Replying to Taleb's: “Bitcoin, Currencies, and Fragility”

[BlackHatCoiner]

For those who don't know it, “Bitcoin, Currencies, and Fragility” is a paper that explains why Bitcoin's value is no greater than 0 and why it has failed as a decentralized payment mechanism. Curious that I was, I bothered to read it. I came across that paper from this post:

Thankfully, Taleb put all the maths, science, and research into an easy to read 6 page, irrefutable paper. Bitcoin is worth $0. The knowledge of that fact is simply taking a long time to sink in because there's so much fake news about bitcoin and scammers. Of course, it's now apparent that more and more of the market is catching on, which is how I know for certain that bitcoin will not be able to stay above $30k for 10 consecutive days ever again. Every year from here out will see lower and lower bitcoin prices until it reaches it's mathematically proven value of $0.

I find it fair enough to make my comments to this “irrefutable paper”. (I had made another post in the past)

Comment 1: Why BTC is worth exactly 0
Gold and other precious metals are largely maintenance free, do not degrade over an historical horizon, and do not require maintenance to refresh their physical properties over time. Cryptocurrencies require a sustained amount of interest in them

Yes, they indeed require energy to be maintained. But, does this actually answer to your statement? How can you state that it's worthless due to its maintenance? What do these two have in common?

Earnings-free assets with no residual value are problematic. The implication is that, owing to the absence of any explicit yield benefitting the holder of bitcoin, if we expect that at any point in the future the value will be zero when miners are extinct, the technology becomes obsolete, or future generations get into other such "assets" and bitcoin loses its appeal for them, then the value must be zero now.

But, it is made in a way for miners to never go extinct. Doesn't this apply for gold too? If humans go extinct, it'll be worthless. You have to somehow provide me a proof that miners will go extinct to consider the value zero now.

Transactions in bitcoin are considerably more expensive than wire services or other modes of transfers, or ones in other cryptocurrencies. They are order of magnitudes slower than standard commercial systems used by credit card companies —anecdotally, while you can instantly buy a cup of coffee with your cell phone, you would need to wait ten minutes if you used bitcoin.

Anecdotally, you don't have to create on-chain transactions for your purchases anymore. Indeed, if there wasn't any other option, the blockchain couldn't fit us all with 7 transactions per second on average. But, there are second layer solutions such as the Lightning Network that are, in my opinion, against the expenses of Bitcoin's transfers.  

The customary standard argument is that "bitcoin has its flaws but we are getting a great technology; we will do wonders with the blockchain". No, there is no evidence that we are getting a great technology — unless "great technology" doesn’t mean "useful". And at the time of writing —in spite of all the fanfare — we have done still close to nothing with the blockchain.

We only judge a technology by how it solves problems, not by what technological attributes it has.

Close to nothing? I'm able to transfer monetary units across the globe within a second (whether they're fluctuating in exchange rate with fiat or not). The technology behind Bitcoin did solve a problem, the prevention of the third party as written in its whitepaper. That was not just a technological attribute.

[o_e_l_e_o]

This will be the same Taleb who gave credibility to the known scammer and fraudster CSW by appearing on stage with him? I would maybe take his opinions on bitcoin with a grain mountain of salt. I will also publicly commit to buying every bitcoin anyone ever wants to sell at a price of 0.01 cents each. Therefore, bitcoin can now never reach $0, since there the minimum price anyone can ever sell bitcoin for is 0.01 cents. There. I have refuted his "irrefutable" claim.

Anyway, his entire argument is that if something could be worth zero in the future then it is worth zero now, and bitcoin will be worth zero in the future because miners will stop mining it. He gives no explanation as to why miners will stop mining it - it is almost as if he is entirely unaware that Satoshi designed bitcoin exactly so that fees would eventually overtake block reward as the main incentive for miners to continue mining it. And even if all miners did just suddenly and unanimously shut down their miners in 2140, that doesn't mean bitcoin is worth zero now. Every asset in the world has a value of zero on a long enough time frame.

If you think that everything which could potentially be worth zero in the future is worth zero now, then I invite you to wire all your fiat to my bank account immediately.

[BrewMaster]

i just want to point out that just because someone has some fancy degrees and is a public figure it doesn't mean their opinion is worth wasting any time on.
in case of Taleb, his whole paper looks like something someone without any education would write.

[OROBTC]

...

I have been reading Taleb's paper about every other day or so since proudhon linked to it.  

It's not easy to digest.  Nonetheless, I believe it is worth reading (and pondering) for anyone who has over 1% of their net in BTC.

Taleb would have built a stronger case had he better demonstrated the correlation between QE and market drops (both) vs. price changes in BTC.

Also, I find it a bit strange that he wrote the Foreword (in glowing terms) to Saifedean Ammous' seminal work The Bitcoin Standard (2018), a book I have re-read...

*   *   *

Still it is important to remember that Taleb is very respected in quantitative finance, probability and related fields.  He popularized the term "Black Swan".  He wrote four respected books on these subjects.

I would, and do, respect and keep up (to the extent I can) with Taleb and his thinking.  He may be very wrong on BTC, but he is worth listening to...

[South Park]

i just want to point out that just because someone has some fancy degrees and is a public figure it doesn't mean their opinion is worth wasting any time on.
in case of Taleb, his whole paper looks like something someone without any education would write.

This is what happens when you believe in your own hype, ‘look, I have a degree that says I know about something so it means that I know about everything and everyone must believe my words’ that is probably what he thinks of himself, not understanding that even for people that are not experts on the technology of bitcoin but that have some basic economic knowledge he sounds like a dumbass, let him believe his own hype bitcoin has been proving him wrong since the day it was created and it will keep doing so.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I have been reading Taleb's paper about every other day or so since proudhon linked to it.

Speaking of proudhon, I'm waiting for his reply here. He's spreading these nonsensical bullshit (FUD) about Bitcoin since 2011. He probably has taken this paper more seriously than it should and justifies himself by repeating keywords such as “science”, “maths” etc. As BrewMaster said above, just because someone has some fancy degrees upon a subject, it doesn't mean that it is worth spending time on.

Therefore, bitcoin can now never reach $0, since there the minimum price anyone can ever sell bitcoin for is 0.01 cents. There. I have refutable his "irrefutable" claim.

Okay, but that doesn't hold water in a market. What would happen if you passed away? We'd have no o_e_l_e_o's and hence, no crazy persons who would accept a fixed price for no obvious reasons. You chose it arbitrarily, but it's not about the amount. It's the fact that if Bitcoin tomorrow became completely useless, you'd have no point on spending even $1 for 18,766,346 BTC.

[NeuroticFish]

This will be the same Taleb who gave credibility to the known scammer and fraudster CSW

Still it is important to remember that Taleb is very respected in quantitative finance, probability and related fields.

1. No matter how respected a person is, we should never ignore the fact that he can easily have his own agenda
2. Even respected people can get tricked into giving credibility to fraudsters

I don't know which of the two is the case here though....


One problem that we already know is that old school economists don't understand Bitcoin.
Another thing is that this is exactly how fake news work. Get half of the truth, combine it with some logic, use only the parts of it that can lead to the conclusion you want (the rest doesn't matter) and voila, you have a bullshit that may look pretty strong if you don't spend some extra minutes to think it over.

So the conclusion is that, sorry @BlackHatCoiner, it looks like you've got tricked into wasting your time with this.

Speaking of proudhon, I'm waiting for his reply here.

You expect a proper reply? Wow. Science and math tells that this is extremely improbable.