
Bitcoin Is Evil (2013) - endisukaj
https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/bitcoin-is-evil/
======
Nokinside
Bitcoin as unit of account (measure of value) does not exist. Products sold in
bitcoin are priced in local conventional currencies and bitcoin price is
altered frequently to match the changes in Bitcoin valuations.

Now somebody may say "That's now but wait until Bitcoin takes over the world."
That's a another problem. Global currency or fixing exchange rates is not a
good idea (Bretton Woods was a failure). There is thing called optimum
currency area. Euroarea is in trouble because it misses many criteria for
optimum currency area. They are fixing them now. Without global fiscal union,
world government and free movement of labour, global currency and single
global unit of account is not a good thing.

As a payment system it's already choking and can't easily move value form one
person to another. You need intermediaries and intermediaries between
intermediaries to fix the system. If you end up using Visa or Mastercard
payment system to pay in BTC what's the point?

I think cryptocurrencies and have a place in the future, but Bitcoin is not
it.

------
en4bz
I don't think it takes a Nobel prize to realize that BitCoin, given its recent
extreme volatility, currently makes for a poor medium of exchange.

EDIT: This article is actually from 2013. Around the time Bitcoin went from
~10 to ~1000 USD. I suppose the same was true at that time. Bitcoin was
relatively stable hovering around ~500USD from 2014 to 2017.

~~~
jk2323
This reminds me of a quote it once read on a board. Someone claimed that his
gold "became much much more". The other guy replied: "Lucky you. I checked
mine. It did not become more at all, it is the same amount of gold that was
there before. Only the dollar declined."

------
quantumofmalice
_> BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central
banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in
mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens
financial transactions._

"evil"

~~~
matte_black
Why wouldn't it be evil? Without the ability to collect tax the first ones to
suffer are the poor who get increasingly deprived of social welfare programs
or rejected for loans and fair interest rates by banks who have to
increasingly tighten their credit standards. Without the ability to monitor
financial transactions black markets run wild and facilitate the exchange of
money for illegal goods and services.

~~~
thescribe
I think you could equally say it allows bypassing oppressive taxes and allows
citizens to bypass draconian snooping, it is all a matter of perspective.

~~~
cies
Something high-net-worth-individuals had access to since forever, not more-
and-more available to the common man.

Disruption?

------
busterarm
Can we add "2013" to the title?

------
ryanmarsh
I began working in the late 90’s as a web developer. Then adoption of the
“consumer” internet was growing rapidly. I recall there was much excitement,
naysaying, thoughtful analysis by very smart people, and pure FUD.

There seemed to be a set of fundamentals or values borrowed from existing
phonomena and applied to the internet, internet companies, and their potential
(for great or evil). These of course lacked the benefit of hindsight and today
much of what was said (although well intentioned) turned out to be frankly
ridiculous.

I have a gut feeling that in 10 or 20 years we will look back and realize that
this new thing has a set of fundamentals all its own. Once those emerge we
will be able to have wonderful arguments. Until then I just try to focus on
the technology. It’s the only thing I can make reasonable sense of. Let the
talking people talk. Let the builders build and let’s just see where this
goes.

Crypto currencies like we see now are a new phonomena. We won’t know who the
brilliant minds and the fools are until this all shakes out.

------
zerostar07
From his writing it is clear that he hasn't invested time researching the
cryptocoin ecosystem. Who cares if bitcoin is evil it was just a start, and
there 's now an entire new financial system being built.

He's too hung up on this:

 _BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central
banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in
mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens
financial transactions._

 _Stross doesn’t like that agenda, and neither do I_

pity

~~~
Danihan
>BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central
banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in
mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens
financial transactions.

That's exactly why I (and most people) like it so much..

------
thisisit
This whole thing is a reference to the argument presented in another article
from 2013:

[https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/why-
i-w...](https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/why-i-want-
bitcoin-to-die-in-a.html)

------
jarym
"To be successful, money must be both a medium of exchange and a reasonably
stable store of value." \- BitCoin isn't 'money' though.

As for the Charlie Stross link and the claim that BitCoin is 'designed to
damage central bankers' \- that depends. It certainly is likely to have the
effect of making central bankers more honest. Up until recently there were
real consequences to printing free-money but after the 2007 financial crisis
it seems central bankers banded together to collectively print money from
nothing - it became ok as long as others were doing it too. Well the reality
is that printing money does have repercussions and one could well argue that
the rise of BitCoin is one such repercussion.

Same with the global attempt to eliminate physical cash - it's all great to go
digital but when the central bankers decide they want to force everyone to
spend more with negative interest rates it can indiscriminately hurt an
average worker trying to save money to buy a home! Same goes for taxation -
governments think its easy to raise money by increasing taxation, the offshore
finance industry used to keep a lid on that until they were cracked down on -
digital currencies can fill that gap.

Now there's no doubt that governments and central bankers might dislike
control being taken away from them but to claim BitCoin hurts them is a bit
like claiming jails hurt convicted felons... IMO.

~~~
pjc50
> control being taken away from them

To whom is this control being handed? It's not going to be the ordinary
citizen; it's going to be the global wealthy plus a few early adopters.

> force everyone to spend more with negative interest rates it can
> indiscriminately hurt an average worker trying to save money to buy a home

Buying a home on a negative interest rate mortgage could be an interesting
experience.

~~~
jarym
\- Being a finite resource, control would seemingly belong to whoever holds
the largest amount. The point isn't that the ordinary citizen is going to
control it, it is that whatever quantity you have is fixed and can't be
debased.

\- Negative interest rates are horrible because they tend to impact savers
whilst borrowers are typically now subject to a minimum interest rate on their
loans.

------
chubot
In general, "X is evil" sounds like a troll (even though I don't own any
BitCoin, etc.)

This author is well known for incorrect predictions, and for not particularly
caring about the truth of what he writes:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-
inte...](http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-internet-
quote-2013-12)

 _By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet 's impact on the
economy has been no greater than the fax machine's._

His defense was essentially that he writes things to attract attention:

 _It was a thing for the Times magazine 's 100th anniversary, written as if by
someone looking back from 2098, so the point was to be fun and provocative,
not to engage in careful forecasting;_

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/elec...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/election-
night-2016/paul-krugman-the-economic-fallout)

On election night:

 _It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are
plunging. When might we expect them to recover? ... Still, I guess people want
an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer
is never._

Regardless of what you think of Trump, this statement is hilariously
inaccurate.

~~~
twblalock
You're attacking the author rather than the argument. What aspect of _this
particular article_ do you have a problem with?

~~~
endisukaj
He fails to understand the fact that it's not necessarily Bitcoin _per-se_
that will bring change to world economy and the banking structure; it's the
underlying technology that has value and perhaps even for Bitcoin itself it's
where the store of value lies.

~~~
thisisit
And what exactly is the value proposition of the underlying technology?

~~~
eitland
Getting closer to frictionless payments.

Getting access to a number of services that we currently use banks for -
without using banks.

Note: my reply is about blockchains, not about bitcoin.

I've more or less given up on bitcoin and think other crypto tokens have a far
better chance in the long run.

~~~
the_gastropod
> Getting closer to frictionless payments.

Pardon my ignorance. I see this mentioned a lot. What do you mean by
_frictionless payments_?

> Getting access to a number of services that we currently use banks for -
> without using banks

What services in particular? And what's preferable about using blockchain
technology for these services?

~~~
eitland
> What do you mean by frictionless payments?

I mean in the same way as email is frictionless compared to mail: you can send
all day, it arrives halfway around the globe in seconds, fees are
significantly lower.

> What services in particular?

For most people? Money transfer.

> And what's preferable about using blockchain technology for these services?

AFAIK because it is a way to make this happen without having to trust a number
of institutions that are rich because of the current setup and might have a
huge conflict of interest.

Again: IMO this is about the technology, not about Bitcoin.

------
alexnewman
Totally agree that the goal is to smash central banking. I also think that the
cryptoanarchist community must h8 central banking. How could anyone blame them
with where our economy has gone. That being said, i think central banking is a
great tool, it is just the fed is too conservative.

~~~
taoistextremist
>How could anyone blame them with where our economy has gone.

We're like the richest we've ever been as a society. Even poor Americans are
pretty damn rich compared to the past. Even if you want to make an argument
about wealth inequality, crypto doesn't really solve that.

The Federal Reserve is actually an extremely responsible body, despite what
people claim or what banks that they have no real control over do.

~~~
dnautics
whether or not it's extremely responsible is irrelevant; while I don't think
they intend it that way, their mission is to extract the wealth from the poor
and give it to the rich in the name of 'growth' and 'stability'.

You do not see folks wandering around the tenderloin getting negative real
interest rate loans or their businesses bailed out. The economic value to fund
the fed's operations comes out of the spending power of the rest of us.

~~~
chatmasta
> their mission is to extract the wealth from the poor and give it to the rich
> in the name of 'growth' and 'stability'.

Citation needed. Even if you mean it as obvious hyperbole, I’d like to hear
some evidence for how central banks “extract money from the poor.”

~~~
dnautics
I never said extract money, I said extract wealth.

Increasing the cost of living by targetting positive inflation. If you're poor
and the cost of living goes up the relative margin of survival decreases
faster than for the wealthy.

Let's say you spend 98% and there's 1% inflation. Your margin of survival goes
down 50%, whereas someone spending 20% barely feels it.

If you have more questions, my contact is in the profile. This is only
scratching the surface.

------
jk2323
"This author is well known for incorrect predictions, and for not particularly
caring about the truth of what he writes"

ROTFL. This really describes Krugman well. Of cause bitcoin is "evil" since it
limits his ideas of how to "experiment" with money.

