The largest cryptocurrency failure ever happened this week as LUNA coin went from $86 to $0.00002 in what appears to be a deliberate attempt to tank its value and drag bitcoin down with it.
Mr. Universe is a character from the science fiction movie Serenity. It's from him that I get my name "Can't Stop the [Macedonian] Signal:"
Bitcoin is north of $50K today, which is extremely impressive considering it has no fundamental value in itself.
I never even imagined that it's price would go that high. Does that mean that I'm totally wrong about Bitcoin? No. It means I was totally wrong about the people who buy bitcoin.
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered."
-Thomas Jefferson
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are getting absolutely crushed today, and it doesn't appear that the selling will stop anytime soon.
As Lee Camp recently noted, there is now one word which can set a room on fire with instant arguments, boasting and weeping. That word is ‘bitcoin.’
It was beyond easy to see this one coming.
It isn't over.
I just read two longish articles that everyone needs to add to their reference library: one by Michael Hudson that puts his Debt Jubilee work into today's context; and an amazing summary of how Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) actually explains today's economy, while neoclassical economics is utter bullshit that keeps the parasitic financial capitalists in charge.
Bitcoin advocates like to think that cryptocurrencies will replace regular money. So you would think that they would be keen to show how useful it is at a bitcoin conference.
Cross-posted from Real Economics.
I suspect that most people do not understand bitcoin and cryptocurrencies because they also do not understand how money is "created." The reality that money can be created out of nothing is so ludicrously simple that most people simply cannot believe it. John Kenneth Galbraith observed that "The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled."
