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Bitcoin som «utspringet til menneskelig framgang»

Oct 5, 2021 Daron Acemoglu

CAMBRIDGE – Prisen på Bitcoin har nådd nye høyder i år. Samtidig har El Salvador og Cuba bestemt seg for å akseptere Bitcoin som lovlig betalingsmiddel. Kryptovaluta har kommet for å bli. Hvilke konsekvenser har dette for penger og politikk?

Penger bygger på tillit. De kan brukes i bytte mot varer og tjenester fordi folk antar at andre vil akseptere pengene som byttemiddel i framtiden. Dette gjelder i like stor grad for den amerikanske dollaren som for gull. De som hevder at kryptovaluta, som Bitcoin, kun dreier seg om en slags svindel — eller en spekulativ boble, som mange økonomer har hevdet — ser bort fra valutaens popularitet.

Likevel mangler kryptovalutaer det stabile institusjonelle grunnlaget som kreves for å styrke folks tillit til dem. Tilliten kommer og går, noe som gjør valutaen sårbar og flyktig. Dette har vi sett med Bitcoin, som har svingt voldsomt i verdi.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 10 Comments on this article

Zack Wang Nov 8, 2021

I cannot believe this is the opinion from a MIT economics professor. Maybe expected too much.
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Zack Wang Nov 8, 2021

I cannot believe this is the opinion from a MIT economics professor. Maybe expected too much.
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Kenneth Fedio Oct 16, 2021

We are the lobsters in the pot…okay, I get it. Thanks for the heads up. Brilliantly presented analysis. All the socio-economic cycles of recent history are being gamed, faked, and fudged by first, second, and third world elites.
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Sergio Ruocco Oct 11, 2021

"Like thousands of other Afghan refugees, Farzan and her family traveled by foot, car and train thousands of miles through Iran and Turkey, finally making it to Germany in 2017. Along the way, dishonest middlemen and common thieves stole everything they brought with them, including their jewelry and cash. At one point, their boat crashed, and more belongings sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean. It’s a tragic story familiar to so many refugees. But in this case, something was different. Through it all, Farzan was able to keep her bitcoin, because she hid the seed to her Bitcoin wallet on a piece of tiny, innocuous-looking paper. Thieves could not take what they could not find."

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoin-financial-freedom-in-afghanistan?fbclid=IwAR0hZI2HaECVoq-6WSic7wjOOmTIoUAE7PkWh8tMYLKO8ue1fn4OxIkgPeA
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Michael Rogawski Oct 10, 2021

"Obviously, our society’s economic ills will not be solved by people making money from Bitcoin." The author fails to recognize the emergence of a new economy that will provide work and incomes for the multitudes who will no longer be able to find jobs in the old economy because of automation, artificial intelligence and robotics. The new digital economy based on cryptocurrency, NFTs, metaverses, and other entirely virtual constructs will surely solve the problem of the future of work. Old school economists living in the past are blind to a bright future being constructed at breakneck speed. If those in the academy who write for Project Syndicate immersed themselves in this new world they would quickly recognize its remarkable potential and turn from being tiresome scolds to active participants building the future.
- Thomas Stapp Oct 11, 2021
  
  Can you please elaborate on how "cryptocurrency, NFTs, metaverses, and other entirely virtual constructs" will solve the problem of the future of work? I struggle to envision how any of those things will be a solution to that problem.
  - bwhillers Oct 14, 2021
    
    Thomas, the question you ask represents an enormous landscape. To sublimate down to a single crystal for wider consumption, consider that today, significant and growing economic resources are being created, represented, and recycled throughout seemingly countless virtual existences - games, markets, etc.
    
    Many millions of real humans are actually creating, buying, and spending instruments of real economic value within entirely virtual constructs which are demonstrating to be practically limitless. This is not “going to happen” - it already is happening. Keep reading.
    
    While tangibles such as food and shelter may seem “real”, these goods are now regularly exchanged for virtual equivalents. People buy real things with virtual currency. You want a simple example?
    
    Some kid designs a t-shirt for their gaming character and other kids want to buy that for their character. Kid #1 sells it to them for either in-game or out-of-game currency; virtual or traditional fiat exchanged for in-game varieties . Gamers (in this next example) literally get paid within their games to say, feed virtual cattle walking about a virtual farm. The money is real, regardless of it being fiat or some other definition of “virtual”. The irony here is left to the readership. Whether these kids ever get a “real” job is entirely subjective.
    
    At risk of unleashing a tautology, anything that has value, has real value.
    - Wilfred Waters Apr 18, 2022
      
      What a terrible future.
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Marco Antoniotti Oct 10, 2021

"Tax the rat farms" (Lord H. Vetinari)
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Elizabeth Pula Oct 5, 2021

BTC is a great brand gimmick. However, as a gimmick, BTC and any of that "sort" does not begin to touch on the reality of balance for the survival of the individual and the survival of the state. This article from the Pandora papers by ICIJ begins to examine what really counts to understand the present imbalance of power and financial reality that is the global dilemma:

https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/baker-mckenzie-global-law-firm-offshore-tax-dodging/

Monopolies as sovereign entities are the real power manipulators that are destroying states left and right. There are no real profit takers in the present game that is occurring, which is the game of self-destructing states globally. Any people and any assets, any real "life forms" really don't matter in the present game of total real global destruction. This game is only man's game, however, the destructive force that man is creating will destroy his planet making the planet uninhabitable for every "one". This present and very real game is not just warring for imaginary profit, and not just not paying taxes. Disappearing states do not leave any kind or any sort of benevolent king or queen.

The shadow economy is the only real global economy. If a balance to correct the dilemma does not occur, the predicament of any survival of the many will only get worse, definitely not a bit better, The shadow economy does not give a flip for any one or any thing real. That bit of irony includes the very ones that are presently dealing the cards.
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https://prosyn.org/GNAhxdCnb

Bitcoin som «utspringet til menneskelig framgang»

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