Jim Rickards on gold versus bitcoin

I've followed Jim Richards for years and love his books, highly recommended by the way. I don't fully agree on his Bitcoin views though, but I respect his views since this man has seen it all. He's been in the middle of the action for few decades and knows how the world is run. Yet, it's not much new here that hasn't been said before, really. Rickards and many other critics have covered these same issues and they have been countered too in this forum as well endless times.

If you compare crypto markets to traditional financial markets sure they lack regulation. But New York Stock Exchange was founded 200 years ago and Bitcoin exchanges were founded (compared to that) like yesterday. Such markets won't change over night and I think the regulation begins to move forward when all the major economies in the world view the cryptos the same way. I wasn't alive 150-200 years ago to trade stocks but I'm sure there was quite a lot of manipulation going on then as well until regulations improved. There will be always people taking advantage of new born markets, whether it's Bitcoin or some other areas of business. It's a wild west out there and everyone's on their own, but governments and central banks and the elite is not losing any money here so they are in no panic to regulate anything. Maybe we'll see some changes here if Wall Street firms are starting to lose money to these Bitcoin futures due to some irrational market movements?

The electricity argument has been discussed in hundreds of topics, I guess there's no need to counter that.

I agree to question Bitcoin's role in panics. This might not be so straightforward people think and it depends a bit of what kind of panic there really is. I think the problem is many don't *really* understand how a panic looks like when banks are closed and things really get ugly. It's very likely you still need banks in order to convert your bitcoins to fiat. Or your local food store needs them in practice to accept Bitcoin as payment, since they just convert it to fiat. It might be very well you can't access your online wallets or there's nothing to purchase with them. Only time will tell and probably we all see what's going to happen inside few years. I'd do what Max Keiser also says; have Bitcoin and gold and silver. You can't go wrong with that. Especially now when gold and silver are so cheap against Bitcoin, it's a great time to cash out some winnings and cover all bases if you are feeling nervous.

Then he mentions the IRS and taxation. I think the narrative is a bit dark if you assume the most of the people want to break the law. I'd assume the opposite myself. As a former professional punter I don't see how this differs from sports betting at all. There are lots of people making some extra betting income they never tell to tax authorities and nobody cares as long as the numbers are small enough. Tax officials can surely hunt you if they want, but they are already short on resources as it is when hunting people who are hiding millions of dollars. Based on social media and discussion forums, my gut feeling is that a lot of people are telling their crypto profits happily if they have made big gains. There are also clear laws now in many countries how you do it, so crypto income is no different case than any other. I don't really see the point of scaring people off the Bitcoin just because some individuals are crooks. If you make a lot of money then just announce your gains and pay tax and that's it.

The whole criminality narrative is IMO getting a bit old. Criminals are using every other technology as well to do crimes. There was a time when this discussion was had about mobile phones and how they make life easy for criminals with pre-paid cards. And when internet was new it was a lot of discussion of how criminals can just contact each other via internet. Now I've seen headlines that criminals are moving drugs with drones over the borders for example. If criminals use Bitcoins to move money it's no argument to ban Bitcoin or we might just ban about every other piece of equipment as well.