“Bezzle” is amusing and worthwhile but only up to a point. Asset prices commonly fluctuate both above and below their intrinsic values, and are usually influenced by other asset prices — a prime example being the interplay between stock prices, house prices, and interest rates. The trick is to separate that phenomenon from “bezzle.” I don’t know of a rule of thumb, but maybe Mish does.
“”Bezzle” is amusing and worthwhile but only up to a point.”
Which is an unavoidable property of all series of uncertain values.
The problem is not the “bezzle”, as long as it is presented as being long term self correcting. Instead, like all else in financialized dystopias devoid of any valuable facets whatsoever: The problem is that the long term reversion is prevented from happening by the totalitarian state.
Such that, again: The net result is more crass redistribution. To the connected, from the productive. In this specific case, by way of the state stepping in to “save the system.” “The System” of course, being nothing more than the bezzle itself.
Prevent redistribution via money printing, as well as via regulations and other means, and any temporary “mispricing” self corrects. Always. Without any exception.
Don’t prevent it: And the leeches feeding off (bezzle mediated, among other pathways…) welfare checks, which the totalitarian state funds by robbing productive people and organisations, will; as in the current dystopian West, be handed control over ever greater shares of total wealth hence resources. Which the welfare leeches, being invariably unintelligent and incompetent, will then predictably squander on stupid things their childlike intellects is easily suckered into believing is “visionary” and such. Queue the free falling West as of today, where darned near all wealth is now controlled by rank morons who were handed it, in exchange for contributing nothing of value themselves, by exactly such crass redistribution. “The Bezzle” being merely one of the mechanism details by which it was orchestrated.
Captain Ahab
1 year ago
87,000 new IRS agents. RFID chips in paper currency (link to dtss.us) Audit small businesses.
Think of the tax dollars.
Columbo
1 year ago
Acceptance by the public of a USD Central bank digital currency is our governments dream come true. Look around, China’s embracing it, except for what happened with the Canadian truckers (Go fund me), what could go wrong?
RonJ
1 year ago
“Fake wealth bezzle will be wiped out”
Bezzle did not have a good day on Wall Street, yesterday.
KidHorn
1 year ago
Talk about digital currency being rolled out is nonsense. Only a small pct of money is cash. All the rest is digital. We’ve had digital currencies for decades. And there’s no way bitcoin or any other non governmental digital currency will replace USD, Yen, Euro, etc… . World governments will never allow it. And cash will be around for decades. Politicians want non traceable transactions as much as everyone else.
Assume Gov orders all $$$ to be turned in for digital dollars by Dec 31, 2024. What will people do for transactions in the underground economy? How do you avoid taxes when every cent goes through your digital account?
What you describe is a 100% digital currency. Not the same as the existence of a digital currency. And I seriously doubt it would ever happen.
Billy
1 year ago
Bitcoin has worth because our government allows it to. Because of blockchain, it’s 100% traceable. So then, how do we not know invented it?
Chances are that the US government invented it. They allow it to exist. The government controls all of the exchanges within the US. It’s extremely difficult for you and I to buy Bitcoin without a phone, computer, or ID.
There is already over 2,000 crypto currencies that are considered dead coins.
In my opinion, I think Bitcoin will be like all other fads.
However, if the US thinks Bitcoin could be a threat, all they have to do is tax each transaction.
Not sure how the gov’t would tax, however it can identify BTC transactions as they pass through routing hubs.
Your conjecture ‘that the US government invented it’ would not surprise me in the least, Just as QAnon likely stands for Quantico Academy FBI)
JackWebb
1 year ago
Can someone point me to a “Blockchain For Dummies” link? I see the term all the time, and know nothing else. I’d like to know, but need the version aimed at a bright high-school kid. Thanks!
A “blockchain” is a ledger – an every-growing list of “blocks”. A “block” is just some information a computer can store. It could be an image. It could be a spreadsheet. It could be the information that dollar bill serial numbered 123456789 is transferred from computer XYZZY to computer ZABFRAZ. Whatever.
A particular blockchain is stored on a gob of computers, maybe located all over the world. These computers do not, repeat, do not trust each other. The owners of these computers can be bitter enemies. But, using the magic of arithmetic, they can trust that their copy of the blockchain is identical to the copy all the other computers have.
So, how are blocks added to a blockchain? The computers vote. And magical arithmetic insures the vote is honest and every computer can agree on the vote’s outcome. In the case of BitCoin’s blockchain, a computer gets a number of votes roughly equal to the amount of electricity the computer burns. Which means, if technology were not ever-improving, BitCoin voting (“mining”) wall heaters would be a great product. 🙂
“Packet” usually means some information (digital data bytes) sent from one computer to another. So “block” and “packet” really mean the same thing – a bunch of bytes. “Files” on your computer are also a bunch of bytes. There’s no end of names we call chunks of digital data.
Crypto currencies use a blockchain to keep track of all their currency. Yes, all. Every last cent. “Blocks” have, for instance, who sent what currency to who. So, if you have a copy of the block chain, you can track a particular “coin” (or fraction of a coin) from when it first was created, through all its owners, to who has it now. And, you can verify you own that coin. And only the computer that owns the coin can give it to someone else. Once.
Currency? Think if all US money were in dollar bills, each with a unique serial number. (Except in crypto, you can divide up the bills to zillions of numbered pieces.)
“Who” is basically a public/private key pair used for encryption and identity. Just like with encrypted email.
I’m not ignoring details. I’m overwhelmed. I am starting simple with what I know. It might look lazy or careless, but it’s not.
I start with packets because I know what they are, and am familiar with how they are moved within telecom networks, i.e. SONET/SDH, ATM, MPLS, Ethernet, the OSI layers, and so on. I’m not the first person who, on being confronted with the unfamiliar, starts by drawing a comparison with what he knows.
Now, as I understand it, the Internet isn’t a separate network, but rather is defined by how information is coded: not in PCM but in TCP/IP, and that information isn’t sent via a dedicated circuit but rather unrelated packets travel together in physical layer, each with their own address, enabling them to take separate paths. This attracted the war spooks, who wanted messages to get through the network even if parts were destroyed by nuclear war.
Thus, after the bombs go off, Washington might no longer be able to contact North Dakota by means of a dedicated session, but rather the information is encoded in TCP/IP and the packets can get there through whatever route is available. The switches will need to be able to handle TCP/IP (hello, Cisco switchrouters), but as long as they do and as long as the entire backbone and the feeders in metro D.C. and wherever they’re located in North Daokta aren’t destroyed, the two ends can communicate.
That’s my frame of reference. As I’ve been reading that link, my first task is to eliminate the Wired-style promotionalism, and start without Bitcoin until I understand how the messaging works. In packet-switching, the data can be effectively encrypted, and does not have to go through an intermediary. Thus, I’m struggling with the claim that blockchains are more secure.
Here’s a thought: How about discussing blockchains within the 7-layer model?
Change “TCP” to “UDP”. TCP is sending UDP packets back and forth so that TCP can give you a stream of data that matches that which was sent to you (missed, duped, out-of-order UDP packets are hidden behind TCP logic).
Hmmm. Well, maybe if you think of a block chain as an endless stream of data that gets broadcast a piece/block/packet) at a time and the computers all have the same exact stream at any given time (excepting momentary update/latency-ish delays).
What gets a bit weird is who the original sender is for each block. In BitCoin, the sender is randomly selected, but computers that burn a lot of electricity get to be the sender more often than computers that burn just a little electricity. And the chosen sender is paid in BitCoin for the work. Other blockchain designs do this part differently.
Near as I can tell so far, blockchain’s appeal seems to be that there’s no intermediary. I don’t know why this matters given that email can be effectively encrypted, and big players (enterprises) can (and do) run their own servers rather than, say, sending everything through Gmail, etc.
What is “permissioned authority?”
Also: Mish, a bunch of what you posted is not visible to me. Nothing under “fun facts” or “why use blockchain.”
I closed browser, cleared out all history, cookies, etc… then relaunched and everything worked.
I suppose it did, but with no disrespect to Mish, I always have lots of windows open. Not real inclined to ditch all of that every time I want to read one of his posts.
Crypto hashes and public/private key pairs are new things under the sun. No one knows what sorts of creative uses can be made of them. So, people who get excited about such things are … excited. It’s a new toy!
1991 is new on the time scale I’m thinking. Pub/priv keys, as you probably know, were invented back in 1970-ish, plus or minus. Not by me, to my eternal shame. 🙂 And, not exposed to the public. Ah, well. They are still new and relatively unexplored territory.
Captain Ahab
1 year ago
What is blockchain but a ‘block’ of data incorporating an encrypted record of the previous block, a time stamp, and last transaction information?
There is nothing special about the timestamp and transaction info, or being able to trace back prior transactions, except each ‘unit’ remains unique over time. Don’t credit cards indirectly include the same information?
What is crucial? Efficient encryption, and built-in memory? How important is Bitcoin’s inherent heterogeneity compared to gold’s homogeneity? Do I really need to store the unique ever-growing blockchains for my 100 Bitcoins? I can melt my gold coins into one ingot…. convert it to digital gold, and trade with confidence.
Good question! I’d change “encrypted record of the previous block” to something like “crypto hash of the previous block”. The underlying tech behind blockchain and some other new-to-humanity things (e.g. Bit Torrent) is crypto-hash. Truly magical stuff. Ditto, public/private key tech.
What is crucial is that no one, two, three…… parties are a priori privileged to decide which possibly differing copies of the ledger is the correct one. Hence no a priori party/parties can collude and rob others. Instead, everyone is “equal.” And anyone who feels he is being mistreated, can simply fork the existing show. Which will succeed once enough people do feel that way. Something which keeps everyone in check.
Very similar to Gold. Not even Dimwits Falling Down Airplane Stairs, can easily confiscate wealth held in Gold buried in some undisclosed location. They can’t do it directly, since they don’t know where to look nor who owns what. And they can’t do it by indirectly , by debasement, since that would take more energy than even the staircase-falling-downers can hope to steal from their betters.
The Blockchain was designed pretty much specifically, as a means of extracting exactly those economically crucial features of Gold, into a construct which could be perpetuated on a loose network of independent computers.
The above being also why the nonsense about “blockchain” somehow magically having “value” all by itself, absent the crucial distributed part. Take away the distributed nature, and “blockchain” is just an insanely inefficient way of keeping a ledger. Only dumb people do things inefficiently. Of course, only dumb people are in charge of “Wall Street” firms anymore (assuming there was ever a time when that was not true.) So I suppose it’s not all that surprising that the Venn diagram for “true believing centralised blockchain gullibles” and “Wall Street firms” exhibit plenty of overlap.
Coming soon, central bank digital currencies will truly be 24×7 and costless….
Digital currencies and blockchain are parallel developments, i.e. one doesn’t depend on the other. Some recent news out of China suggests their central bank e-CNY digital currency won’t use blockchain (“distributed ledger”) due to the need to handle very high transaction volumes.
Captain Ahab
1 year ago
While we debate Bitcoin and blockchain, does anyone remember Phil Zimmerman and the cyberpunks of the 1990s? Without them, and Phil’s PGP in particular, the internet would be largely useless. Zero privacy. No encrypted email, no safe online bank transactions, no cryptocurrencies. Nada.
CRS65
1 year ago
I completely agree with Mish on this topic!
Steve_R
1 year ago
Wall Street’s biggest banks have largely avoided investing directly in cryptocurrencies, but Black Rock is.
BlackRock Inc. , the world’s largest asset manager, is partnering with Coinbase Global Inc. to offer direct access to bitcoin to some institutional clients.
Common clients of Coinbase (COIN) and BlackRock’s (BLK) investment management platform Aladdin, will get access to crypto trading, custody, prime brokerage, and reporting capabilities, according to a statement Thursday.
“Our institutional clients are increasingly interested in gaining exposure to digital asset markets and are focused on how to efficiently manage the operational life cycle of these assets,” Joseph Chalom , global head of strategic ecosystem partnerships at BlackRock, wrote in the statement.
In March, BlackRock’s chairman Larry Fink wrote in a letter to shareholders that the company is studying digital currencies, stablecoins and the underlying technologies as the firm has seen increasing interest from clients.
Bitcoin was trading at around $22,952 Thursday, down 1.6% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinDesk data
why does it require so much energy? (don’t bother to answer. leave me in my shell.)
all i know, is based on a very good interview by forbes, i think, moderated very well, a year ago. the smart gal guest mentioned getting around capital controls in Africa. the smart South African guy said it was a means for moving ‘venue’. that slayed me. it was so funny. Venue! I get it, it’s a means to move money outside of banks and capital controls. What else is the point? Sync with your recipient, get in, move it, and get out, rapidly. that’s how I see it. I don’t understand the usefulness beyond that.
The algorithm to “mine” Bitcoin gets progressively harder over time. That means more computing power which means more energy. As the price of Bitcoin rises, the competition for Bitcoin increases. More computers competing, more energy wasted.
Captain Ahab
1 year ago
Would Bitcoin exist if capital came with a true opportunity cost? I suspect the Fed’s FREE CAPITAL CAMPAIGN, adding trillions and maintaining near zero interest rates greatly distorted the allocation mechanism and induced speculation.
dbannist
1 year ago
To this day I do not understand the long term value of BTC.
If I lived on an island and suddenly declared that coconut shells were now money we would have a limited supply of them and could only add new supply as new coconuts grew. However, a neighboring tribe on the same island also declares that conch shells are money. Another tribe declares that whale bones are money. There are 100 tribes on the island and every tribe has a different currency and can create as many currencies as they want to. Eventually, all currencies become worthless after a short hype because when anyone can create as much currency as they want at will they will indeed do so because human nature is what it is. After everything is currency, nothing will be and only those things that are rare or actually produce stuff will have value.
When anyone can create a digital currency does any currency really truly have value? I’ve lost count of how many there are now there are literally new ones every day. When everyone figures out how to make their own digital currency none of them will have any value.
Because of this I only own 25 bucks worth of digital currency, and only because I got it for free from Paypal for signing up for something. That was a year ago, it’s gone from 25 bucks to 1.25. O well. Maybe I can buy a candy bar with that 1.25 that’s left.
Actually probably not…..inflation has hit candy bars hard too.
In 400 years BTC people will wonder at the BTC madness and it will be the subject of economic textbooks, replacing Tulipmania as the ultimate foolishness.
This is an important point about an “asset” with a limited use value (as us classical economists say). What you actually describe above is basically the story of gold. Gold was not worth much in west africa but salt was, so gold was traded for salt. Gold was not worth much in indonesia by cowrie shells were, so gold was traded for cowrie shells.
The Europeans were the ones who found gold to be really valuable and they took over the world, so gold because the basis of money. Had the indonesians taken over the world, we would all be listening to elderly actors telling us about all of these great cowrie shell deals, and had the Kingdom of Benin taken over the world, we would be listening to the same elderly actors telling us about all of this great salt that we can hoard in our safes.
There is a definite superiority to gold vs. cowrie shells. There is a reason one died out and another survived.
Short of nuclear fusion, one cannot make more gold at will. Salt can be made on a whim, cowrie shells can be farmed (and are highly perishable due to breakage). Furthermore one cannot move 1000 years worth of collective wages of one person in a box the size of a backpack if it was cowrie shells.
I’m not a huge gold bug but I can see the clear difference between gold and other forms of currency that have passed away. Yes, there are temporary blips where other things become more wanted as a currency (bullets during a war, water\food during a siege) but these would never survive as a world store of value and have limited usefulness due to very unique, and local circumstances.
And gold was widely used beyond Europe. In fact, it was used pretty much everywhere there were people, including the Americas pre-Columbus, wherever it was found.
Yes, I included that.But it cannot be made in large quantities. Salt, cowrie shells etc can all be made in massive quantities. Well, technically salt isn’t made, it’s removed from water, but there’s so much of it as to have nearly infinite supply.
Of course, there’s billions of tons of gold in the center of the earth. Gold is heavy and comprises a not insignificant part of the earth’s core. IF we could get that then yes, gold would be worthless too. All I need is to invent some tech to get me there.
There’s enough gold in the core of the earth to cover the entire surface of the earth 12 feet deep. Accessibility matters.
Perhaps that west Africans and Indonesians did not ‘value’ gold explains their lack of economic development? On the other hand, China and Middle East cultures placed high value on gold for millenia. Ditto for Central American cultures like Mayan and Aztec.
People who lived on Island Earth did have 100 local currencies. And then, being sentient and all, arrived at using one, or a few, which none of them could easily print more of, as a currency for inter-tribe trade.
Bitcoin (or developments….) are no different.
Instead, the “problem” you are alluding to, is exactly the one of every country being able to, cost free, print their own currency. And then, to boot, attempting to prevent exactly a non-printable currency from being defaulted to as a means to keep them honest in international trade.
As for Gold vs “Bitcoin,” one can make a good case for a mix of both. Or even a few more. The risk profiles differ. With Gold, they are primarily physical theft, and/or inability to physically get to your holdings. The costs are due to high costs of securely transfer. With crypto, the risks are that the necessary complication leaves you exposed to forget a password/lose a key…..; as well as the possibility that some new math renders your holdings a lot less secure than before. While the costs are related to mitigating these risks. For most people, hedging by keeping reserves as a mix of both, is likely the optimal solution.
In either case, though: You won’t get the cheap, quick convenience of traditional, centralised, trusted bank ledgers. So both Gold and Bitcoin can never be expected to serve as any more than a “reserve” currency. Or “savings.” With day to day transactions being done by some partially trusted “bank” funded by one or both of the above.
Of course, being funded by ultimately anonymous funds, you can keep those bank accounts suitably anonymous as well. You can still avoid any direct link to your physical person. This anonymity being an absolute necessity for any meaningful protection from theft, since absent it, no fancy protocol nor bank vault can protect you from simply being kidnapped and forced to fork over. Your only defense against that, being that noone knows who owns enough to be worth kidnapping.
Tech being what it is, what is stopping someone from making a better version of BTC in 20 years? Absolutely nothing. How fast can BTC become worthless? Overnight. Just think about the tech that was brand new 20 years ago compared to today. Do we really think that BTC, a digital currency, won’t be upstaged by something better? The world isn’t the same place it was even 40 years ago. 40 years ago virtually no one owned a computer. Where will we be in another 40 years?
What about manufacturing plants? Farms? Ranches? Aluminum smelters? These will be in business 100 years from now, barring an alien tech that eliminates the need for such things. That’s why I invest in stuff that actually produces stuff.
“Tech being what it is, what is stopping someone from making a better version of BTC in 20 years?”
People have been making better versions of USD since before the Fed was imposed on people.
People didn’t climb down fro the trees and suddenly start using Gold as an exchange medium. Until that happened, many other currencies were tried. May/most superior, in many ways, to current Fiat currencies.
In the real world, Bitcoin’s competition is not some mythical metaperfect currency. But rather current Fiats. Every single one of whom are little more than vehicles for rampant, and ever accelerating, transfers of wealth. From competent, productive people; to the regime-connected rank idiots who currently own, run and grossly misallocate the wealth previous generations built up.
I start with packets because I know what they are, and am familiar with how they are moved within telecom networks, i.e. SONET/SDH, ATM, MPLS, Ethernet, the OSI layers, and so on. I’m not the first person who, on being confronted with the unfamiliar, starts by drawing a comparison with what he knows.
Now, as I understand it, the Internet isn’t a separate network, but rather is defined by how information is coded: not in PCM but in TCP/IP, and that information isn’t sent via a dedicated circuit but rather unrelated packets travel together in physical layer, each with their own address, enabling them to take separate paths. This attracted the war spooks, who wanted messages to get through the network even if parts were destroyed by nuclear war.
Thus, after the bombs go off, Washington might no longer be able to contact North Dakota by means of a dedicated session, but rather the information is encoded in TCP/IP and the packets can get there through whatever route is available. The switches will need to be able to handle TCP/IP (hello, Cisco switchrouters), but as long as they do and as long as the entire backbone and the feeders in metro D.C. and wherever they’re located in North Daokta aren’t destroyed, the two ends can communicate.
That’s my frame of reference. As I’ve been reading that link, my first task is to eliminate the Wired-style promotionalism, and start without Bitcoin until I understand how the messaging works. In packet-switching, the data can be effectively encrypted, and does not have to go through an intermediary. Thus, I’m struggling with the claim that blockchains are more secure.
Here’s a thought: How about discussing blockchains within the 7-layer model?
What is “permissioned authority?”
Also: Mish, a bunch of what you posted is not visible to me. Nothing under “fun facts” or “why use blockchain.”
I suppose it did, but with no disrespect to Mish, I always have lots of windows open. Not real inclined to ditch all of that every time I want to read one of his posts.
Tulips still have value! Not much, but some.
In 400 years BTC people will wonder at the BTC madness and it will be the subject of economic textbooks, replacing Tulipmania as the ultimate foolishness.
There is a definite superiority to gold vs. cowrie shells. There is a reason one died out and another survived.
Short of nuclear fusion, one cannot make more gold at will. Salt can be made on a whim, cowrie shells can be farmed (and are highly perishable due to breakage). Furthermore one cannot move 1000 years worth of collective wages of one person in a box the size of a backpack if it was cowrie shells.
I’m not a huge gold bug but I can see the clear difference between gold and other forms of currency that have passed away. Yes, there are temporary blips where other things become more wanted as a currency (bullets during a war, water\food during a siege) but these would never survive as a world store of value and have limited usefulness due to very unique, and local circumstances.
And gold was widely used beyond Europe. In fact, it was used pretty much everywhere there were people, including the Americas pre-Columbus, wherever it was found.
There’s enough gold in the core of the earth to cover the entire surface of the earth 12 feet deep. Accessibility matters.