2 thoughts on “Some good watching material”

  1. Rickards knows his gold, but the crypto part comes across as a strange mix of unusually informed and completely misimformed statements.

    For example, people usually criticize Bitcoin’s limited supply and how it can’t replace all money, but he didn’t fall into that trap and correctly recognized that Bitcin is just one of many cryptocurrencies. But then, he implies that Bitcoin energy usage can’t grow forever and that something bad will happen if it stops growing which is a really basic thing about Bitcoin he should understand. The truth it that Bitcoin doesn’t need it to grow indefinitely; mining consumption is self-balancing, the instant it becomes unprofitable miners get shut down, difficulty falls, and system auto-corrects. There has been a lot of media hype about this, most of it fueled by the incorrect data by a single researcher (Alex de Vries) who did a napkin calculation not based on real data. Then there was similar story on Bitcon propagated by media which said that Bitcoin is responsible for huge CO2 emissions, and then somebody actually did some research and found out that over 70% of energy used by Bitcion is clean renewable energy.

    Then he’s using the old child pornography argument, who needs to use that stuff apart from pedophiles, there’s simply no other use case. People have used the same argument against Internet in the nineties, only pedophiles use that stuff, and believe me, you do not want to be associated with pedophiles.

    In the same breath he complains that Bitcoin is not regulated, and then complains about KYC and AML on exchanges. Well you can’t have it both ways, it’s precisely the regulation that requires KYC and AML. Regulation “protects” you by requiring banks and exchanges to cover their asses by collecting as much of your personal data as they can, and then they get hacked and your personal data gets exposed to identity theft, and suddenly you’re registered as an owner of a London-based company which is used for money laundering by drug cartels. That’s regulation for you.

    BTW did he really predict a war with North Korea by the end of 2018 in this talk?

    • Rickards knows his gold, but the crypto part comes across as a strange
      mix of unusually informed and completely misimformed statements.

      I don’t think any of what he said about Bitcoin is actually questionable, it’s just that he actually knows what he’s talking about; bitcoin is both internally unregulated *and* its gateways to the real world are tightly controlled. I do, however, disagree with him in many things, especially when it comes to geopolitical issues where he advances an American agenda, and I see America as essentially a bad actor. But he is an excellent insight into the minds of those who actually run the show in America. Those guys are wickedly smart, unlike the bitcoin hipsters, who just think they are smart.

Leave a Reply