In the course of my online discussions, I have been tempted to provide a treatment of Bitcoin and related subjects (Modern Monetary Theory, "Fiat" money), etc. But, on examination, I seem to have already written enough on the subject. Check here . I have changed my opinion that crypto is a "zero-sum" game. The reason is that some players are happy to lose money, which changes the whole picture. There are major players who are glad to lose money in this market. If you are a criminal enterprise or a terrorist organization wanting to launder millions of dollars, a "loss" of 10% is totally acceptable. Crypto is, in other words, a godsend for organized crime. Among other reasons, these are one reason that governments of the world will soon consign all this crypto-crap to the trash bin overnight. I note that crypto-nerds regard this as impossible with almost religious fanaticism, nor are they willing to even discuss the fact that "winners" in this ma...

Bitcoin is not a currency. Very few people, from Nobel Prize Winning economists to the "man on the street" understand money and value. The phenomenon of cryptocurrency is a case in point. I highly recommend the little horror story of Gerald Cotton and Quadriga  as background to my comments here. Not wanting to trust their money with any "central authority", Quadriga's customers handed over their life savings to a trusted criminal and they vanished with him when he died. Marketplaces in of any scale require an underlying currency to function. At the very least, such currency must have a more or less stable value on the day the market takes place. In practice, such currencies become stable in larger territories over longer time periods, usually backed by the agreed-to value of some particular good, such as gold or silver or the promise to pay gold or silver.  Unlike in the imagination of crypto believers, the "government" is just another play...