaction to counteract the first one.

If you understood basic technical stuff, you'd understand that a bank does not delete records when they "reverse a transaction". I'm not going to spend a bunch of time trying to explain it all here, but if you google it, you'd learn that... that's not how it works.

Just want to point out this is not a good argument - the bitcoin as part of the nation's reserves thing. Nobody would care that Bitcoin price temporarily dropped. Do people freak out that the US owns hundreds of billions of dollars of Gold when the Gold price drops? Nope. These are permanent national reserves. US won't care one bit about the volatility of Bitcoin. The point of putting it in the national reserve is that it is hard money and is a useful asset, like Gold, for the nation to hold, simply in order to increase the value of the nation's permanent resources.

Your argument makes it sound like you think the US is gonna be trading Bitcoin or something haha. That is not what anyone is talking about.

Anyway, Trump is a corrupt traitorous deranged lying idiot criminal so nobody should put any stock in anything he says. He's just trying to buy votes from gullible people with his suddenly crypto-friendly talk. Best thing for Bitcoin is going to be a United States that still functions and remains a free country, so we need Trump behind bars for his crimes, definitely not in the White House again.

As far as Krugman goes, he clearly hasn't bothered to research what Bitcoin actually is. It's pretty dang common among economists to just assume Bitcoin is some sort of scam because it isn't part of the traditional financial system, and so they just write it off and never put any effort into understanding what it is.

He's not totally wrong. I get where his coming from as an Economists. Economically, Bitcoin has actually only served as a means of money laundering, and terrorism. But to individuals, ( and for some corporation these days) it is used as a means of investment. Not totally though as most of these corporations still try to find illicit activities and hoarding of currencies through Bitcoin.

Bitcoin though may have actually helped alot of economies, but that is because of the individuals investments and adoption not through the government.

The most interesting part of the comment is "Bitcoin is still economically useless and useful just for money laundering and extortion", tell me the regularly used fiat isn't used for the same too. Is it therefore necessary to put away the use of fiat simply because of the negative uses it's involved in?

People often give negative views on the use of crypto generally but in no distant time we get them changing their stance and apologizing, this wouldn't be any different, I am patiently waiting for him to do the same.

So you're saying that you agree with the economist that Bitcoin is used for money laundering and tax evasion? I'd suggest you do your own research and see for yourself whenever that's truly the case or not. Based on facts alone, most criminals prefer Fiat for illegal activities because of its versatility. They try to avoid Bitcoin because of its transparency. Would they be dumb enough to use a public chain like BTC to get caught by the authorities? I guess not.

The comments made by the economist are nothing more than pure FUD. It's an attempt to try to lure people away from Bitcoin. But it won't work. Especially when BTC is open to anyone. It has been marketed as the "next digital Gold", so don't expect it to go anywhere soon. Set yourself forward 10 years from now, and Bitcoin will be bigger and stronger than ever. Who wants to use Fiat when its purchasing power will diminish over time (inflation)? If you want to remain a slave, use Fiat. But if you want freedom, choose Bitcoin instead. We, Bitcoiners will be the ones laughing at the end. Just you wait and see. :D

To be fair, so far bitcoin has not had any significant or notable impact on a country's economy, let alone the world economy. Bitcoin is still very new, too small and has not been used much outside of investment purposes. So it is not wrong to say that bitcoin's impact on the economy is insignificant but this may change in the future.

But I will disagree with you if you say that bitcoin is only used for money laundering or terrorism. Money laundering and terrorism have existed for hundreds of years, while bitcoin has only appeared in the past 15 years. So what did criminals use before bitcoin was invented? So, accusing bitcoin of being just for money laundering is just an accusation based on the jealousy and envy of those who missed out on the bitcoin revolution. They speak ill of bitcoin because they feel jealous and cannot accept the fact that there are many bitcoin owners who are becoming richer than them.

What you and those who like to slander bitcoin should do is join the bitcoin revolution instead of spending time slandering bitcoin or spreading false news about it, because that won't make you better.

I hope you can read this again and point out your faults yourself. Did you mean that the fact you are investing in Bitcoin, you do not care about your investment anymore and losses are nothing? C'mon!!! I wonder what many of you think about investments. Bitcoin is not a certainty but an asset, and if it is an asset, it should be dynamic. This means that you might not know what it would do at all times no matter how you think you know its market psychology and one may lose if care is not taken. Talking about asset loss, it is worse with Bitcoin and other cryptos compared to traditional assets, particularly the fiat currency which the world still relies on as their national reserve. Are you telling me that an asset (Bitcoin) that could reduce the national reserve worth to lower than 4 times the value it was purchased will not be worrisome to the nation? If you do, then you are joking. The management of the national resources is not a child's play that you will just view shabbily.

Haters are always going to hate Bitcoin. And there's nothing we can do about it. Regardless of some negative comments by wealthy people and mainstream media, Bitcoin continues to grow at a non-stop rate. Its legitimate use cases are expanding each day. Such is the case that now institutional investors are deeply interest in Bitcoin. Do you think they'd be interested in it if it was a "criminal's coin"? I don't think so.

This is nothing more than pure FUD. I've said this many times already. It's time to ignore these "jerks" and continue to buy and "hodl" BTC as usual. Don't be surprised if BTC goes as far as replacing Gold in the future. It's the next big thing. :D

Non-American here. I don't know what's going on with all the democrat vs republican things there, what are their key differences in how they view economy and in this case bitcoin.

I need someone who understand very well about this to enlighten me, since this political view might play a big role in economy and cryptocurrency regarding of which side would win the presidential election in America.

Economically, Trump is an isolationist and a racist: he believes that the USA should not trade with other countries, and that the US should make everything here. He also sides with white supremacists in the USA who believe the White Race is superior to all others.

Specifically, Trump is calling for the immediate deportation of 11 million Americans residents starting the day he is elected. This will be the largest mass-deportation in the history of the world, and will require a gigantic new police force (Trump says he will use the US Army to do it).

Trump is also calling for tariffs on China that will effectively eliminate them as a trading partner with the USA, meaning that there will be thousands of goods it the USA we will not be able to get, or the cost of them will skyrocket, including most electronic goods which are now made in China.

And Trump's economic policies will make the USA go from the strongest economy in the world to the weakest one since we will be the one country that does not freely trade with others.

Harris is easier to understand: she is not offering anything new, but basically a continuation of the same policies the US has had under Biden. She is talking about higher taxes for rich people, but even that is mostly fluff.

Why not figure things out for yourself when most of the information is available on the Internet? Why do you think someone can enlighten you? I mean , if you meet a Democrat, you'll hear all the good things about the Democratic Party. They will spend all day praising the Democratic Party and badmouthing, criticizing, and even making up bad things about the Republican Party . Or vice versa , if you meet a Republican, they will only talk bad about Democrats .

In my opinion , if you are really interested in the election and its impact on bitcoin . You should understand everything yourself because that way you will have the most correct perspective according to your understanding instead of being imposed by other people's thoughts .

After thinking about this, my main advice to non-US residents wanting to weigh in on US politics is... DO NOT DO IT :).

It's just impossible to understand the context we Americans have, and what the issues are from the outside. We get political news every single day and have for years, and we all are given tons of information that we've learned over the years.

If somebody from outside tries to learn about US politics in 10 minutes, they are, as you said here, just going to get a one-sided explanation. And I think "do your own research" won't really work either.

US politics is about things far, far removed from Bitcoin and our business. And as I've said in other threads, it's really bad business to limit yourself to 50% of a country's market by picking one political side or another.

I'm doing it for the sake of listening to various people's voices, directly from the one who live In America and experiencing it firsthand.

Thanks for tour suggestion, buddy.  Looking for the information which is available on the internet, for me, feels different compared to listening to people opinions and experiences. Don't worry buddy, I'm not here to pick a side and won't get indoctrinate by one side only. It's always good to see others perspective than my own after doing my own research. I still keep my skepticism in America's politic since I believe it will give some impact to Global economy while  I'm trying to find some opportunities in making profits amidst the political chaos.

It is difficult to please everyone because human nature is greedy, selfish and jealous. So I don't feel sad or hateful when there are still many people who hate bitcoin even though it has been legalized by the government and recognized by the world. But what's scarier is that the people who spread Fud and badmouth bitcoin every day are secretly investing in bitcoin. Simply because there are many people who are very selfish, they do not want to share their wealth with others and by that they want people to stay away from it but themselves secretly buy it.

That's why I don't believe when banks, celebrities talk bad about bitcoin, I don't believe what they say and I just look at what they do. I wouldn't be surprised if this guy is secretly accumulating bitcoins too  ;D.

The advice you get from this forum also comes from the internet, and what I mean is join different social platforms and find the answers yourself. Don't tie yourself to a single place if it's only filled with Democrats or Republicans. Talk and discuss directly with many people, consider it a survey and it will give you the most accurate view of what is going on in the US.

Watching news from government media channels is for reference only, I am not saying you should completely believe that news if it is not verified. Because those media channels are also controlled by the parties.

We are no longer in the stone age or underdeveloped technology, we are in an era where the internet, technology and social media have developed by leaps and bounds. It is true that there will be a lot of misinformation and false information being spread but if you are knowledgeable and wise enough, you will be able to differentiate between reliable news and fake news.

People who say that bitcoin is economically useless, do not live the lives that we live and that is why they find it useless. Nothing that bitcoin can do for me can be done with anything else, which makes it the most useful thing in my entire life economically, if they really want to ignore that fact then they can, it's their life and I do not care what they think, but the reality is that it is the most economically strong and useful thing ever for me, and it will continue to be so. If they really want to provide a proof, contact me, and I will tell you how I use it and then let me know what I can do to do the same things without putting crypto in my life.

I guarantee you that my life would never be the same if crypto wasn't around. I would live a terrible life right now, probably much worse and because of this I am really in love with the fact that crypto exists because it has already enhanced my life by a large margin and that is why I love it.

Thank you for your advice. I'm doing it, but for now the only platform that I use to talk to people from different country is this forum and reddit, but it seems like in every topic there will always be a fight between Republicans and Democrats which is quite hard to have a civilized discussion when both are in the same room. Fortunately I managed to stay objective amidst their conflicts.

Issac Asimov was a science fiction writer, and a scientist. Among his sci-fi stories was the Foundation series. The series included something that he and a publisher came up with called "psychohistory." Psychohistory is or has to do with mass beliefs of groups of people of certain time periods... or something like that.

That's all that Bitcoin really is dependent on. It's all how people think, what they believe, and what they think other people believe. Bitcoin, itself, has no value.

8)

Bitcoin is certainly a life changer. Like I've stated before, some people express negative comments of Bitcoin out of pure hate. Or simply because they don't know anything about it. The economist mentioned by the OP is completely wrong. With crypto being institutionalized, its legitimate use cases will expand over time. Criminals are vary of BTC's transparency and lack of efficiency compared to traditional Fiat. Nothing beats good-old cash (paper money), right?

Perhaps, privacy coins like Monero and Grin would be more appealing to criminals for money laundering, tax evasion, and whatnot. But not, Bitcoin. Illegal activity on the BTC blockchain will be virtually non-existent for as long as it lives. Think of Bitcoin's transparency as a feature. Not a bug. Satoshi did well in doing this. Why do you think nothing can beat the real thing? :D

Bitcoin was created and developed until today and is trusted by many people, which means it is bringing benefits to them, otherwise no one would need it.

When it comes to the impact of bitcoin on individuals and organizations, it is almost undeniable, many people have changed their lives thanks to investing in bitcoin. But when it comes to its impact on the economy of a country or the world, that is another matter. So far, have you seen it impact any country's economy or the world economy? And what role does it play in that economy?

Do people who improve their lives through bitcoin investments pay enough taxes? Do they have any impact on the economy or are they trying to boost the economy or are they just using bitcoin for their own purposes? Not to mention, how many people have improved their economy by investing in bitcoin out of 8 billion people in the world?

Therefore, we need to be clear that bitcoin has a strong impact on the individual and institutional economy, but when it comes to the macro economy like the country or the world, it has no significant impact.

Yes I agree with you that Bitcoin does not have much effect on a country's macro economy. It is possible to leverage the positive influence at the individual or institutional level and its wide potential to affect the overall economy of a country, such as by increasing holdings of Bitcoin, which a country's government or FED can take as a hedge in alternative ways such as through commodity trading, even if it is not integrated into that country's economy. Also CBDC is a digital form of fiat and if Bitcoin can be used instead it can be a huge opportunity for the economic progress of that country.