Did Milton Friedman predict Zerocoin?

[calian]

Video from 1999.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2mdYX1nF_Y

[mandelmus]

Video from 1999.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2mdYX1nF_Y

Awesome video showing Milton's great perception ... thanks for posting that Calian!

Think of all the futuristic sci-fi movies -- almost all of those movies perceive us as using some type of purely digital (perhaps anonymous) currency in the future.  It's an inevitability.

[BitTrade]

Friedman would LOVE bitcoin / cryptocurrencies.  

The main detraction that most libertarians have with Friedman's ideology was that he advocated an "ideal" increase in the money supply - which could only be enforced (at the time) by a central authority, either a government or the federal reserve.  He himself didn't like that idea, but it was the only option at the time.  Albeit Bitcoin uses a different rate of money supply increase than what Friedman likely would have adocated, cryptocurrencies allow friedman's theory to operate in a truly free society, free of centralized authority.  

His son David Friedman (a better intellectual than his father, IMO) also loves bitcoin.  

[Benny1985]

FYI, Friedman had a few discussions about Bitcoin-esque ideas in the 1970s. I'd have to dig around to find the video, but I believe it was part of his PBS Free to Choose series about monetarist policy and the great depression, and how ideal currencies should have a steady, static increase of supply (similar to BTC) over time.