After big year for Bitcoin, NY media is still behind –
After big year for Bitcoin, NY media is still behind -No one could mistake Paul Krugman for being a futurist. This year Bitcoin skyrocketed from $14 to $1200 and plummeted down to $500 before settling around $750 at year’s end. В It saw two bubbles inflate rapidly and pop just as quickly. В With the benefit of hindsight, Forbes called Bitcoin the best investment of the year. В It has certainly been a tumultuous, but promising year for the largest cryptocurrency. As Bitcoin continues to move into the common lexicon, you would expect more intelligent discourse to make its way into the pages of publications like the New York Times and the NY Post. В Sadly, this is not the case. В Two recent articles the nonsensically titled Bitcoin is Evilв and Bitcoin: A Modern Day 3-Card Monteв are so laced with misleading bias and Keynesian drivel that they do not merit a serious response, but if the man who equated the internet’s impact to that of the fax machine gets to publish his opinion, then I might as well do the same. Despite being titled, Bitcoin is evil,в Paul Krugman’s piece is not a moral contemplation, but a question about Bitcoin’s reliability as a store of value. В Apparently even the New York Times isn’t above sensationalist headlines. В Krugman correctly points out that there is no issue with Bitcoin as a payment system, but Bitcoin’s volatility makes it a questionable store of value. What Paul Krugman misses is that price volatility isn’t a feature of Bitcoin. В It is a feature of growth. В Never has a currency been invented to be a currency without government support so readers can be forgiven for seeing Bitcoin’s dramatic rise as unique. В This video (20 minutes long, but HIGHLY recommended) explains pretty clearly that Bitcoin has been following the same S-curve that other emerging technologies have consistently followed. В I won’t go into detail (Watch the video! ), but as was the case with refrigerators, air conditioners and Facebook, demand for Bitcoin will grow slowly (2009 2012), then experience exponential growth, then plateau as it approaches its real market value. В Of course nothing is guaranteed and Bitcoin could see an exodus and crash, but that seems increasingly unlikely. Of course, Paul Krugman cannot end an op-ed without a bit of hypocrisy:В He says, Stross doesn’t like that [libertarian] agenda and neither do I, but I am trying not to tilt my positive analysis of Bitcoin one way or the other. вВ I don’t know how you can claim to be unbiased about Bitcoin when you title your article, Bitcoin is Evil. вHidden within the rhetoric was a real concern about Bitcoin. В The same cannot be said for Jonathan Trugman’s article in the New York Post. В В Never before have I come across a more obvious example of unsubstantiated FUD. В The closest thing to a coherent argument is his concern about Satoshi Nakamoto’s secrecy and anonymity. В If the CEO of Facebook required the same secrecy, that would be a cause for concern since you would not know what Facebook does with your information. В This is not an issue with open source software, though, because the user has access to the actual code. В The user can see for himself exactly what the program will instruct his computer to do. As I said before, though, this piece doesn’t deserve a serious response, because it reads like satire. В The use of quotation marks around real words like walletв and mine” is a dead giveaway. В The author writes, Nor is it like dollars, which have US Treasury backing. Or bonds, with their taxing-authority support. Or gold, or silver, which have a value based on weight per ounce. вВ First of all, value is obviously not based on weight. В An ounce of gold is worth more than two ounces of silver. В More damning than that glaring oversight is the author’s failure at a kindergarten brainteaser. В “Weight per ounce”? В What weighs more? В A pound of bricks or a pound of feathers? All of this should give the Bitcoin owner optimism for the future. В Bitcoin’s market cap is $9. 2 billion and the media still doesn’t even understand it. В There are a lot of people out there who have yet to discover Bitcoin and for many of them, 2014 will be the year that they do. В If 2013 was the year of the Bitcoin, 2014 may be the year of the milibitcoin.
