Dec

4

Bubbles Excluding Tulips

Andy Aiken writes:

Since bitcoin is one of these emotionally freighted subjects that permits otherwise serious investors to unironically post charts that juxtapose data from highly disparate eras, contexts, and time frames, I might as well contribute one too.

Stefan Jovanovich writes: 

It is not emotional, Andy. If it were, I and others would not have complimented you, both on the List and privately, on a great call. What the professionals on this List have taught me is that price movements are themselves information, independent of the units they denominate. The difficulty with your chart is that it is not a display of prices over time. What I find paradoxical about cryptocurrencies is that their growth in popularity and transaction volumes has been accompanied by a rise in price that is independent of any increases in outputs or payouts. All other mines in history that have seen dramatic price rises in their asset values have seen even greater increases in outputs even as the output prices dropped–salt, silver, gold, coal and even diamonds all followed this pattern. The asset prices for the leaseholds for the essential commodity of the modern age–oil & gas energy–have confirmed this same pattern. Rockefeller became the wealthiest man in history by owning the distribution and production of a product whose price plummeted even as consumption soared.

Clearly, cryptocurrencies, like Tesla's newly imagined giant batteries, defy all the known rules. Congratulations on the unprecedented and profitable levitation. 

Andy Aiken replies:

I didn't mean to say that your points, or the discussion on the List, were emotional. It's been a rational discussion here, although I do think dismissing bitcoin as a bubble similar to the South Seas stock bubble shows an insufficient understanding of bitcoin as well as the South Seas affair.

My "emotionally freighted" reference had performances such as this recent Joseph Stiglitz interview in mind. "We ought to just go back to what we have always had" (i.e. the state prints money at will and deliberately impoverishes the middle class over multiple generations) One of the B'Berg commentators even chips in with his pathetic misunderstanding of Marx, as if to red-bait libertarian viewers who might consider buying a few satoshi.

I was thinking as well of this chestnut from Paul Krugman, another courtier to the flexions:

When I have been in doubt about how to live or invest, doing what Krugman and Stiglitz consider evil has always been a rewarding choice.

What is unique about bitcoin is that unlike diffusion of earlier technologies, in which investors participated by investing in representations of the technology (startup companies), in the case of bitcoin and a handful of other platform cryptos, the coin is definitionally equivalent to the technology.

The dynamics driving the price are aligned with Brexit and the "surprise" election of Trump. Bitcoin is a Cassandra for our age.

The price could of course drop by 50% or 90%. As Jayson points out, it has dropped by this magnitude several times previously. It's the nature of innovation that isn't "managed" by the state.


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2 Comments so far

  1. Andre on December 7, 2017 12:53 pm

    I believe the gambling habits of asians are driving this. Their government crackdown makes it all the more alluring to them. Maybe like sticking it to the big man.

  2. Andre on December 7, 2017 12:56 pm

    The best most accurate observations are usually taboo i believe because it leaves the loser or the mass man out of the winning like in turf betting book

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