Quote from: TraderTimm on December 07, 2013, 10:13:36 PM

Quote from: BalkanBoy on December 06, 2013, 10:29:11 PM

So if Greenspan is wrong about everything else, that automatically disqualifies him as giving a valid opinion on BitCoin? What if he is right, have you considered that, or does that not fit in with your worldview?

Okay, lets say the father of the largest real-estate bubble in america is somehow *right* about bitcoin. Well, when would you expect this to manifest itself? After the first surge to a dollar? The second to 31? The third to 266? The fourth to 1,000+? Do you see a pattern here at all?

When confidence is lost, the opportunity to recover is also lost. Bitcoin hasn't lost that confidence. For that to happen, we would freefall to near zero, and then stay at some mediocre value - say 1 dollar, and taper off to nothingness as everyone just decided to stop participating.

The problem with his grand and sweeping pronouncement is he bases this on the "intrinsic value" theorem, which for old economic fossils, usually means Gold. You can't directly compare bitcoin and gold, although some try. I suppose there is a rudimentary basis for doing so, where the scarcity of gold ore could be held up to the relative scarcity of finding the correct "hash" for a block. But other than that, they are distant cousins to each other.

In any case, I'd just take his predictions he made during his career and apply that probability ratio to what he's said about Bitcoin. If anything, its a contrary indicator.

AG is almost certainly right about something. Although he made bald unsupported assertions, and all we have to go on for reasoning, is his authority. The authoritative summary being that he hasn't the imagination necessary for Bitcoin. I don't disagree with him on that. Bitcoin is in beta, and so it does require a modicum of imagination, which he hasn't yet found.

Interesting times ahead, is the Fed's taper also a fuse?¹

The punch-line to this joke is that with the approval of BASIL III accord, at its implementation there will be a reduction in the "intrinsic value" items held as asset classes in all meaningful central banks on the planet.
Its being traded out for the pseudo-collateralized debt instruments of other central banks.
Add that to the defacto socialization of the debt of the federal reserve, a bank regulatory authority owned by banks (yet again passing the bag of debt rung up by the too-big-to-fail to the taxpayers). http://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/84-84/8076-the-bank-of-american-taxpayers-the-bankers-bank-of-choice

1 "taper-fuse" Definitions from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia:
n. A long, flexible fuse, in the form of a ribbon, charged with a rapid-burning composition.