Talk:Economics of bitcoin

Speculative bubble

Further information: Cryptocurrency bubble

Bitcoin has been characterized as a speculative bubble by eight winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences: Paul Krugman, Robert J. Shiller, Joseph Stiglitz, Richard Thaler, James Heckman, Thomas Sargent, Angus Deaton, and Oliver Hart; and by central bank officials including Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, Agustín Carstens, Vítor Constâncio, and Nout Wellink.

The investors Warren Buffett and George Soros have respectively characterized it as a "mirage"^[1] and a "bubble";^[2] while the business executives Jack Ma and Jamie Dimon have called it a "bubble"^[3] and a "fraud",^[4] respectively.

Views of economists

As early as 2014, Nobel laureate Robert J. Shiller stated that bitcoin "exhibited many of the characteristics of a speculative bubble";^[5] in 2017, Shiller wrote that bitcoin was the best current example of a speculative bubble.^[6]

Economist John Quiggin in 2013 said "bitcoins are the most demonstrably valueless financial asset ever created".^[7]

Researchers Neil Gandal, JT Hamrick, Tyler Moore, and Tali Oberman claimed that in late 2013, price manipulation by one person likely caused a price spike from USD$150 to more than USD$1000.^[8]

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz in 2017 said "It’s a bubble that’s going to give a lot of people a lot of exciting times as it rides up and then goes down." He emphasized its use by criminals, its lack of a socially useful purpose, and said that it should be outlawed.^[9]

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman wrote in 2018 that bitcoin is "a bubble wrapped in techno-mysticism inside a cocoon of libertarian ideology". He criticized it as a very slow and expensive means of payment, used mostly to buy blackmarket goods, without a "tether to reality".^[10]

Nobel laureate Richard Thaler emphasizes the irrationality in the bitcoin market that has led to the bubble, demonstrating the irrationality with the example of firms that have added the word "blockchain" to their names which have then had large increases in their stock price. The extremely high volatility in bitcoin's price also is due to irrationality according to Thaler.^[11]

Four Nobel laureates, James Heckman, Thomas Sargent, Angus Deaton, and Oliver Hart, characterized bitcoin as a bubble at a joint press conference in 2018. Hart cited Christopher Sims's work showing no intrinsic value to bitcoin. Heckman compared bitcoin to the tulip bubble. Deaton pointed to bitcoin's use by criminals.^[12]

Professor Nouriel Roubini of New York University has called Bitcoin the "mother of all bubbles". He believes that a revolution in financial technology (fintech) is now happening, but that it does not include the flawed blockchain used by bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has failed, according to Roubini, as a unit of account, a means of payment, and as a store of value, the three attributes needed by any successful currency. "Scammers, swindlers, charlatans, and carnival barkers (all conflicted insiders) have tapped into clueless retail investors’ FOMO (“fear of missing out”), and taken them for a ride."^[13][14]

Views of central bank officials

Early claims that bitcoin was a bubble focused on the lack of any intrinsic value of bitcoin. These claims include that of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in 2013. He stated "You really have to stretch your imagination to infer what the intrinsic value of Bitcoin is. I haven't been able to do it."^[15]

In 2017 Greenspan compared bitcoin to the Continental dollar, which ultimately collapsed. He said "Humans buy all sorts of things that aren't worth anything. People gamble in casinos when the odds are against them. It has never stopped anybody."^[16]

Former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke (in 2015) and outgoing Fed Chair Janet Yellen (in 2017) have both expressed concerns about the stability of bitcoin's price and its lack of use as a medium of transactions.^[17][18]

Agustin Carstens, head of the Bank of International Settlements, has said that bitcoin is a speculative bubble and that the general public should be protected from its effects. It is "a combination of a bubble, a Ponzi scheme and an environmental disaster".^[19]

David Andolfatto, a vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, stated, "Is bitcoin a bubble? Yes, if bubble is defined as a liquidity premium." According to Andolfatto, the price of bitcoin "consists purely of a bubble".^[20]

Comparisons of bitcoin to the tulip mania of seventeenth-century Holland have been made by the vice-president of the European Central Bank, Vítor Constâncio^[21] and by former president of the Dutch Central Bank, Nout Wellink.^[22] In 2013, Wellink remarked, "This is worse than the tulip mania [...] At least then you got a tulip [at the end], now you get nothing."^[22]

Views of investors and executives

External videos
Bitcoin Is More Than a Bubble And Here To Stay, 1:39:01, Intelligence Squared[23][24]

American investor Warren Buffett warned investors about bitcoin in 2014, "Stay away from it. It's a mirage, basically."^[1] He repeated the warning in 2018 calling bitcoin "probably rat poison squared". He believes that bitcoin is a non-productive asset. "When you're buying nonproductive assets, all you're counting on is the next person is going to pay you more because they're even more excited about another next person coming along."^[25]

Buffett's close associate Charlie Munger is even more direct in his distain. Trading cryptocurrencies is "just dementia" according to Munger. Bitcoin is "worthless" and a "turd".^[26]

John Bogle, the founder of The Vanguard Group, is also very direct "Avoid bitcoin like the plague. Did I make myself clear? .... There is nothing to support bitcoin except the hope that you will sell it to someone for more than you paid for it."^[27]

George Soros, answering an audience question after a speech in Davos, Switzerland in 2018, said that cryptocurrencies are not a store of value but are an economic bubble. Nevertheless, they may not crash due to the rising influence of dictators trying to "build a nest egg abroad".^[2]

James Chanos, known as the "dean of the short sellers", believes that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are a mania and useful only for tax avoidance or otherwise hiding income from the government. Bitcoin "is simply a security speculation game masquerading as a technological breakthrough in monetary policy".^[28]

Two lead software developers of bitcoin, Gavin Andresen^[29] and Mike Hearn,^[30] have warned that bubbles may occur.

On 13 September 2017, Jamie Dimon referred to bitcoin to as a "fraud",^[31] comparing it to pyramid schemes, and stated that JPMorgan Chase would fire employees trading while the company released a report critical of the cryptocurrency.^[32] However, in a January 2018 interview Jamie Dimon voiced regrets about his earlier Bitcoin remarks, and noted "The blockchain is real, You can have cryptodollars in yen and stuff like that. ICOs ... you got to look at everyone individually."^[33][4] Alibaba chairman Jack Ma has said, "There is no bubble for blockchain, but there's a bitcoin bubble."^[3]

Sources

[1] Crippen, Alex (14 March 2014). "Bitcoin? Here's what Warren Buffett is saying". CNBC. Archived from the original on 13 January 2017. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [2] Porzecanski, Katia (25 January 2018). "George Soros: Bitcoin is a bubble, Trump is a 'danger to the world'". Globe and Mail. Bloomberg News. Archived from the original on 9 June 2018. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [3] Yang, Yingzhi (18 May 2018). "There's a bitcoin bubble, says Alibaba executive chairman Jack Ma". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on 10 June 2018. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [4] Hackett, Robert (January 9, 2018). "No, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon Has Not Changed His Stance on Bitcoin". Fortune. Meredith Corporation. Archived from the original on 2018-06-12. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [5] Shiller, Robert (1 March 2014). "In Search of a Stable Electronic Currency". New York Times. Archived from the original on 24 October 2014. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [6] Shiller, Robert J. (October 19, 2017). "Three Questions: Prof. Robert Shiller on Bitcoin". Yale Insights. Yale School of Management. Archived from the original on 2017-11-29. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [7] Quiggin, John (16 April 2013). "The Bitcoin Bubble and a Bad Hypothesis". The National Interest. Archived from the original on 22 October 2014. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [8] Biggs, John. "Researchers find that one person likely drove Bitcoin from $150 to $1,000". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 15 January 2018. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [9] Costelloe, Kevin (November 29, 2017). "Bitcoin 'Ought to Be Outlawed,' Nobel Prize Winner Stiglitz Says". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on 2018-06-12. It doesn't serve any socially useful function. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [10] Krugman, Paul (January 29, 2018). "Bubble, Bubble, Fraud and Trouble". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2018-06-04. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [11] "Economics Nobel prize winner, Richard Thaler: 'The market that looks most like a bubble to me is Bitcoin and its brethren'". ECO Portuguese Economy. 22 January 2018. Archived from the original on 2018-06-12. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [12] Wolff-Mann, Ethan (April 27, 2018). "'Only good for drug dealers': More Nobel prize winners snub bitcoin". Yahoo Finance. Archived from the original on 2018-06-12. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [13] Roubini, Nouriel (January 29, 2018). "Opinion:Bitcoin is the mother of all Bubbles, Roubini says". MarketWatch. Project Syndicate. Archived from the original on 2018-06-12. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [14] "Bitcoin biggest bubble in history, says economist who predicted 2008 crash". Archived from the original on 2018-06-12. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [15] Kearns, Jeff (4 December 2013). "Greenspan Says Bitcoin a Bubble Without Intrinsic Currency Value". bloomberg.com. Bloomberg LP. Archived from the original on 29 December 2013. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [16] Moyer, Liz (6 December 2017). 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"Bitcoin and Beyond: The Possibilities and Pitfalls of Virtual Currencies" (PDF). Dialogue with the Fed. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 April 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [21] "Bitcoin is like Tulipmania, says ECB vice-president". The Financial Times. 22 September 2017. Archived from the original on 30 September 2017. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [22] "Bitcoin hype worse than 'tulip mania', says Dutch central banker". The Guardian. 4 December 2013. Archived from the original on 20 March 2017. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [23] "Bitcoin Is More Than a Bubble And Here To Stay". Intelligence Squared. April 23, 2018. Archived from the original on 2018-04-28. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [24] Hankin, Aaron. "Business moguls beaten in 'bitcoin bubble' debate". Market Watch. Archived from the original on 2018-05-20. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [25] Imbert, Fred (7 May 2018). "Warren Buffett on bitcoin: It doesn't produce anything except more buyers looking to sell". CNBC. Archived from the original on 2018-06-25. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [26] Imbert, Fred (7 May 2018). "Berkshire's Charlie Munger: 'Bitcoin is worthless, artificial gold'". CNBC. Archived from the original on 2018-06-12. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [27] Grant, Nico (November 28, 2017). "Vanguard Founder Jack Bogle Says 'Avoid Bitcoin Like the Plague'". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on 2018-06-12. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [28] Parramore, Lynn (4 June 2018). "Jim Chanos: "Cryptocurrency is a security speculation game masquerading as a technological breakthrough"". Institute for New Economic Thinking. Archived from the original on 2018-06-12. ... if you say, well, fiat currency is going to bring the world down, which could, of course, happen, then I say the last thing I'd want to own is bitcoin if the grid goes down. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [29] Dan Caplinger (4 April 2013). "Bitcoin's History of Crushing Speculators". The Motley Fool. Archived from the original on 7 January 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [30] Barford, Vanessa (13 December 2013). "Bitcoin: Price v hype". bbc.com. BBC. Archived from the original on 19 December 2013. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [31] Cheng, Evelyn (7 June 2018). "Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon on bitcoin: Beware". CNBC. Archived from the original on 9 June 2018. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [32] Dugan, Kevin (September 12, 2017). "JPMorgan CEO warns trading revenue is set to drop". New York Post. News Corp. Archived from the original on 2018-12-21. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [33] "Jamie Dimon says he regrets calling bitcoin a fraud and believes in the technology behind it". CNBC. 9 January 2018. Archived from the original on 2018-01-13. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)