Armstrong wrote:
BitCoin was a means to get money out of China when you could not wire money out under currency controls. In Australia, they have adopted the slogan that “CASH IS FOR CRIMINALS.” They will do the same to cryptocurrencies. All they need to do is declare a law that it is illegal for a business to accept cryptocurrency under the excuse that it is money laundering. You just killed the entire industry.
We’ll be ready for that with optional, opt-in KYC on the blockchain.
Also any country that bans blockchains is going to be falling away from the massive innovation and knowledge age, and will set their economy backwards. There will always be some countries that embrace the technology and will prosper while the retarded countries will suffer (or more likely their citizens will ignore the government and use VPNs and what not to side-step the government).
I have been skeptical about the claims that cryptocurrencies will replace all money and central banks and end banking creating money out of thin air. That would be recreating the Dark Age. For that to take place there can be no lending. The mortgage market would collapse and the value of the property would fall to less than 10% of its worth becomes the maximum someone has cash as was the case during the Great Depression. This hatred of central banks is stupid. The money they create is less than 10% of the money supply. The bulk is created through lending and fractional banking.
Unfortunately Martin Armstrong being the old geezer that he is, is unable to understand the decentralized ledgers are part of a epochal shift away from the (fixed capital investment, the industrial age, and thus the) value of finance and debt. As land becomes worse than worthless, debt is also becoming useless in the knowledge age because knowledge creation routes around the Theory of the Firm and is not fungible and thus can’t be financed. As Rifkin’s Zero Marginal Cost Society explains, the value of the (mass) production financed things will become insignificant relative to the value of the production of knowledge.
Some good thoughts to ponder on.
Very very true. I love Martin's work but he is too used to being the 'smartest guy in the room' and that blinds him to the trend that is unfolding. The generational shift in perspective between the in-power baby boomers, the hard-bitten cynical Gen-Xers and the, believe it or not, more pragmatic Millennials will see a very quick adoption of new ideas in money and re-value knowledge.
I will say, however, the production of physical things is still the kind of knowledge that cannot be lost at a societal level or it becomes a more fragile system.
We’re gaining more anti-fragility of production of physical things with decentralized production with 3D printing for example.
My thesis on the decline of the industrial age is focused on the mass production, fungible laborer, high amortization of the knowledge inputs, which enables financialization and Theory of the Firm. My thesis is the flattening of the knowledge age disintermediates those Coasian parasites.
I’m head in the sand coding, so I my replies may lean towards helicopter abstraction of what is detailed in my archives.
No worries. I've got to write a blog post this morning on some of what we're talking about. And keep all the geopolitics straight, and take care of my subs and watch the currency and debt markets.
We all have our crosses. :)
The paradigm-shift is broader than just money. For example, integrate that serial algorithms have stopped scaling and the implications.
I expect you've read this on Zerohedge?
Nice find! I hope someone will link my blog post in the comments of the ZeroHedge blog.
Actually I have also made those points before that for example the government depends on the Internet grid for all their functionality including the military.
Also the point that crypto can leverage any form of decentralized grid such as HAM radios powered by solar panels.
Tom Luongo wrote an excellent blog and makes some additional points that I’m also fully aware of and had alluded to in various writings over the years, but he really pulls it all together eloquently in that blog.
Armstrong has responded to all of us with two new blogs. I will be posting some new comments with my reactions shortly. Going jogging first.
FYI, this is Tom Luongo. First, thanks for the kind words (and yes I got your e-mails) and 2) i' here on steemit as @goldgoatsnguns if you'd like to follow. I x-post nearly everything I write here.
Case in Point:
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@goldgoatsnguns/crypto-idiocracy-mistaking-the-extreme-for-the-norm