Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Is Bitcoin Really Real Money? Ontological and Epistemological Questions — J. Barkley Rosser


Mentions MMT.

If the value of Bitcoin based on the greater fool theory?

Econospeak
Is Bitcoin Really Real Money? Ontological and Epistemological Questions
J. Barkley Rosser | Professor of Economics and Business Administration James Madison University

9 comments:

Ahmed Fares said...

re: Bitcoin scalability problem

Bitcoin - 7 transactions per second

Visa - 1,700 transactions per second

Bitcoin scalability problem

Transactions Per Second (TPS)

Also, Nouriel Roubini had a good article on Bitcoin out today:

Nouriel Roubini: bitcoin is not a hedge against tail risk

Matt Franko said...

“ against tail risk”

Reification error... he thinks a probability abstraction is real...

Marian Ruccius said...

Matt: I think this is doctrinalism on your part. Roubini no more thinks tail risk is "real" than Nassim Taleb believes black swans fly. Having worked in disaster management, my experience tells me that such language and communication is effective for thinking about and planning for disaster events. The historical frequency of tropical cyclones (aka typhoons and hurricanes) and averaged storm tracks of possible events are fundamental data, because at the onset of response planning you have to think in abstract terms. Obviously, tropical cyclones can originate in different locations and travel much different paths from the average. Nonetheless, having a sense of the general pattern can give you a better picture of the average hurricane season for your area -- and of the obverse of that pattern. This is how we feel our way through uncertainty.

One place where that abstraction is unwarranted is in slow-onset disasters, such as droughts, climate change, slowly escalating civil conflict, and so-on. (And perhaps, as Keen argues, where there are excessive build-ups of private debt.)

Peter Pan said...

Black swans can't fly?

Matt Franko said...

Marian,

We can easily build hurricane proof structures and infrastructure... there are people who study how to do that...

F=ma is not a ex post probability illustration... we know how to apply that in functional equations..,

So I don’t see your point...

Taleb was all pissed off in the GFC and was threatening to leave the US (LOL go back to shithole Lebanon?) when policy makers intervened to stabilize the system by adding regulatory capital to depositories after they added so high a balance of reserves in sept 2008 they made the whole depository system insolvent and all the big Broker-Dealers had to declare bankruptcy...

So he might call that a “black swan!” but technically competent people wouldn’t have caused it in the first place...

So I don’t see the value in examining anything like that in probabilistic context...

It means you are just as stupid as the people doing it... ie no value added...





Matt Franko said...

“Nassim Taleb believes black swans fly. “

That’s not his point he’s not saying they can fly .., he’s saying they are inevitable and I say bullshit... we can easily prevent them... if we get properly trained and competent people in there... Art Degree morons need to find something to do in Art and leave the material matters to we who are trained in material matters...

Finger painting or something like that...

Matt Franko said...

Marian,

We have satellite surveillance on the hurricanes we can see where they are going from a great distance away when they form... people in the path can prepare at last minute...

None of the people doing that use probability or statistical analysis...

They design and construct those systems using functional equations.., not probability...

Using probability means you don’t understand what is going on

Matt Franko said...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unguided_bomb

“An unguided bomb, also known as a free-fall bomb, gravity bomb, dumb bomb, or iron bomb, is a conventional aircraft-delivered bomb that does not contain a guidance system and hence, simply follows a ballistic trajectory. This described all aircraft bombs in general service until the latter half of World War II, and the vast majority until the late 1980s.

Then, with the dramatically increased use of precision-guided munitions, a retronym was needed to separate 'smart bombs' from free-fall bombs. 'Dumb bomb' was used for a time, but many military circles felt it sounded too trite, and eventually 'gravity bomb' gained currency.”

People planning air strikes using dumb bombs used to use probability... because it is literally dumb...

Matt Franko said...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_error_probable


“In the military science of ballistics, circular error probable (CEP)[1] (also circular error probability[2] or circle of equal probability[3]) is a measure of a weapon system's precision. It is defined as the radius of a circle; centered on the mean, whose boundary is expected to include the landing points of 50% of the rounds; said otherwise, it is the median error radius.[4][5] That is, if a given munitions design has a CEP of 100 m, when 100 are targeted at the same point, 50 will fall within a circle with a radius of 100 m around their average impact point.”

You have to use dumb probability for dumb bonds... both are dumb...