Nassim Taleb "Bitcoin, currencies and bubbles"

I'm not interested in his views on BTC as a currency, it's his view on technology that I find interesting and take issue with.

My view on gold is that it is also a "technology", like stainless steel, carbon fibre, padlocks or latex. Mmmmmmm, latex. :p

It's invention enabled humankind access to a highly effective store of wealth/medium of exchange through a large part of history. Importantly not throughout history as there was an immense period of time before its invention where the technology to mine and refine gold was just not available, which gives plausibility to my "gold is a technology" argument. Gold requires a host of technologically based applications and processes in order to to find it, mine it, refine it, assay it, transport it to market and to exchange it with any confidence as well as to store it securely. All of which to quote Taleb in his own words when dismissing BTC, require "active maintenance by interested and incentivized people to keep its physical presence", which apparently preclude it from having "monetary value, for any such period of time".

As Nassim Taleb argues correctly, technologies do get supplanted. And it's quite conceivable that the technology we call BTC can supplant the technology we call gold because BTC can be mined, transferred, audited and stored more efficiently than gold without the necessity to be in physical form.
 
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Does that mean I don't or won't make use of the older technology that gold offers and exclusively use BTC? No.

I like to have open fires in winter on my deck. I could just as easily stay inside, rug up and turn the oven on and leave its door open, but the old open fire technology meets certain needs that leaving the oven door open just doesn't.
 
nassim has turned into a bsv paid shill and bitcoin detractor, sad to see as i enjoyed black swan and fooled by randomness however have no time for his recent shift in thoughts on crypto.
 
Polar.bear.Stacker said:
I'm a fan of Nassim Taleb's books and was wondering what people's thoughts were on this?
I've tried looking at it from a few perspectives and come up ambivalent.
There's no way to prove something is a bubble until it pops?
I own a bit of btc and a bit of gold, and my argument is that there's an everything bubble.

https://nassimtaleb.org/2021/06/bitcoin-currencies-bubbles/
Click to expand...

This reminds me of a book that I read, called "Peak Everything" by Richard Heinberg. Of course, he is referring to the natural resources that will be depleted one day on Earth.

BUT: the financial bubbles are somewhat similar in my opinion. What's depleted is demand, trust, velocity... and it all goes down.

Michael Saylor seems very inspiring and has had right so far every time:

Yes, there will be bubbles, but notice how Bitcoin, for instance never went down to 600 $, where it was 7-8 years ago. Back then I've found it outrageous that it could trade for "that much"...

If just 10% of the people on Earth who have a smartphone and internet connection embark on the crypto bus, then it could go to 1 million $. It could go even higher.
The wealth transfer started occurring with crypto, while everyone believe it would all go into gold and silver.
 
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