On: Bitcoin solved a major technical problem, but not an economic one

[tvladeck]

He came around on the Internet (and admitted his mistake), and now believes there will be large productivity gains from Big Data.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-dynamo-and-b...

Edit: I realize I'm not addressing your larger point. He still may not be the guy to go to. But that being said I think his opinions are more nuanced.

Edit 2: Another post by him on the value of ICT: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/11/the-ict-revoluti...

[hexis → tvladeck]

No doubt that when bitcoin's success is obvious, he will also admit his mistake and go on to make another uninformed prediction.

[tvladeck → hexis]

I personally find that people who admit their mistakes more trustworthy because it shows they can at least learn from them. In this case, the jury is very much still out on whether BTC will succeed as a currency, and not as a protocol that's useful for some other thing (or many other things), which seems to be the crux of Krugman's argument.