Hi So brill and so timely - my girlfriend with teenager convincingly describing her son’s extensive knowledge of crypto currency and investment in LightCoin. Downloaded to “peek” at the Coinbase app...palms sweat...too early to buy. “Slow and steady growth” rings in my precarious ears. My offspring arrives home with a job application for Daiso. Turns out one inventor of bitcoin lives only a few blocks away, is a millionaire, maybe a nettime subscriber, and we did not know. Offspring has seen a documentary and starts talking about “mining” —already weaned on Minecraft. Meanwhile cramming my brain to read about “other” currencies. The crypto market IS seductive. Do I dare buy a still affordable LightCoin to finance my kid? Are we actually in the middle of some financial revolution or an alternate market? Mom’s “still reading about it” when the quiet “so...what about that LightCoin” question came through to her ear at breakfast.
You are better “ financial advisors”—a curious professional role that only exists for last three decades to sell “products” to hapless potential investors. You have torn a hole in my bubble! Happy holidays! Cheerz Molly On Wed, Dec 13, 2017 at 9:25 AM Patrice Riemens <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Never Mind the Bitcoin? > > By Patrice Riemens, Eduard de Jong, and Geert Lovink > > We wrote about (and against) the crankiness that is called Bitcoin back > in 2015, at a stage when everybody was gawking at its sudden rise in > 'value' from $250 to something like $400 - up from $5-15 not tah much > earlier (1) > > OK, if "a week is a long time in politics" (Harold Wilson)(2), how long > must be two years in the Digital Era? > > Now that Bitcoin is 'futured', and has briefly peaked at a > 'stratospheric' $19K - that is > before 'crashing' at well below $15K - it's time to take stock. > The shortstory: it's as cranky as ever, only the numbers are crazier > than ever. > (Oh, do we hear "and you ain't seen nothing yet"?) > > But then, so is the 'Zeitgeist'. > > The longer story: > > Our present challenge is to 'ship' our message before Bitcoin > unavoidably crashes for real, reverting to the 'value' it held for long > time: gift economy rather than speculative markets gone bananas. > Publicizing after the inevitable crash will earn us the stale notoriety > of > belonging to the 'told you so' grumpy brigade, a corollary of François > Mitterand's remark that 'they' will never forgive you to have been > right before your time.(3) > > Conversely, 'telling you so' before, let's repeat, the unavoidable > showdown probably earns us the risée of the Bitcoin aficionados, prone > to tell you, in a fine replay of Dotcom boom times, that "this time, > it's different!" > > Never mind that this argument has been peddled ever since humans tried > to part other humans from their money by letting them walk in (or into) > a pyramid, because, in fact, they succeeded every time. > > The same applies to Bitcoin. Just forget about outlandish concepts like > 'public ledgers', 'wallet' or 'encryption', concentrate on the most easy > to grasp part of its working mechanism that is so abundantly > clear: Even if you buy at $15K for something that's not even worth the > bits it's expressed in, if it sells a day later at $19K, you still make > a helluh'of a profit! > > The reverse is, of course, also true, but hey, it's a casin... err, > sorry ... the 'magic of the market'! Which points to what may > be the chief characteristic of the 'Bitcoin phenomenon': the perversity > of a steadily more unequal and unfair world, where far too much > money is concentrated in far too few hands (even if there are millions > of them). > > And these owners, to use that hallowed Dutch phrase, "don't know what to > do with it out of sheer > madness." > > There is another aspect: following Saskia Sassen's dictum "Finance is > not (about) Money"(4), we now can safely say that > Bitcoin is no longer a cryptocurrency as such. It is a speculative > vehicle in the form of a cryptocurrency, leaving it into a class of its > own with regard to other cryptocurrencies, more appearing so every > day—we lost the count quite some time ago. (Maybe, one should make an > exception for Ethereum, another wonder of hacker dude driven fintech, > surrounded by nearly the same exalted hype as Bitcoin.) > > This leaves another interesting question: where are the Bitcoin pioneers > in this high-stake, demented risks, game of crypto Wheel of Fortune? > We all remember the years of the Satoshi legend, that mysterious entity > that must now turn in its anonymous grave. Those were the days: 'Bitcoin > evangelists' evoking a financial revolution—liberation—for the > little man, those oppressed and ransomed by the big financial players > ... > > There was talk of 'community', of frictionless payments, of smooth > usability and widespread acceptance (actually, a large shop accepting > payment in Bitcoins, smack in the middle of London's 'hipster district', > and equipped with a Bitcoin ATM, admitted to fewer than 20 > over-the-counter BTC transactions over the past couple of years)(5). > This > evaporated as 'exchanges' appeared all over the place (and got bust, or > hacked, or both), as an ever smaller number of increasingly bigger > 'miners' took an ever larger part of the mining cake, and sale & > purchase of Bitcoins got expressed in any currency but its very self. > > But then, have the 'early adopters' of Bitcoin struck it rich? After > all, in these days, Bitcoin 'mining' was easy and they went for free, > for a beer, of for a couple of Dollars at the most. They must be > millionaires by now! Well they may, and probably do, 'feel' so (as far > as their Bitcoins did not vanish when their computers crashed, they lost > their phone in the bus, or their thoughtlessly ditched hard drive came > to rest in a landfill). Yet for a majority of them, our guess is: they > never cashed out. Partly because the engrained Bitcoin 'philosophy' of > hoarding, partly because they became trapped in the eternal curse of the > market: it's always too early to sell (while it's always too late to > buy, of course). > > As in all trading, in the end, the only ones who will have handsomely > benefited from the Bitcoin craze are the intermediaries — the very > outfits Bitcoin was supposed to dispose of. > > In the meanwhile, fired up the spectacle of exponential valuation, the > mainstream press has, as it were, caught up with the Bitcoin phenomenon. > They muddle with a question they could as well have asked — and > answered — 5 years ago: "Is it a bubble?" Repeated often enough, and in > combination with the - somewhat disingenuous - 'scepticism' of large, > established financial institutions and their regulators, this has all > the likeliness of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy — as both early > and the more recent Bitcoin fans alike will not fail to point out after > the actual collapse. > > End of the story? Forget it! Just as hope springs eternal, the body of > Bitcoin may decease before soon, but its skeleton will remain alive and > kicking ... you in the ass! > > So no prize for guessing right: our next deconstruct is about the > Blockchain. Keep tuned! > > > Notes/Sources > > (1) Our Bitcoin texts: > > http://networkcultures.org/geert/2015/01/28/geert-lovink-and-patrice-riemens-the-bitcoin-experience-part-i/ > http://networkcultures.org/moneylab/2015/11/30/10-bitcoin-myths/ [1] > Bitcoin price history: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_bitcoin#Prices_and_value_history > (2) Harold Wilson: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Wilson > (3) Francois Mitterand: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Mitterrand > (4) Saskia Sassen: > https://vimeo.com/90207380 (Saskia Sassen @ MoneyLab#1 conference) > (5) Bitcoin acceptance: > > https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/02/bitcoin-is-it-a-bubble-waiting-to-burst-or-a-good-investment > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected] > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
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