In defense of digital money
I recently read Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s article https://medium.com/incerto/bitcoin-is-the-detector-of-imbeciles-e5cc5eeccdbf and purely out of curiosity I asked what ChatGPT thought about it with prompt
write a reaction blog post to https://medium.com/incerto/bitcoin-is-the-detector-of-imbeciles-e5cc5eeccdbf
and here’s the reaction
As someone who has followed the development of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for a while, I have to say that I strongly disagree with the idea that Bitcoin is only attractive to “imbeciles.” While it’s true that the market for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can be volatile and that there are certainly some bad actors out there who are looking to take advantage of inexperienced investors, I don’t think it’s fair to write off the entire industry as a haven for fools.
To be sure, there are certainly legitimate concerns about the use of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. For example, some people worry about the lack of regulation in the space, and there have been instances of hacks and scams that have caused people to lose money. However, these concerns are not unique to the world of cryptocurrency. In fact, there are plenty of traditional assets that carry their own set of risks, and it’s important for investors of all stripes to do their due diligence and understand the potential drawbacks of any investment they are considering.
At the same time, it’s important to recognize that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have the potential to revolutionize the way we think about money and the financial system. For example, the decentralized nature of these networks makes them resistant to censorship, which could be a game-changer for people living in countries with repressive regimes. Additionally, the use of blockchain technology, which is what underlies many cryptocurrencies, has the potential to streamline and secure all sorts of financial transactions.
In short, I think it’s premature to write off Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as nothing more than a fad or a scheme for “imbeciles.” While it’s important to be cautious and do your homework before making any investment, I believe that these technologies have the potential to change the world in meaningful ways, and it would be a mistake to ignore them. So, it’s important for people to educate themselves about the potential benefits and risks of these technologies and make their own informed decisions about whether or not to invest.
Note that I didn’t ask ChatGPT to write in a certain perspective, it all on its own wrote something that can be summarized as “don’t count it as fad.”
To add my own opinion about the article, I kept waiting for Taleb to get to a point and I couldn’t find a cohesive one after the obvious “there has been fraud committed in the name of cryptocurrencies.” Yes they have and the system will evolve and learn. The fundamental idea for making Bitcoin and creating a uncensorable money is still alive and desirable goal.
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About 36,000 “people” trolled me — which I had to block all thanks to a bot. Here, we have to do what can be called a “cluster”, which brings together crypto fans, Covid-19 skeptics, climate skeptics, Putinists, and radical carnivores. Many are delusional conspiracy theorists, but naive to the core.
I got lost here. I think the article could have completely skipped mapping the “cluster of conspiracy theorists” here to be more cohesive and to the point. It feels like it looses track into name calling and associating all bitcoiners with “trolls” that Taleb has encountered on twitter. There are indeed people who are in it for developing a better distributed system for transferring value.
I think there are legitimate points to be made about bitcoin’s “religion-like” characteristics like Joe Weisenthal at Bloomberg quite eloquently did https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-21/bitcoin-is-a-faith-based-asset-joe-weisenthal. Even crypto folks like Bankless have called it a meme, and some folks like Osmosis’ Sunny Aggrawal has called it the original appchain.
I would like bitcoin to evolve further and be a place where “proven” cryptography gets implemented from other networks. It may be happening but right now the core product hasn’t changed significantly for many years. Taproot was a pretty amazing upgrade in how smoothly it went and there have been chatter about getting Zero Knowledge Proofs into bitcoin in certain circles. A lot of amazing cryptographic research was accelerated _because_ bitcoin existed. Many amazing researchers and computer scientists are constantly joining this field to solve these hard problems.
If I’m an imbecile to believe that money can be digital and not tied to state, so be it.
