
A Letter to Jamie Dimon - petethomas
https://blog.chain.com/a-letter-to-jamie-dimon-de89d417cb80
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golangnews
Jamie Dimon's reaction is not IMO unreasonable given the hype and the
contradictions inherent in the position of most bitcoin advocates -
contradictions laid bare in this article (fast, decentralised, consistent,
pick two).

This article however is a really good counterpoint - it lays out the most
reasonable case for Bitcoin as a new class of asset which is useful as a
representation of value for distributed applications. This is the strongest
case for blockchains I have seen.

It also points out the severe deficiencies inherent in a distributed model
which make it unattractive on many measures compared to existing solutions,
which for some reason current 'crypto' (sorry cryptographers) advocates find
it incredibly hard to do - perhaps because they have come to value the asset
more than the use case. Decentralisation makes bitcoin slow.

The only bit where it breaks down is in its insistence that 'Censorship
resistance' is a fundamental advantage of distributed applications. This
appears to assume that the network will not be policed, and the endpoints
cannot be policed. Your computer is vulnerable, your servers are vulnerable,
the bitcoin developers are vulnerable, exchanges are vulnerable, miners are
vulnerable. All of those pinch points can and will be bribed, cajoled, shut
down or worse coopted if significant real value is captured in distributed
networks.

 _no one can stop me from using Bitcoin to pay for something_

Why yes, yes they can :) Or even worse they can turn bitcoin into something
that you wouldn't want to pay with or are forced to pay with like company
scrip. Exhibit 1, the cryptoruble:

[https://cointelegraph.com/news/breaking-russia-issuing-
crypt...](https://cointelegraph.com/news/breaking-russia-issuing-cryptoruble)

~~~
mgalka
> Jamie Dimon's reaction is not IMO unreasonable given the hype and the
> contradictions inherent in the position of most bitcoin advocates -
> contradictions laid bare in this article (fast, decentralised, consistent,
> pick two).

His ultimate conclusion -- that bitcoin is a bubble -- is not an unreasonable
one to reach. But his reasoning completely misses the point. It doesn't even
make sense to evaluate the worth of bitcoin in isolation as if it were fiat
currency. An argument that it's a bubble necessitates a viewpoint on value of
distributed apps.

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cujic9
I don't take any signal from Jamie Dimon's words.

Regardless of his (or their) true thoughts on crypto, there is no situation in
which it benefits him or JPMorgan to speak positively about crypto currencies.

As a finance company, they either want to "win" the game, or end the game.
Slowing down adoption and/or encouraging government action help them toward
both of these goals.

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johnwheeler
giving jamie dimon a lesson in finance huh? this is so arrogant...

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k0mplex
More of a software lesson

