

Failure is an option - billderose
http://antonopoulos.com/2014/03/02/failure-is-an-option/

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kens
If Mt Gox were a bank, it wouldn't be big enough to make the Wikipedia list of
US bank failures:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_U.S._bank_failu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_U.S._bank_failures)
(I don't have a hidden agenda with that comment - I just found it
interesting.)

And on a totally unrelated note, pivoting off the title: I think the "failure
is not an option" philosophy led to a lot of NASA's problems.

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gpcz
Can you expand on your opinion regarding NASA's problems stemming from
"failure is not an option?" Based on Gene Kranz's Wikipedia page, specifically
the "Failure is not an option" section (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Kranz#.22Failure_is_not_an...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Kranz#.22Failure_is_not_an_option.22)
), this is a complicated and controversial topic.

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millstone
> I have some predictions: Gox will not be bailed out.

MtGox will not be bailed out because of the relative unimportance of bitcoin
to the larger economy, not of any high-minded free market idealism.

Since the MtGox explosion, bitcoin prices (and therefore real purchasing
power) are down by about 30%. If bitcoin were a national currency, the
government would be doing everything in its power to prevent such a decline,
including saving MtGox by any means possible. It would absolutely be too big
to fail.

By way of comparison, Greece's economic woes drove its real purchasing power
down by about 11%.

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Pitarou
I think the writer was comparing Mt. Gox to certain US financial institutions,
not Greece.

And this isn't "high-minded free market idealism". It's a practical
observation. The state has given unconditional support to large financial
institutions; institutions that are owned and managed for private profit. How
can that possibly end well?

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thesimpsons1022
the writer is the owner of the blockchain website so he does have his biases

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VanV
FWIW, my understanding is that he is just the chief security officer at
Blockchain.info [1], and not one of the owners.

[1] [http://antonopoulos.com/](http://antonopoulos.com/)

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henrik_w
In line with the thinking in "Antifragile" by Taleb - failures of individuals
in a population makes the the population as a whole stronger. The forrest fire
example is also in the book - artificially "stabilizing" a system only sets it
up for a bigger disruption later. Great book, with lots of interesting ideas.

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victoro
Failure has always been an option in small, unproven, socially unimportant
markets. It really shouldn't take 7 paragraphs to compare apples to oranges...

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dalai
I think his point was that is should also be an option in large, proven and
socially important markets.

