Bitcoin is a bubble - Nobel Laureate in Economics

[CryptoCurrencyInc.com]

Bitcoin is a bubble - Nobel Laureate in Economics

Robert Shiller, 2013 Nobel Prize winner in Economics, and an expert in the nature of market excesses, has come down on bitcoin and said that the tremendous jump of the virtual currency was a 100 percent bonified “bubble”.

"It is a bubble, there is no question about it.... It's just an amazing example of a bubble," the Business Insider quotes Shiller, talking to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

http://rt.com/business/bitcoin-shiller-bubble-davos-127/

[Netnox]

He can go fuck himself

[kaysersoze]

It's great for a couple of reasons,

1. first read this book - http://www.amazon.com/Expert-Political-Judgment-Good-Know/dp/0691128715/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389427054&sr=8-1&keywords=expert+political+judgment

2. Every major technological breakthrough is always in the beginning very polarizing phenomena

3. Ask him when he ever in his life invented something or had a vision about any technological disruption that changed the world.

4. IF every single " expert" ( in this case false) would think BTC is what we think then I would be more worried as a historical reference

Problem with all these economists is that they are ECONOMISTS.

[cr1776]

Just remember the Nobel in Economics is a fake one.

By the way, I am creating, for 2014, "The Nobel Memorial Prize in Cryptological and Computational Sciences" (officially called the First Bank Prize in Cryptological and Computational Sciences in Member of Alfred Nobel), with the winner for 2014 to be determined by my committee and the main contenders for the 2014 prize being Satoshi Nakamoto, Alan Turing, Grace Hopper, Kurt Godel, Marvin Minsky, and John von Neumann.

The first winner will be announced on the same day as the other Nobels.

[ChuckBuck]

But didn't the Bitcoin "bubble" burst 2 or 3 times already and still surge back up?

[justusranvier]

Economists are never going to accept Bitcoin any more than buggy whip makers accepted the automobile.

They only have a profession at all in a world in which governments control the money. A Bitcoin world means their experience and their fancy degrees might qualify them for a job flipping burgers, assuming that job hasn't already been given to robots by then.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvebxYILfZQ#t=9m5s

[angrynerd88]

i agree with that guy, bitcoin is a bubble, obviously, noone needs bitcoin, people have already their money so why to change investing in something dubious which does the same (but with GREAT volatility in their savings!) some years in the future we will look back and laugh at bictoin mania...question is: how much still? i think it is still enough time to invest and profit, this is why i am here.
I think that bitcoin is now more like gambling for people than a real coin

[FenixRD]

Just remember the Nobel in Economics is a fake one.

By the way, I am creating, for 2014, "The Nobel Memorial Prize in Cryptological and Computational Sciences" (officially called the First Bank Prize in Cryptological and Computational Sciences in Member of Alfred Nobel), with the winner for 2014 to be determined by my committee and the main contenders for the 2014 prize being Satoshi Nakamoto, Alan Turing, Grace Hopper, Kurt Godel, Marvin Minsky, and John von Neumann.

The first winner will be announced on the same day as the other Nobels.

Exactly.

1. There is no Nobel prize in economics.

2. Negating any importance of even the concept: the Nobel in peace was awarded to the man featured in this graphic:

http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/TBIJ-Infographic-Obama-3001.jpg

[dewdeded]

He can go fuck himself

This.

[bitjoint]

Just like the whole internet...





If a nobel says it, it is true. word.

[remotemass]

Look! Bitcoin is not a bubble!!!



 

[CryptoCurrencyInc.com]

Why bitcoin could fail

Every few years the world of technology witnesses a revolution, the next big development with the potential to change how we function and to spawn a highly profitable new industry. There's been the explosion of personal computers, followed by the Internet, smartphones, tablets, cloud computing, and other large and small disruptive technologies. The latest such game-changer seems to be the arrival of virtual currencies, personified by the biggest player in that arena: bitcoin.

On the surface, bitcoin seems like a great idea and maybe an inevitable one. Bitcoins (the actual units of this virtual currency) are a form of electronic money that can be traded directly between parties; do not require the physical backing of gold, dollars, or any other traditional store of value; and whose price is based on demand over a peer-to-peer network. That isn't that different from mainstream currencies -- since the abolition of the gold standard in the 1970s and the creation of floating exchange rates, even the U.S. Dollar functions mostly on the same principles.

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2014/01/24/why-bitcoin-could-fail/

[Meuh6879]

"It is a bubble, there is no question about it.... It's just an amazing example of a bubble,"

[Melbustus]

Economists are never going to accept Bitcoin any more than buggy whip makers accepted the automobile.

They only have a profession at all in a world in which governments control the money. A Bitcoin world means their experience and their fancy degrees might qualify them for a job flipping burgers, assuming that job hasn't already been given to robots by then.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvebxYILfZQ#t=9m5s

I have one of those fancy degrees, and I'm obviously a huge bitcoin proponent.

Academics have a few predictable issues with bitcoin:

1) The whole idea of the Fed and central banking is academically elegant. It's a really nice idea to be able to tweak constants in the economy in order to maximize employment, etc. The fact that it's ultimately a small organization acting on imperfect information, subject to both political pressure and human failure, is ultimately an implementation detail in an academic's eye, and therefore irrelevant to overall validity of the idea. Bitcoin obviously takes all that away; arguably replacing it with inevitable and uncontrollable more frequent and medium-sized bubbles/panics. That's debatable, but that's how they'll see it, and they conclude that humanity can do better via properly implemented central banking. I disagree for the reasons alluded to, but that's the issue.

2) These guys are thinking of bitcoin as an 1800s style gold-standard, which was fraught with imperfect information, and a pretty non-fluid economy for many reasons. Humanity has never tested a monetary system with credibly perfect information available to all participants. Furthermore, in our electronic era where things like re-pricing can be done at the click of a button (or even programmatically with zero manual intervention), inelasticity in currency supply shouldn't matter nearly as much. But the lesson academics learned from the 1930s is that an elastic currency supply is necessary to stimulate an irrationally non-performing economy. I'd argue that given that structural framework of the economy of the 1930s, maybe that makes sense, but our current far more fluid, information-liquid economy is a different beast. People can rationally adjust much more quickly.


And as to generally calling bitcoin a bubble, it's hilarious to me how people just look at the absolute price per bitcoin and cry "bubble!" or "expensive!". If "1 bitcoin" meant "100,000 satoshis" instead of "100,000,000 satoshis", would they say the same thing (ie, the "price" would be $0.80/btc). The whole supply is only worth $10B no matter how you slice it. The M2 of a small nation like New Zealand is ~$70B. What do these guys think the total supply of the world's first truly global electronic currency should be?

[minerpart]

By bubble he means the speed of the appreciation in the value of BTC has gone up excessively quickly. But many stocks show bubble-type 'explosions' in their short-term price-chart. You come back 2 years later and that bubble is now a small part of a larger chart.

This is a classic bubble chart:


Internet adoption from 1990-2005.

So some bubbles never pop. Global/mass-adoption tech usage is one of them.

You will see a similar chart for motorcars, televisions, PC's, smart-phones etc.

Could BTC be in a bubble-type state? Yes.
Should we be worried about the BTC bubble? No
Does it ever have to burst? No.

[indiemax]

Just remember the Nobel in Economics is a fake one.

By the way, I am creating, for 2014, "The Nobel Memorial Prize in Cryptological and Computational Sciences" (officially called the First Bank Prize in Cryptological and Computational Sciences in Member of Alfred Nobel), with the winner for 2014 to be determined by my committee and the main contenders for the 2014 prize being Satoshi Nakamoto, Alan Turing, Grace Hopper, Kurt Godel, Marvin Minsky, and John von Neumann.

The first winner will be announced on the same day as the other Nobels.

Love it

[godt]

Just remember the Nobel in Economics is a fake one.

By the way, I am creating, for 2014, "The Nobel Memorial Prize in Cryptological and Computational Sciences" (officially called the First Bank Prize in Cryptological and Computational Sciences in Member of Alfred Nobel), with the winner for 2014 to be determined by my committee and the main contenders for the 2014 prize being Satoshi Nakamoto, Alan Turing, Grace Hopper, Kurt Godel, Marvin Minsky, and John von Neumann.

The first winner will be announced on the same day as the other Nobels.

+1

[zachcope]

Economists are never going to accept Bitcoin any more than buggy whip makers accepted the automobile.

They only have a profession at all in a world in which governments control the money. A Bitcoin world means their experience and their fancy degrees might qualify them for a job flipping burgers, assuming that job hasn't already been given to robots by then.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvebxYILfZQ#t=9m5s

I have one of those fancy degrees, and I'm obviously a huge bitcoin proponent.

Academics have a few predictable issues with bitcoin:

1) The whole idea of the Fed and central banking is academically elegant. It's a really nice idea to be able to tweak constants in the economy in order to maximize employment, etc. The fact that it's ultimately a small organization acting on imperfect information, subject to both political pressure and human failure, is ultimately an implementation detail in an academic's eye, and therefore irrelevant to overall validity of the idea. Bitcoin obviously takes all that away; arguably replacing it with inevitable and uncontrollable more frequent and medium-sized bubbles/panics. That's debatable, but that's how they'll see it, and they conclude that humanity can do better via properly implemented central banking. I disagree for the reasons alluded to, but that's the issue.

2) These guys are thinking of bitcoin as an 1800s style gold-standard, which was fraught with imperfect information, and a pretty non-fluid economy for many reasons. Humanity has never tested a monetary system with credibly perfect information available to all participants. Furthermore, in our electronic era where things like re-pricing can be done at the click of a button (or even programmatically with zero manual intervention), inelasticity in currency supply shouldn't matter nearly as much. But the lesson academics learned from the 1930s is that an elastic currency supply is necessary to stimulate an irrationally non-performing economy. I'd argue that given that structural framework of the economy of the 1930s, maybe that makes sense, but our current far more fluid, information-liquid economy is a different beast. People can rationally adjust much more quickly.


And as to generally calling bitcoin a bubble, it's hilarious to me how people just look at the absolute price per bitcoin and cry "bubble!" or "expensive!". If "1 bitcoin" meant "100,000 satoshis" instead of "100,000,000 satoshis", would they say the same thing (ie, the "price" would be $0.80/btc). The whole supply is only worth $10B no matter how you slice it. The M2 of a small nation like New Zealand is ~$70B. What do these guys think the total supply of the world's first truly global electronic currency should be?

Great post.
It's strange how the economists have over complicated things to take in account phenomena that were only due to imperfect information and  inelasticity of currencies.

When I learnt about economics it was an elegant tale of Pacific Islanders trading coconuts and fish or something like that.
Supply, demand, imperfect markets, opportunity cost and the knowledge that change is constant are the only real economic building blocks. The rest is Keynsian nonsense trying to fit the facts after the event to justify their nonsense fat handed interventions.

[goxed]

According to well respected voodoo scientists a.k.a. economists ; did  you guys know that the fair value of BTC is a  big, 0?

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/12/fair-price-bitcoin-zero.html

[Deprecate]

Yeah just like the Internet is a bubble, what loser uses Internet nowadays right!