an article was posted in Coindesk<\/a> with\u00a0a Columbia economist’s opinion on Bitcoin.\u00a0Joseph Stiglitz argued that Bitcoin should actually be outlawed, because it “it doesn\u2019t serve any socially useful function” and exists solely to circumvent regulation. Stiglitz believes in digital currency, but he believes it should be government-controlled.<\/p>\nStiglitz remarked in an interview that Bitcoin is “only a bubble” and that we “ought to go back to what we always have had.” I see merit in the former statement, but I often find that the latter statement is one of the most harmful sentiments made in our political landscape.<\/p>\n
To Stiglitz’s point, Bitcoin does seem like\u00a0a bubble right now. As Stiglitz remarked, “The value of a Bitcoin today is expectations of what the Bitcoin is going to be [worth] tomorrow.” Right now, Bitcoin has very little intrinsic value that would bring sense to its absurd price; very few things can be purchased with BTC, and most purchasers of Bitcoin during this excitement don’t actually plan to use or spend it. It is simply being bought as stock on hype.<\/p>\n
Like any bubble, the Bitcoin bubble may burst. I think it’s overly bold for\u00a0Stiglitz to assert that it\u00a0must\u00a0<\/em>burst, and I think his interviewer calling Bitcoin entirely “smoke and mirrors” seems like a bit of a Luddite.<\/p>\nWhat do you all think? Is Bitcoin safe? Is it at all valuable? Does it have a future, or are we fooling ourselves?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was fun discussing the positives and potential of Bitcoin in class, though Bitcoin has many negatives to discuss as well. We did touch upon them, but I thought I’d highlight them here. Although Bitcoin seems to be the talk of the town these days, it comes with imperfections. I will note that only 4 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8867,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8867"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions\/48"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}