Is Bitcoin the Future?
by John Mauldin
of Mauldin Economics
While I think that Bitcoin as currently configured has limitations, the technology of the blockchain is one of the most potentially revolutionary developments of the last century. I think we evolve to Bitcoin 2.0 or 3.0, using the same blockchain technology, but with a way to make the new currency a truly stable medium of information that can be easily exchanged for goods and services.
Why not create a currency that is backed by a number of commodities, with gold perhaps as the backbone? Why even limit ourselves to commodities? Bitcoin as currently configured could be part of the basket. Anything that can be represented in a digital form and has a reasonably stable long-term value could be considered.
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I feel as though I'm watching my own learning curve for bitcoin play out in ultra slow motion as I continue to read articles such as this. John Mauldin has understood blockchain technology as a decentralized ledger for recording transactions (time-stamp server). What he's missed is that half the benefit of using the blockchain as money is lost if these transactions represent
claims on real assets (commodity-backed tokens) rather than the transfer the asset itself (bitcoin).
It's quite interesting. He uses the word "information" in an unusual way, like he half-gets the money-as-memory concept:
"a way to make the new currency a truly stable medium of information that can be easily exchanged for goods and services"yet then proposes to back this "information" with a basket of commodities. Can he not see that "backing" reintroduces centralization and counter-party risk, clouding the pure form of information that bitcoin already is?
Very well stated, thanks.
What continues to be missed by Mauldin and others is that any sound money construct has to be contained wholly within itself with zero external dependencies. The problem with "backing" is the backing mechanism (whatever it is) becomes the weak point which must be trusted. For example, the FED originally was sold as a trusted entity that would back paper dollars with gold, however by 1932 the amount of FED paper liabilities was so far beyond physical actually held, that the FED was forced to default on it's obligations. Backing Bitcoin with gold is no different than backing paper dollars with gold, it doesn't work.
There is a reason we have the phrase "cold hard cash", it came from many generations learning to not trust "backing".
When Mauldin argues to back bitcoin with gold what he is really saying is "I want the world to use my version of sound money (atoms of gold) and not your version of sound money (Bitcoin ledger), but since physical gold is too difficult for your average person to use now I need your technology". However if Mauldin wants to recreate the gold standard, then the hurdle is to get the majority of the public to use physical gold (not paper products based on physical), this is a difficult hurdle.
The brilliance of Satoshi's Bitcoin is he designed the hurdle for your average person to directly use a sound money system to be very very low, lower than any sound money system we've ever had access too. That is proving to be a level of understanding real world economics that is beyond the vast majority of today's economists.