Big Shots in favor of Bitcoin

[toffoo]

Despite some recent good news (WordPress), the strong recovery and relative stabilization of market prices the past few weeks, and the flood of publicity surrounding the block reward halving today, I became somewhat depressed as I read through the load of comments on Slashdot's story covering the halving, which I found to be overwhelmingly negative and misinformed.

We all know that Slashdot is an old, washed up bunch of geeks, but this should really be an ideal community of potential early Bitcoin adopters.  If they still aren't "getting it" (despite all the positives coming out recently) what does that say about the rest of the world?

It got me thinking that here we are, almost four years into Bitcoin's working life (where it's been widely known for at least two years) and I cannot think of any respected, intelligent, or highly-regarded public figure who has come out speaking positively about Bitcoin.

The entirety of its success seems to be driven by grass-roots, community-driven users, without any real intellectual "big shots" coming out in favor of it.  In fact, the few who have spoken publicly about it seem to be unanimously negative.

Most here will remember that some of our "highly esteemed" Senators think it's just a system for money laundering and drug dealers.  And that a highly-regarded (though polarizing) Nobel Prize-winning economist thinks it's essentially worthless.

It seems Bitcoin has gained the most traction among the Libertarian, gold-bug, and "collapse-minded" communities, which makes some sense from their perspectives, but these are generally fringe groups that unfortunately do not (yet?) really represent mainstream thought.  There's also been some college professors of cryptography or digital payments who have spoken positively, but not exactly household names.

I am old enough to have been around when Internet email first became widely used, when the WWW itself transformed publishing, and when MP3s revolutionized the music industry, and I don't recall any of this massive negativity around when these transformational technologies came out.  So what's the deal with Bitcoin?

I know the underlying concepts are complex, and that money plays a special role in our collective psyche, but why hasn't a Bill Gates, or a Larry Page, or a Warren Buffett, or a Jeff Bezos, or an executive at Goldman Sachs, or some other Nobel Prize-winning economist come out and said that Bitcoin is a brilliant and well-implemented idea that will change our world for the better?  These are all smart, successful, and open-minded people, could it really be that none have yet seen the light?


So I thought it might be interesting to get a thread going here to see who is the biggest, widely-known intellectual "big shot" to have spoken positively in public about Bitcoin.  I've got nothing.  What can you come up with?

At the same time maybe we can list some big shots who have spoken negatively about it and will look like dummies when Bitcoin does transform the world.  Paul Krugman tops my list there.

[payb.tc]

-1 Jimmy Wales.

although i don't know that he's said anything about it directly.

[genuise]

When first money forms emerged, was it really necessary that some one famous endorsed them?

They were just used by small groups in the beggining and based on experience more people made thier choice.

The grass roots movement and pieceful voluntarie adoption what makes real change.

I think everything is just fine.

[Polvos]

Bitcoin is working as expected. A mass of people will slowly accept it in silence. As happened with the credit card system or the peer to peer users. Don't expect huge known figures jumping in and broadcasting their Bitcoin affinity. That is not going to happen because Bitcoin is the revolution in the economy, and the true revolution will not be televised.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS3QOtbW4m0

[ercolinux]

It' s really unlikely that some big name of economy will speak positevely of bitcoins, at least at this point: for bankers a widely spread bitcoin can be a potential risk, for old school economist is a concept too far from their minds to even accept the fact that is possible.
For the "normal" people understand the point of strenght of bitcoin is not easy, all what they see is a money that you've to buy like a foreign  currency at a premium to buy things that you can already buy with your currency. Unless we can build a stronger market of products and services that can be traded in bitcoin, the use will be limited to who as understood the power of bitcoin.

Aside from this in Europe someone has alredy write interesting articles on bitcoin, for example there is this one (in Italian):http://gnosis.aisi.gov.it/gnosis/Rivista31.nsf/ServNavig/11#(5

The author is Teti the responsible for computer technical support of the Directorate General of University of Chieti-Pescara where he is also a teacher. It is Honorary President of the Italian Society of Information Sciences and Technology (SISIT). Professional Member of the American Association for Computing Machinery and of the New York Academy of Sciences, and the article was writed for the AISI magazine (AISI is the Italian domestic intelligence agency)

[Raoul Duke]

That Nobel Prize in Economics you talk about... it doesn't exist.

[Stephen Gornick]

Who is the biggest, widely-known intellectual "big shot" to have spoken positively in public about Bitcoin.

At some upper levels:

Federal Reserve economist David Barker discusses Bitcon with Jon Stossel:
 - http://patriotpost.us/opinion/13107
 - http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/1484348139001


Larry Summers discusses Bitcoin:
 - http://www.technologyreview.com/news/427348/larry-summers-and-the-technology-of-money/


"Bitcoin ... Might work in Iran (funny quip by Citi CTO with SWIFT in the panel) #futureofmoney"
  (Yobie Benjamin, Global Chief Technology Officer of Citigroup)
 - https://twitter.com/leimer/status/194573328298676225
  

why hasn't a Bill Gates,

Because instead of trying to figure out the path of least resistance to allow money to be moved by the "unbanked", he is instead worrying about:

The Gates Foundation presented some of the output of research they’re doing now on data gathering for policymakers ...
[...]
How to regulate non-bank mobile money providers.
[...]
Needless to say, the regulators were very intrigued.  

 - http://www.nfcmobilemoneysummit.com/conference/mmuleadershipforum.php

They are intrigued ... and probably drunk on Billy G's generous bar tab.  Oh, don't worry -- there's no talk of bitcoin there.  Why?

The Leadership Forum is held each year [...] is by invitation only.

or a Larry Page

Well, he's probably getting the same advice his Chairman got:

There's an issue with peer to peer money, that being that it's illegal.

 - http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9225033/_Google_Bucks_Never_Paid_Off_Schmidt_Recalls

And since Google would rather have you store USDs in your Google Wallet than BTCs, he's probably not going to be touting Bitcoin's advantages.

or a Warren Buffett

Warren agrees with Berkshire partner Charlie Munger ... "I don't invest in what I don't understand".

or a Jeff Bezos

He is invested in Remitly (called Beamit at the time), a service that uses ACH rails in the U.S. and pays out through mobile phone payment services in the Philippines.
 - http://www.chubbybrain.com/companies/beamit#axzz2Db7oCYMK
 - http://finsphere.com/company/vision  (using your mobile as identity)

Again, since Bitcoin is a competitor I can't imagine Bezos touting its benefits.

or an executive at Goldman Sachs,

They're already on it (for personal / side pocket investment)
 - http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/01/traders-bitcoin-idUSL6E8ET5K620120401

Bitcoin has gained the most traction among the Libertarian, gold-bug, and "collapse-minded" communities, which makes some sense from their perspectives, but these are generally fringe groups that unfortunately do not (yet?) really represent mainstream thought.

Present and accounted for:
Max Keiser, Adam Kokesh, are of course big fans and others like James Turk is at least receptive to Bitcoin.

But then there is:

Chris Larsen (Prosper.com) - I don't know what he has said in public about Bitcoin, but as CEO of Ripple.com I'm guessing he's a fan.
 - https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/rippleusers/IVin3Qwrp7k

Fred Wilson gave 500 BTC to the Bitcoin Foundation.  That's says as much as getting "spoken positively in public".  You don't get much bigger of big hitters in the startup / VC world.

[toffoo]

That Nobel Prize in Economics you talk about... it doesn't exist.

So sorry, you are absolutely correct, I meant the "The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics, but officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel".

Thank you so much.

[ripper234]

-1 Jimmy Wales.

although i don't know that he's said anything about it directly.

https://www.quora.com/Jimmy-Wales-1/What-does-Jimmy-Wales-think-about-Bitcoin

It is interesting but I'm cautiously skeptical.  What I mean is that if you imagine a spectrum from "optimistic" down to "skeptical", then I'm slightly closer to "skeptical" than "optimistic".

I think it is an interesting pilot project and experiment, but that it is unlikely to be much more than that.  It may provide the intellectual and experiential groundwork for something more widely usable and consumer friendly in the future, though!

[picobit]

I think this quote from Jimmy Wales makes sense, and reflects my own sentiments pretty well.  Bitcoin is not particularly user-friendly, although I think that can and will change.

However, there are many other reasons for being sceptical about Bitcoins long-term survival.  Personally, I think Bitcoin is a great idea, but its odds of long-term survival are not too good.  Until then, I will use bitcoins, partly because it is too great a concept to stay away from, partly because if all of us being sceptical abandon it then the odds of success will be even lower.

So, lets all hope that I am wrong   Time will show.

[cunicula]

With regards to economics.

Part of the problem here is that bitcoin has tried to hitch itself to Austrian economics. This is a public relations nightmare. It is the intellectual equivalent of bitcoin hitching itself to Silk Road, money laundering, and terrorism. Austrian Economists are pariahs in the economics world. You cannot first say we are drug-selling, money laundering terrorists, and then expect your listener to evaluate you without bias. It is not realistic. Bitcoin does not need to identify as Austrian. It is a choice.

Part of the problem is that bitcoin crosses two disciplines of economics: Monetary Economics and Mechanism Design.

People have tried to get monetary economists to comment about bitcoin as a monetary system. However, monetary economists lack the expertise to evaluate the security of bitcoin. Why should they trust bitcoin as safe? Just because it has not been hacked yet? That is weak. How do they evaluate this?

There is a comment by Barry Eichengreen that is illustrative.

While there have already been some attempts to create a true electronic currency, such as Bitcoin, these have had difficulty getting off the ground. It is not hard to see why. If it is possible to imagine one private electronic currency, then it’s possible to imagine several, and there would be no guarantee that other people would accept the particular electronic money you use.

Moreover, these payment systems would be only as reliable as the individual companies’ software and servers, which would be impossible for end users to judge. Also, nothing would ensure that the electronic money you accumulate would hold its value, and nothing would prevent the operators of the platform from issuing more, in the first instance to themselves. If people worried that their electronic money was losing value, they would rush to convert it into merchandise; others might simply refuse to accept it as payment. The whole scheme would come crashing down.

Key Points:
a) Bitcoin is useless if it isn't secure. [This is true. But of course, Barry has no expertise to evaluate this. Nor does he understand what a P2P system is. Why would he? He is making a pretty good point which explains why bitcoin is not popular outside of the nerd community.]
b) If bitcoin succeeds why couldn't an improved clone of bitcoin succeed. If so why would bitcoin have value. [This seems valid to me. Bitcoin would be worth more if the field was closed to future competitors.]

What about the mechanism design people? No one has asked them about bitcoin or even brought it to their attention.

Mechanism Design is the specialty of economics that designs incentive systems to elicit truth-telling. A mechanism has two properties:
a) conditional on participation, people must weakly gain from telling the truth. [in bitcoin's context, double-spending is the relevant lie]
b) how much people gain from participation; this has to be greater than 0. [in bitcoin's context, how beneficial is our system once we make sure (a) is satisfied]

A typical mechanism design question is as follows:
Can we get (a) to hold without requiring an external input of resources? If so, then this usually maximizes gains from participation.
(The bitcoin analogy is: Can bitcoin work without PoW? If not, what is the minimum PoW required?
You would do this through clever redistribution of the gains from participation. i.e. through PoS)

Bitcoin is much more interesting as a mechanism than as a currency. Ultimately, the monetary questions depend on the answers to the mechanism questions. People should really be asking the mechanism design guys to comment, not the monetary economists.

[benjamindees]

Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody.  Are afraid of something.  They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Bitcoin is working as expected. A mass of people will slowly accept it in silence. As happened with the credit card system or the peer to peer users. Don't expect huge known figures jumping in and broadcasting their Bitcoin affinity. That is not going to happen because Bitcoin is the revolution in the economy, and the true revolution will not be televised.

+n, n->∞

Big Shots talking in favor of Bitcoin... sorry guys - not gonna happen too often.

[BkkCoins]

Just about every big name in any field is a big name because they are part of the system that Bitcoin undermines in many ways. How can you expect these people to support something which conflicts with everything they think about the world?

A money system without banks or government. Come on - what successful big whig is going to believe in something as anti-establishment as that. I think it's great, but my persona, my image on the world stage, doesn't depend on being held in high regard by peers.

All of these people, even the ones who are thought of as radical, are fully embedded in a world view that favours the status quo. All of them think that credit cards are great, even ideal - just superb examples of capitalism at work.

Only the fringe is going to sense the possibility that Bitcoin could change the world and act on it. The big names would be too worried about being wrong.

I think this is all ok. Bitcoin needs to grow from the grassroots up until it has subverted every smug know-it-all big name such that one day when things are falling off the hinges and they look around they're going to desperately reach out and use Bitcoin because they have no other choice. You cannot fight overwhelming power with direct assault - you have to infiltrate and quietly weaken the pillars and let it fall from within.

[Lethn]

the strong recovery and relative stabilization of market prices the past few weeks

Strong Recovery? Stabalisation?....... HAH!!...... AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!

*immediately buys silver investment bars*

[Mike Hearn]

This is how the mainstream media were covering the internet in 1995 - over a decade since it first started to take off, and several years after the invention of the web.



These things take time. And don't knock Slashdot. It's just a microcosm of what the technical world are thinking. Many of us came here after reading about Bitcoin on Slashdot. Well, actually I was talking to Satoshi in early 2009 but I left because nothing was happening. I came back after seeing a Slashdot comment mentioning it and I was like, huh, Bitcoin is still around and got some users?

Don't expect mainstream economists to come out in favor of Bitcoin any time soon. There are very few professional economists and they mostly are either academics, or work for central banks. Bitcoin would, if it became wildly successful, essentially delete the whole concept of monetary policy and thus the justification for central banks existing.

Despite that, a few economists do have open minds and don't mind researching radical ideas. Look at the recent IMF paper on full reserve banking for an example.

The discussions around Bitcoin will become easier as we build innovative and unique applications on top of it to do things you can't do with existing technologies. That's why I've spent so  much time on research and gave a talk on my findings in London. By building apps that do things like using micropayments, we can help people understand that Bitcoin is more than "what we have now, but with less regulation".

[Steve]

The same things that bother you are what get me excited.  I love the fact that the big money is going to be late to this party.  I would much rather see it come to pass that many people of modest means build their own economy without their participation.  When we talk to potential investors in BitPay, many of them ask what were doing about consumer adoption.  They've heard pitches for all kinds of digital currency "schemes" (to quote the ECB) over the last ~15 years.  They always cite the problems getting end users to adopt Bitcoin (they don't grasp what makes Bitcoin fundamentally different than the many prior attempts at virtual currencies).  We usually say that we're doing little to nothing about end user adoption.  In reality, as much as people deride speculation and day trading, the candlestick chart of the Bitcoin exchange price will do more to drive end user adoption than any brow beating of this or that company (that will only make them more resentful).  Jeff Bezos was asked the very same questions about end user adoption of the Internet in the early days of Amazon.com.  Jeff Bezos never worried about signing people up for the Internet.  I once heard Bitcoin described as the most asymmetrical trade of a lifetime, and I agree.  

[tcp_rst]

The same things that bother you are what get me excited.  I love the fact that the big money is going to be late to this party.  I would much rather see it come to pass that many people of modest means build their own economy without their participation.  When we talk to potential investors in BitPay, many of them ask what were doing about consumer adoption.  They've heard pitches for all kinds of digital currency "schemes" (to quote the ECB) over the last ~15 years.  They always cite the problems getting end users to adopt Bitcoin (they don't grasp what makes Bitcoin fundamentally different than the many prior attempts at virtual currencies).  We usually say that we're doing little to nothing about end user adoption.  In reality, as much as people deride speculation and day trading, the candlestick chart of the Bitcoin exchange price will do more to drive end user adoption than any brow beating of this or that company (that will only make them more resentful).  Jeff Bezos was asked the very same questions about end user adoption of the Internet in the early days of Amazon.com.  Jeff Bezos never worried about signing people up for the Internet.  I once heard Bitcoin described as the most asymmetrical trade of a lifetime, and I agree.  

I agree.  I also think it's in bitcoin's best interest (overall) to develop into something robust just under the radar.  Eventually it will become something that regulators, governments, intellectuals and central bankers can't dismiss as folly.  I pray it's mature enough to withstand whatever happens when they come to the realization this is for real.  I'm not sure we're there yet.

[Mike Hearn]

I think their questions about end user adoption are reasonable, actually.

Yes, we all know what makes Bitcoin different to other e-currencies that were tried. However, from the perspective of the man on the street, why is Bitcoin a better way to buy things than using his credit card?

Virtually all attempts to fix payments on the internet have failed at this stage, because they couldn't come up with a compelling value proposition (for users who have cards already). From the perspective of Peter Punter, credit cards are easy to use (just type in some stuff that's written down for him on a wallet-size piece of plastic), provide brainless consumer protection, are accepted everywhere, require no setup (he got one when he opened a bank account years ago), automatically give you itemized statements and hey - they even let him spend money he didn't earn yet! Some credit card schemes go even further and give you rewards for using them, like points or air miles.

From a users perspective, credit cards are pretty great. All the nasty parts of the system get pushed off onto merchants. Fees? Hidden in the prices. Payment fraud? Hidden in the prices. Card payments only really start to suck hard once you try to sell things with them. Most people who earn a salary buy way more often than they sell, so they don't care abut that.

Fortunately, payment cards don't serve everyone. But then again, not everyone can easily get bitcoins either. So right now it's a wash.

User adoption of Bitcoin is growing, but we have to remember that there are many systems that grew and grew and looked really successful, got lots of press coverage etc ... until they saturated their niche, then they never grew again. Second Life? Desktop Linux? PGP? Bitcoin could easily be added to that list.

What's more, if Bitcoin started to become really successful, it'd kick its competitors into life - Visa, MasterCard, the banks, might actually start innovating again and building systems that match Bitcoins strengths.

All these factors don't mean Bitcoin will fail, far from it. Just look at the web vs AOL. But it's not guaranteed to succeed either. Again, I think we can massively increase the chances of success by simply creating new markets that don't currently exist and then dominating those - micropayments are an obvious example but there are others.

[elux]

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/11/what-has-changed.html#comment-718987084

Teemu Kurppa --> takingpitches • 2 days ago

I've been following a few Bitcoin companies here in Finland, and as an earlier Bitcoin sceptic,
I was surprised how much activity and money there is already in Bitcoin economy.
I think a lot of investors are underestimating what's going on in Bitcoin world, because it's still so far away from the mainstream.

But many truly disruptive things were viewed as toys or pure idiocy in the early days. I'm speaking from the experience here.

When we started Jaiku, a microblogging service similar to Twitter, in 2006, before Twitter and before Facebook's activity stream.
At that time, a lot of people said that broadcasting and reading short mundane thoughts was the stupidest idea they had ever heard of.
Fast-forward a few years and hundred of millions of people are doing it everyday.

Based on what I've seen, I'm starting to think that Bitcoin might be a similar phenomenon.

fredwilson Mod  --> Teemu Kurppa • 2 days ago

Yessssssssss

Fred Wilson (born August 20, 1961) is a New York-based venture capitalist and blogger.

Wilson is the co-founder of Union Square Ventures, a New York City-based venture capital firm with investments in Web 2.0 companies such as Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Zynga and 10gen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Wilson_(financier)