Quote from: jgarzik on May 14, 2012, 01:23:45 AM

Quote from: dissipate on May 13, 2012, 07:20:40 PM

Quote from: Gavin Andresen on May 13, 2012, 02:04:26 PM

Good luck-- I share your view that coming up with better ways of playing zero-sum games is not the way to make the world a better place.

The fact that this statement is coming from the 'lead developer' of Bitcoin does NOT make me feel good about the future of the Bitcoin project. Shows a complete ignorance of markets and economics. Epic epic epic fail. Sad

The fact that Zhou thinks that such markets are a 'zero sum game' as well means that it is a good thing he is getting out. He doesn't even understand what he created. Sad.

Personally I think the bitcoin economy would be useless if the only thing going on is currency exchange.

A healthy bitcoin economy includes vendors and customers, everyday commerce.

I am not sure how there could even be a situation where the only thing going on was currency exchange. Even in the earliest days of Bitcoin when it wasn't being used for much of anything at all, people were still speculating on its future potential value. That is legitimate speculation and that is more than just currency exchange. I myself realized the potential value of Bitcoin early on and threw some money in at $1.44, saw it rocket it up to $30 and crash back down. I still have my original coins because I think Bitcoin has even more potential in the future.

But to go even further, even just straight up gambling is not a zero sum game. People gamble for a variety of reasons, but the bottom line is, they feel that on any given 'roll of the dice', risking their money at that point in time is worth it. Hence, even if Bitcoinica was straight up gambling (but I doubt that it was), it still wasn't a 'zero sum game' because the people involved thought that it was providing value to them at the particular time that they decided to use it.

As for a 'healthy' economy, I would personally like to see a lot of those things, but maybe the economy won't include much of those things. Perhaps Bitcoin will turn into some digital form of gold hoarding where people just buy them up to stash away some hidden wealth for a period of time. Who knows? In any event, no aspect of the Bitcoin economy, or really any economy is a 'zero sum game' as far as I can tell. People derive value from all kinds of crazy places, and if they are happy, that has all kinds of positive secondary effects.