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What Does Bitcoin Mean For Austrian Money Theory?
Submitted by Logan Albright via Mises Canada,
Libertarians tend to agree with each other on most things. We all favor less government regulation, lower taxes, less involvement in international conflicts, and more personal freedom. There are a few areas, however, in which the movement remains sharply divided. One of these areas involves the nature of money.
The two schools of thought are essentially the “gold standard” crowd versus the “competing currencies” crowd. Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek argued strenuously in favor of competing currencies, pointing out that it made no sense to praise the benefits of competition in every good and service, while denying those same benefits for currency itself.
Ludwig von Mises, and his most celebrated student Murray Rothbard, on the other hand, argued that commodity money, specifically gold, was the only kind that could ever enjoy the stability needed to prevent inflation and credit busts.
Mises formulated this argument as “the regression theorem” of money in his first book, The Theory of Money and Credit, in 1912. The theorem, in brief, runs as follows:
People will only accept a medium of exchange if they observe that it has value, and can actually be exchanged for things. The only way to observe that is by looking at whether it was so used in a preceding time period. Thus, this chain of observations can be followed back until the first instance in which a particular type of money was used as a medium of exchange, and in order for those first adopters to accept it, it must have had value independent of its use as a medium of exchange, or in other words, be a commodity. Paper money, especially that with no commodity backing, is only adopted when governments force it upon people.
Mises’ theory is elegant, and for a long time it has been accepted wisdom among many Austrian economists. The only trouble is that Bitcoin is in the process of proving it wrong.
Although commodities have historically been successful, history does not prove inevitability, but merely what people have chosen in the past. Mises himself makes this point in his methodological treatise, Theory & History, in a scathing critique of statistical methods within economics.
The science of human action for which Mises coined the term praxeology, as Rothbard later pointed out, does not deal with why people choose one thing or another (psychology) or with what they should choose (ethics), but merely deals with the ramifications of the fact that they do choose and act towards goals. Economics, therefore, as a subset of praxeology, cannot predict what type of money will be chosen in the future or why. As Jörg Guido Hülsmann wrote in The Ethics of Money Production, “one cannot tell on a priori grounds what the natural money of a society is. The only way to find this out is to let people freely associate and choose the best means of exchange out of the available alternatives.”
The fact that Bitcoin, a fully digital currency with no commodity backing, is now being adopted by increasing numbers of people as an alternative currency would seem to cast doubt on the inevitability of commodity money.
When a theory, however logical, finds itself at odds with observed reality, there are only two possible courses of action for a rational thinker. The first is to discard the theory in favor of one that accurately describes the world as we observe it. The second is to find reason to doubt the reality of our observations. One explanation could be that while the regression theorem looks only at past value, it neglects to take into account the expectations of future value, which is what have driven Bitcoin. Another possibility is that only when commodities are actively prohibited as currencies by government, can a digital fiat money arise and gain popularity. AT this point, it’s too early to tell.
Bitcoin may yet fail, in which case Mises’ theorem will remain as a powerful argument in favor of the gold standard. If it ends up succeeding, however, an alternate explanation will have to be found.
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The success and failure of each will be largely dependent on us.
I read an article a while back on currency alternatives. The dosturbing frontrunner predicated a 'one world government' system in which 'currency' was issued as 'energy certificates' that you trade in return for fuel, electricity, goods and services. The kicker? They have an expiry date that voids them once past it. This was to combat the 'evils' of wealth accumulation.
Made me start looking at carbon credits and similar as early r&d and beta testing.
The future of gold and/or bitcoin depends on us not allowing such a system to be implemented...
You bitcoin fucktards crack me up. You are the same fucktards who rail against a fiat currency. WTF do u think bitcoin is fuckwads?
You clearly have no idea what the word "fiat" actually means. You have never actually read any Hayek, Mises, or Rothbard have you? Did you finish High School?
Hint: It has something to do with decree. (You will probably need to look that up too)
Hint: You are a dumb fucktard soon to be parted of whatever little wealth you have stashed. God it's embarrassing watching you fucktards bend over for another anal probe.
I know i'm dealing with a genius when fucktard is their favourite word. You like watching anal probes, don't you. It's OK man, I don't judge ;)
There is no u in favorite you EU you wealth confiscating fucktard.
Even after a serious bitcoin bubble blowout I'm up 500% YoY.
Good God you are the reason sheep shears were invented. Can you really be so fucking ignorant and stupid? I'd rather see some fucking worm species take your place in the overall gene pool you fucking fucktard.
Bitcoin is headed for $10,000 or pennies. We'll just wait and see how it goes, homie. If successful it should give everybody more options (freedoms). So just chill, wait and see. Bitcoin does not need your participation.
Oh wait, we promise we will never print/digitally create moar! Stupid fucktards!
There is no "we" in Bitcoin, and no, more CAN NOT be printed. Jesus. The same old flat Earth society is out in full force again tonight I see…
These guys are pretending that their ignorance doesn't matter, because they have a couple of gold coins.
So said the FED fuckwad.
don't feed this worthless troll, he's not only ignorant, but a loudmouthed asshole.
if he at least did some reading on his own he'd understand how bitcoin has a mathematical limit of 21 million, and no one has the power to create more.
Funny how they can "disappear" fucktard.
Oops we lost several thousand fucktardcoins.
Sorry, double post
Not a single bitcoin has ever been "lost", look it up genius…
You may know where it is in the block chain, but it may be lost in the sense the btc wallet is lost forever. To me that is lost! There is no bring back a btc where the wallet is phyically destroyed, a failed usb drive or other digital mishap. Be more clear, BTC can disappear forever and never be used again.
So what, you can just as easily lose a gold coin in the bottom of a lake, can you not?
Then you do admit BTC can be lost, Good. Yes, I could lose a gold coin. As you can tell by my previous post I am on the fence with BTC. Nothing has changed.
Correction: Bitcoin cannot be lost because the blockchain. The private keys can be lost.
Yes jackass no more Bitcoins can be created as US Dollars.....be someone promised. Are you really so fucking stupid?
Actually, it would be nice if we had "US Dollars", but, alas, we have Federal Reserve Notes, which are credit-created. Big difference. The fucking Federal Reserve nicks us for 2% inflation year-after-year, and manipulates interest rates to crush capital formation. But, the Federal Reserve isn't stupid, as it is doing exactly what it's banker masters want.
It is not Fiat you Moron , now puke out the Sour Grapes and do some homework.
One has a 5000 year proven track record the other 5 years and not proven.
One is real, tangible and a store of value, created by the extreme forces it took to form our very small and fragile life support vehicle over millions of years.
The other only has any value from a perceived faith in its security(which so far has been poor) and the fact that it can't be regulated by governments and central banks( which from BC's relatively small market cap any bank or government in the world could single handedly destroy it with manipulation. All you need to do is destroy enough faith in using it. It is with a lot of suspicion that we haven't seen governments CB's being more vocal and in fact seem to be supporting it for some reason, we shall find out later I'm sure)
Created by some fictitious character with some cool bullshit shit story on how it came to be. In reality I think the truth of its creation lies somewhere between BIS and NSA and will tie in nicely with the oligarchs one global currency plan, it will make a great electronic medium for it I'm sure.
In the mean time I know which one I'd rather leave my hard earned savings
GOLD is really rare for its duly reasons!
Why Gold Is So Rare
"UNLIKE diamonds or gem stones, which are produced under the Earth by extreme pressures and heat, gold is a NON-TERRESTRIAL metal, meaning that all the gold that exists today, above and below ground, is all there ever will be. Gold is not produced by the geology of the Earth; in fact, Gold doesn’t even originate from this solar system. All the gold that exists on Earth today arrived many billions of years ago during the early period of Earth’s formation. Gold is a heavy element with an atomic number of 79. As with other elements heavier than iron, gold was created in the far reaches of space in some of the most violent events in the universe – supernovas."
More at here.
There are indeed some factual reasons why gold is famously nicked as the BARBAROUS RELIC.
I agree that Gold, Silver, Platinum, Palladium, and Bitcoins have their merits. It all hinges on their intrinsic properties.
Bitcoin is much more liquid than gold, or silver, or any other PM. It is (currently) more easily transferred. There are many merits to bitcoin and many merits to gold. Circumstances dictate whether one or the other is better to hold.
Question is: What do you think bitcoin is ? Because you are cracking us up - fuckwad ....
I'm 100% fine with letting gold and bitcoin compete. I don't fucking trust bitcoin for the most part, and I worry for those who generally share the libertarian ethos because it doesn't help any of us when a contingent of our movement gets ripped off. It might be useful for things like extranational money transfers and grey market trades, but I just don't see myself actually storing wealth in it. I strongly believe that the human world is a world of real things; of metal, wood, and flesh that actually exist in the physical universe. Something more enduring than spinning magnetic tapes. I do genuinely wish the BTC'ers luck.
Tulips.
Your comment is 4 years too late. Does not wash any longer.
I don't know what bitcoin has to do with Austrian theory, but at least when demand is higher for bitcoin, the value of them go up. When the demand for dollars go up, they just create more dollars, devaluing everyone's money and making most people poorer. Fuck the theories, it's the reality that pisses me off.
Bitcoin, the world's first decentralized digital currency, provides a potent example of technology allowing us to transform into more highly-evolved self-leaders who refuse all external authorities, in contrast to the milennia-old sheep-like follow the herd mentality, now waning in its power and ubiquity.
Central bankers will meet their match. You can't bomb a bitcoin.
Simplistic thinking is now every bit as dangerous as the thinking that got us here.
Besides someone who wants to manipulate or control, who the fuck cares what medium I and my partner in the transaction choose to exchange goods and services?
We could agree on using bumblebee dicks if we both wanted to.
Nothing...if you buy it now you are a fool.
I think GoldCoin would make the best of both. Until then I will stick with physical Gold.
Bitcoin is essetilly a commodity in that its value comes from the electricty and computer costs it takes to produce it
The only issue with Bitcoin is the number of altcoin variants, which in effect, inflate its supply sustantially more than people realize.
Bitcoin has a first mover advantage, but many of these other altcoins with newer technologies attached, detract from its demand.
I think the more interesting part of bitcoin is the protocol and not necessarily the coins themselves. Most don't even mention that though. It is always just a comparison of a gold coin to a bitcoin.
Bitcoin has 94% of the total crypto-currency market. That ratio has actually been growing recently (Up from 90% 6 months ago). Sure the number of alt coins is unlimited but you can't just push a button and create Liquidity. An altcoin might come along and dislodge bitcoin's lion share of liquidity but it would have to be a vast improvement to do it. I think most of us bitcoiners would welcome such a development.
@TheHound73
Don't get me wrong. I still hold a little bitcoin. I know where I am coming from here. Even if the bitoin market share HAS grown, the fact that many altcoins are *highly* correlated, and use bitcoin as a gateway to trade, in fact make bitcoin even more important.
But, if at some point those altcoins should ever start trading directly into fiat (rather than using BTC as an intermediate trade) you will see the market share and price come down. Much in the way that the US dollar is the current global reserve, but trade swaps might see its global reserves dissipate.
Also, the number of alternative coins is absolutely ridiculous. I mean there are probably over 200 already that I know of, maybe 1000 unknown. That will almost certainly lead to some degree of cumulative value detraction from Bitcoin as all of those alternatives, are in fact, Bitcoin substitutes.
I am not ragging on Bitcoin, or bitcoin holders. Just giving objective facts here. (And I don't know why, but people seem to get personally offended when I act objectively with these things. Some people have very much attached themselves to the notion that one trade, or the other is going to go sky-high, and they lose sight of the underlying properties of what they are trading.)
When bitcoin was in the stage of current altcoins it didn't even had any value.
Currently altcoins are good for the following:
- Make the creators rich by preying on clueless newbies
- Testing concepts
Bitcoin has liquidity, utility and a huge network behind it (both computational and userbase).
I do not dispute that Bitcoin has infrastructure built up behind it. That said altcoins ARE substitutes, no matter what you want to believe. 99% of them are "built" on Bitcoin source code.
They might not be fantastic substitutes, or they might lack the features, or advantages of BTC. They are still substitute goods and ultimately every "newbie" who buys into the next Bitcoin variant, is one less newbie buying into BTC.
No, it doesn't. Go to coinmarketcap.com All the altcoins together are a tiny fraction of bitcoin's market cap.
Also look to history. There were numerous currencies during the free banking era. The amount of one bank issued currency in no way effected the price of any other, period.
Might as well say that fiat currencies can't work because there are a potentially unlimited number of countries. Hyperinflation in one currency never reall effected another, save perhaps to make it stronger.
Totally wrong.
A way to derive the value of bitcoin is to understand the cost of censor a transaction.
Currently this cost is surely not less than 12.500$/block (and probably a lot more than this). This amount at least to 2 M$/day of computation needed to be redone (plus the time it need to be redone). And I'm pretty sure you can not undone the blocks after one or two retargetings.
Given you need HW enough to outrun the network many times to outdo the network in a short period of time, you need to froze a capital of many tens or hundred of millions of USD to be able to censor transactions.
Now, if you do a transaction of 1 M$, would you use 100 M$ to undo the same transaction? Usually people handing 1 M $ in cash or merchandise out know who they are dealing with or just wait enough until they release the good so undoing the transaction is no more economic.
One of the glaring symptoms of the very root problems is articles that suggest Bitcoin is a solution to anything at all.
To say bitcoins success would prove Mises Austrian Theory wrong is just bullshit. Even if you read into what he's saying there he's really not arguing money has to be backed by a commodity it's just that money had to have some REAL VALUE in the beginning in order to become money. Bitcoin has that value because it operates outside of the dollar system - that's the only thing that gives it real value. Rothbard makes it pretty clear in "What has government done to our money" that gold and silver came through the economic beginnings as money for a reason and that even though they had thus far been proven as the best store of value it was not required to believe that gold and silver were the ONLY money it was just that the market itself had decided what money should be long ago and it just so happened they went with gold and silver because it's divisible, durable, portable, fungible, and had a long history of storing value.
If bitcoin actually became real money it would only replace gold and be the new market solution. It doesn't disprove any Austrian theory at all you dolts because bitcoin has actual value in the fact it's an independent instrument of the dollar system and it's been chosen willingly by market participants as money.
But here's the newsflash: It's still valued in dollars and always will be. In fact there's no way to measure bitcoin in anything else but another currency because it's has no real value other than operating outside of the currency systems which means what it really is is a medium of exchange with the currency systems and nothing else. It has value because the current system is failing and people are looking to escape the dollar system. Bitcoin's rise is more of a reflection in the collapse of dollar confidence than anything else. There's no real value to it other than the fact it's a great way to escape the dollar system digitally and because of that it could continue to soar in value as more and more try to escape that system. BUT only gold and silver are money, real capital, in physical form. Bitcoin is a medium of exchange based around the value of other currencies - it is not pure wealth, real capital, or physical in any kind of way. It is functionally useless and easily replicated by other algos (this is why we have so many new cryptos popping up day after day). They both have value but for totally different reasons and in totally different ways.
True competition of currency and a gold standard are not mutually exclusive because competition of currency would allow for a gold standard to exist in tandem with other standards and that is why almost all Austrians today argue for competition of currency instead of a gold standard - most of us just hold the belief gold will win out in the end especially as cryptos are the only thing posing any real threat and they haven't been around a DECADE while gold and silver have been money for THOUSANDS of years...
The real game changer is someone introducing a gold backed crypto currency. That's when shit gets real - bitcoin's delivery system backed by physical gold and silver - there'd be no stopping something like that (unless bitcoin and crypto is an NSA/CIA/NWO backdoor to a one-world currency which is still possible no matter what the supporters want to believe). Barring it being a set up when crypto and PMs merge together, and the warehousing of the metal is absolutely concrete and not fractionally reserved, that's when the people will retain total control again over the banking powers.
Entire economies could be built around a crypto currency like that - solid, safe, secure and it would allow gold and silver to be sold in the tiniest of amounts in order to make it's use more practical for every day purchases. The pros of crypto and gold solve the cons of the other...
As soon as I got to the part in your rant where it is valued in dolars I stopped reading. You can value a pile of dogs shit in dollars if you wish to. You can also value bitcoin in gold or silver . Your argument is a Straw Man argument. Bitcoin is the Future of Money. 5000 years of history is NOTHING in human terms , prior to PM's food and building materials acted and was money - for hundreds of thousands of years. When gold came along I bet a lot of cavemen said it has no value and it was a Ponzi scheme run by the elites. Your shit does not wash any longer , you should stick to the whole EMP , the grid is going down prepper shit.,
You missed the point because you stopped reading. Bitcoin is nothing but a medium of exchange. You cannot deny this. It's only more valuable than the rest because it was first. There's no real value other than it's exchanged outside of the currency system.
" nothing but a medium of exchange"
Hmmn , maybe you should read that back to yourself - perhaps I am missing something here but is that not the very definition of: Money ?
the canonical description of money, described by aristotle i believe it was, is that it is:
1) a medium of exchange
2) a unit of account (divisible, portable, fungible, durable)
3) a store of value
1- universally recognized
2-durable
3-transportable
4-divisible
5-difficult to counterfeit (scarcity)
You just described gold...
I think Peter Schiff is already onto that one with his gold backed MasterCard setup through his gold investment business, not sure of the link sorry
Peter Schiff now accepts bitcoin for PM's.
>"It's still valued in dollars and always will be."
Gold and silver are valued in dollars, so are chickens, so what? Your silver buys only half as many chickens as it did a few years ago and not because chickens became twice as valuable.
There are gold backed cryptocurrencies if you trust the organization providing the backing. None of us bitcoiners do. Bitcoin is backed by bitcoin just as gold is backed by gold. Both find their value in the marketplace.
I think both Hayak and von Mises are correct in a certain sense. There is a "competition of currencies" of sorts; it's just that gold won the competion long ago and has been pretty unchallengeable ever since. Now a new currency comes along in the form of Bitcoin to vie for the crown, according to the OP.
Will it succeed? I'm not sure it can even be considered a serious contender yet. I just don't see Bitcoin ever taking over the place held by gold in the minds and hearts of human beings. I also do not believe that the level of easy-access electronic computing and societal cohesion we currently enjoy are going to be permanent fixtures of daily life going forward, and Bitcoin is a pretty damn meaningless concept with out them.
But in the larger (and more philosophical) picture, money is just an idea. Every era and every civilization has its own money-concept that waxes and wanes with it. We ourselves do not think about money the same way they did a century ago, or even thirty years ago. Money ends up being reified into the human relationships and legal structures which define an advanced society's class structure. When this class structure starts to break down, the "money" of that world evaporates. In other words, money has an expiration date. Wealth, on the other hand, has a more absolute and objective character, being composed of independently existing physical assets of a valuable nature. Gold belongs to the world of wealth, and it outlasts the succession of money-concepts and class structures that occasionally come along to play with it.
clearly you are one of the few who has done a lot of thinking on the importance of the historical perspectives on money.
so many have not.
cryptocurrency is the generic idea of digital cash. there is no reason it cannot be setup by private banks, by treasuries (soveriegn fiat) or even, as with what we are seeing now 'decentralized' nets of 'miners', essentially private servicers of a network of people who own and use the currency [ every network is different but most are very top heavy].
while gold and silver are minted to provide standards of currency ---not only to represent value, but to literally carry the faces of kings or the marks of societies that create those minted coins-----as a sign of power----------the underlying bullion survives. even if melted. and then can reamin around long enough to be minted again or poured for molds for jewelry.
if and when 'minted' digital identity keys are 'melted' or 'destroyed' nothign remains. digital currency can 'go' as easy as it 'comes'.
the creation of a bitcoin through mining, is not all that much more difficult than the creation of an entire crypto-currency by hitting a few buttons to copy and redistribute a new protocol. indeed. there is a cryptocurrency business out there that for a few bucks will issue you your own new currency with your name or any name on it. other bitcoin styel programming companies are in fact DOING THIS VERY THING---in order to create new 'services' through the use of the copy coins. these services are referred to as 'bitcoin 2.0' and many futurists believe that bitcoin 2.0 may represent a greater presence of value through the services they provide than the actual bitcoin currency as it now stands.
there is surely a lot going on in the cryptocurrency world, but at it's very core, is the idea of using technology to create unforgeable identity keys that can be sent reliably from person to person (p2p) through the internet at almost no cost above what it already costs to maintain the internet network.
thus cryptocurrency , unlike gold, is highly fluid and travels extremely fast, and is relatively hard to forge and easy to check ( gold is easy to forge and requires acid to check ) . however, unlike gold, cryptocurrency is entirely dependent on the internet and a highly entangled technological world to operate. thus, any single minuted cryptocurrency , namely bitcoin, could be rendered worthless shoudl the internet function be disrupted for any meaningful amount of time in those countries where the bitcoins are most regularly traded ( the u.s. )
sure , people could hold onto their passwords, but what would they do with their tokens if there was no where to spend them (using the internet) . gold , very differently, does not oxidize and cna be stored indefinitely at little cost. it has a well established history of being especially valuable when conventional fiat is going to shit, particularly during war time. in this way, gold is the 'real' money. the money that acts more like a true insurance policy against the implosion of the societies and economic systems that produce the things we use money to buy.
in a pinch, gold has been used to save peoplpe's lives , and buy slave's and prisoners' freedom's during war time. it is hard seeing any cryptocurrency let alone bitcoin achieving this during a great conflict. in our immidiate future, as the idea of digital wealth is not yet entrenched. however in a science fiction future where the entire brave new world is so completely interdependent on functioning digital networks---it seems quite feasible that cryptocurrency, and the general nature of value itself might irretractably by embedded in the human cultural/economic/political existence of digital representation.
quite to the point--a more 'advanced' society would necessarily NEED to transcend gold and other bullion for storing value. despite gold's inherent rarity. it can be captured easily because it is stored in one location . what about a form of wealth so advanced you could quantum teleport it ? that wealth would have to be stored as abstract information, not gold.
when you look at the very nature of gold, you realize there are quite a number of elements that are MORE RARE than gold. platinum for one is more rare in the earth than gold. metals can represent value, and gold won the human cultural preference for the bullion which many societies would then mine.
this seems to be a legacy that humanity is only quite recently becoming aware of, but dont' be fooled; we are nowhere near approaching a point where gold will be rendered obsolete. if anythign it does seem like we are headlong into the political cycles that are the stock in trade of gold's underlying value to us as human beings.
Metals will never return to monetary use (in a market determined manner) as long as the technological infrastructure is in place. They are just too inconvenient as payment instruments for that to happen. Cryptocurrencies will replace fiat, should fiat collapse but the technological infrastructure remains in place. If the technological infrastructure too collapses along with fiat, silver may return as a monetary unit because it is the only precious metal available in a denomination of practical exchange value. For example at today's rate of USD 20 per ounce, one ounce silver coin can be useful in regular commerce. But a one ounce gold coin valued at over USD 1300 today will not be of much use in daily commerce. Yeah, it can be made in smaller sizes, but are there any small sizes in which it is readily available today? If not, when fiat collapses, gold is not ready to act as money in daily commerce.
Regardless of what acts as a medium of exchange, the one thing that will definitely help someone survive is having a skill that will be socially valued when fait currency collapses.
why is the 'market determined' manner of gold prices ( the london FIX) all that much different han bitcoin?
bitcoin might be 'deflationary' but there's still under 1000 or so peopel than own over 70% of all bitcoins. do you not think they collectively control supplies of bitcoin same as the fed and international banks control supplies of fiat? allowing for market crashes and market bubbles as they progress?
your faith in cryptocurrencies is really a faith in the dominance of technology in the future overwhelming the low tech solutions that have worked for a long long time.
gold is not pratical to use as payments. that is why it is stored in a value in which 100% reserve backed gold certificates can be issued. certificates are practical to use for payment. of course, a 'fractional reserve' sysetm is an outgrowth of the demand for certificates rising faster than the actual demand for the redemeption of available supplies of gold.
THE CREDIT SYSTEM ARISES OUT OF THE DEPOSIT SYSTEM FOR GOLD.
similarly with cryptocurrency; if underlying crypto-currency is going to be as valuable as gold, the technological systems we have will all have to be hooked up into cryptocurrency , and it is going to have to trascend any controls sytsem.
this is a real wrinkle for crypto. why ? because gold is transnational and transcends any systems of control implemented by any one person.
are crypto transnational yet?
until bitcoin folks give up the dream that cryptocurrency will be 'legal' i have a hard time taking them seriously. the VALUE of gold does not derive from its 'legality' . the day to day flucturation in price may be influenced locsally by the legality in any one jurisdiction ( creating arbitratge opporutinty), but not derived from it.
if the u.s. simply made bitcoin illegal to service ( to convert to dollars at a regulated bank deposit account) ---the price would crash by 90% within days.
at that point, we can have a discussion about the enduring value of crypto, and the specific value of bitcoin, and the transnational demand for the crypto digital currency.
The problem with competing currencies is what to do about all that dollar-denominated debt in the world.
Bitcoin is not debt money. Like gold , it has the capability to actually extinguish debt. It is not loaned into existance and does not exist as debt on a balance sheet. Once Central Banks and government treasuries decide it is money , we can theroretically eliminate global debt allowing us all to start a new wealth cycle. And unlike gold , it cannot be re-hypothecated and short sold so easily because all balances on the open ledger are transparent to all parties.
How can BTC be compared to Gold, when BTC is yet another promise of future wealth set up in a trust framework? i.e, debt.
That's all in your very active imagination. Bitcoin makes no promises. It is just a distributed ledger.
Lol! It's imaginary stuff, that you swap for real stuff. So, an IOU.
If you want to get away from all of the imaginary stuff, you hold tangible assests.
Wow.
absolutely not.
there is no IOU involved.
when you receive a bitcoin for something, the bitcoin is the payment, it is a digital token, and only you have the key to use that asset (unless you are careless with security, etc).
you actually get that token, it's not a future promise to receive it.
You must be joking. You need a lesson in what REAL money is.
Keep cranking out those bitcoins from the computer in your mommy's basement. She's paying the electric bill after all.
Money is subjective - Maybe you should let the Free Market decide what money is , now go online and check your digital fiat balance , located in the server memory of your local bank's computer , and tell us how real that is.
Gold is an element. Money is a concept. Some humans use gold as money. Good for them, that's their choice. Some humans use bitcoin as money. For me, without having to get my hands dirty with national fiat currencies, I get paid here in Asia from Europe and also pay my own subcontractors in America easily using bitcoin. Sorry, using gold to perform this same feat would be costly and time consuming.
I have created a money called bigcoin. Send me your useless currency and I will give to you a share of the limited 20,000,000 bigcoins I created. No, really, I promise....fucktards.
Or we can do Beanie Babies.
4 years too late. Yawn.
I'll worry about Bitcoin when the Rothschild fraudulent-reserve FedRes is gone. Until then, I just don't care.
An American, not US subject.
"Guillotine the Fed!"
Yup, some people should just keep using their YellenBux.
"Guillotine the Fed!"
Test Bitcoin according to standards in http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2013/11/creating-and-destroying-money_9208...
Even just the advent of this currency and its sustainability, even if it winds up being short lived, shows that there is some validity to Hayek's argument. This may not be a complete right or wrong argument but rather the gray area in between has the right answer. Given the right circumstances, Hayek is right or vice-versa.
Even just the advent of this currency and its sustainability, even if it winds up being short lived, shows that there is some validity to Hayek's argument. This may not be a complete right or wrong argument but rather the gray area in between has the right answer. Given the right circumstances, Hayek is right or vice-versa.
Please accept my bullshit money in trade for your digitally created bullshit money. Then please bend me over and convince your bullshit is better!
Not worth in your case. Some people should just stick to their YellenBux and everybody is happy.
BTC is a protocol. like http, but with open source checksum verification and a hardware backbone with more Tf/s than http. It's value as a currency is part of it's usefulness, but not the only thing. A bit like gold can be jewlery, dentist fillings, circuits, art, as well as store of value. BTC has data verification uses [political election open source counts, lab result verifications, maths apps, international transactions free from fees; and donations to charity that get to target without a skim by middlemen, plus many more apps to come.....]. The competing alt-coins do not have this advantage. In the '80s no one knew what a computer protocol was, or how much http would be adopted in mainstreet. Accepting BTC as a valid world currency does not impact current stores-of-value, I see it as a useful tool which covers much ground and can be used for humanity in a positive way - which cannot be said for fiat currency, but could be said of PMs, and is unlikely with Alt-coins.
Some of them may finally get that. But in the mean time the rest of the ZH Flat Earth Society are now climbing down into their dank bunkers , lighting their candles and admiring their 10 years old stash of prepper food , expiry date 2075. They are ready for the apocalypse , the day when the government finally shuts down the ac grid and the internet - to stop bitcoin. Failing that shutdown , it will be an EMP from space that shuts down bitcoin But - at least they will be prepared , remeber to keep those matches dry , otherwise you guys will all be waiting for daylight to read the next chapter of your book: "How to survive when the government shuts down the Internet and the Grid"
I like energy backed we could call it the gallon.
Backing is merely a promise and promises can be broken. That is what happened to gold/silver backed paper/electronic currencies which after sometime became pure fiat.
Hayek already wrote about it. Type into any search engine: "Hayek Imagining a free market monetary system". Spoiler alert: Hayek would have loved the idea of Bitcoin, and it is just fine for an option. Hopefully others will also emerge (obviously in addition to specie).
Who wrote this article?
The gold standard is just a peg to a governmental currency (not Fed cartel dollars) and competing currencies are a private alternative. They both can, and should, exist.
Alas, a cartel has unconstitutionally monopolized this and purchased congress.
Not that any of this matters in the large scheme - but you can call me the "Satoshi" of decentralize economics so here are the two statements:
its understandable to confuse these three things, as per "information equivalent force":
but as "information" subject to all the equivalent forces competing with it finds a decentralized consensus, all those definitions will be more "common knowledge"
That sounds like just another load of bollcoks. WTF are you trying to say exactly ?
what part are you specifically looking for clarification on ?
this statement might help:
Base "money" is noting but an "energy token", its worth what you think it is worth, "Bitcoin" can not be priced by the market because it is a "trust" or monopoly of a small mining group, so in effect this "trust" is saying:
expend your energy and buy this entity at the "price" we determine, that's a terminally flawed system.
the "market" can only know the "price" "consensus" if the distribution parameters adhere to "neutral control" ( my own definition an theory)
so in plain language all "neutral control" means
no one has a monopoly or control over the ongoing mechanics of unitary issuance.(money issuance)
break that down further:
no single "fucking cunt" can control the issuance, and then determine what you pay for "money" or specifically "an energy token", that can only be determined by a "market" consensus, which is just "what we all fucking agree it is"
I don't want people to get distracted here from the focus
The point>
i'm talking specifically about a monpoly over the issuance which causes the "price mechanisim" of the market to non function meaning "Bitcoin" can't be priced its a "price manipulation" "Scam" > however this does not mean that crypto currency is a "price manipuated scam"
the flaw is in the original design as interpreted by the NSA whitepaper, so the "live test" that "Bitcoin" is, is a failure.
The bitcoin mining network has always been and will always be open to anybody anywhere to participate with any amount of hash power anytime without asking anybody's permission. How would you propose to change it?
competing currencies denotes a free market in currency, that is advocating gold just as much as anything else.
so sick of this argument to be honest, menger settled this when he showed how something comes to be money.
free market, the market will decide.
The key words there are "... it must have had value independent of its use as a medium of exchange, or in other words, be a commodity."
Value is a subjective thing. In today's world, with the manipulated and re-re-rehypothicated contracts, commodities have actually lost value as a medium of exchange.
Posession is 9/10th's of the law. And so, an essentially unbreakable and unforgeable currency backed up by silicon hashing power, where the central bank is effectively your hard drive (and it's 2x backups), is a safer store of value because people trust the traditional banks less and less.
Therefore, trust itself is a commodity, and bitcoin qualifies as a real currency and has value. Nobody can bail-in your hard drive.
Just when you thought Bitcoin stories had faded into obscurity and backpage news... here is a conspicuous turd in the punchbowl.
you forgot steaming turd....
Craptocurrency?
These bitcoin festishistas are the same crowd that used to claim there were alien landings nightly.
Say what?
Nanu nanu!
No need for this conversation. BTFD
Bitcoin Last Price: $507
Get a little bit of everything. Don't put all ur eggs in one basket.....precisely how a nukka ends up in a casket
well not literally everything....but u get the point.
Society is better off if things of great use are NOT hoarded. Lumber, grains and base metals are all used as stores of value in China and it has screwed up the international trade in these items. Gold is the best store of value. It is internationally recognized as precious while having no other real function (at least widely used). this makes gold a near perfect store of value. Whatever is accepted as a medium of exchange is fine as long as it functions. It should also be easily transmitted internationally too. Bitcoin and most fiat currencies could work.
Gold just needs to see a higher value to function properly....much higher. A physical only market will cause that to happen.
lasvegaspersona Gold just needs to see a higher value to function properly....much higher. A physical only market will cause that to happen.
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Please explain the collapse of gold in the Great Depression when it was an only physical market.
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lasvegaspersona Whatever is accepted as a medium of exchange is fine as long as it functions. It should also be easily transmitted internationally too. Bitcoin and most fiat currencies could work.
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Please explain how bitcoin, fiat or even gold isn't manipulated? I have admitted that PMs have been manipulated, which didn't discredit my position that PM's would decline but be higher relative to most other commodities (especially when the SHTF). But even without a paper PM market, it can still be manipulated. For example, you mention hoarding. That manipulates the maket.
Some crypto currencies are backed by something for example cannabis coin (cann) is backed by 1 gram of cannabis
I wonder if Bitcoin could have been launched in the pre-Nixon era, if the technology had been available? I suspect not.
Perhaps the regression theorem is only conditionally true. That is to say, it holds, absent the existence of fiat money, crammed down our throats by an over-powerful government. Put another way, the existence of fiat money and the panoply of government measures that enforce it, create additional benefits and incentives for an alternative currency that would not otherwise exist. I am thinking here, for example, of the risk of bail-ins, or excessive taxes, which Bitcoin users might seek to avoid. One benefit of currency not listed above is the anonymity of the bearer. This benefit has been increasingly undermined by successive governments, and regulations now require banks to monitor the transfer of funds and use of cash in trivially small amounts. Bitcoin restores that benefit as a currency.
The gold standard is nothing more than a promise of an authority.
Bitcoin FTW!
Ideally gold, silver, and cryptocurrencies should all be allowed and be freely traded as alternative (hard/limited) currencies, and the free market would find their right fiat price in no time... However, TPTB do not want that, since it would take away their control of fiat creation, debt, deficit spending + interest rates... So Gresham's law will continue to operate until things go bust and the current system will come down. We may be close to that point, 1, 2 more years??? That will be the darkest hour (for gold, silver, and possibly bitcoins), but they might all shine after a reboot. Time will tell, good luck to all.
I really like Bitcoin, But it does have counterparty risk which I dont like..I have to have a power source and the internet neither of which I own..
Energy is ubiquitous. No one can sustain a monopoly over it. It comes from the sun. So yes, you can "own" your energy just as much as anyone else could own it. Get some solar cells if you want energy indepdence.
Likewise, the internet is not controlled or owned by anyone. It's a decentralized global network. You can set up radio links to your neighbors and build mesh nets. Read up on mesh nets - I think they're going to be an important part of decentralizing the internet further and avoiding censorship.
Essentially bitcoin is just "information", and it's very hard to censor the spread of information as it can move over so many different mediums.
The BitSat project is putting Bitcoin satellites in space to broadcast the blockchain so that you can be up to date even without any connectivity via the peer-to-peer network.
Kryptoradio is another project to broadcast the blockchain via television frequencies, where anyone can build a receiver to receive the blockchain. It's being done by a Finnish TV broadcaster.
The key concept here is decentralization, which eliminates the need for trusted third parties. It is core to bitcoin's philosophy.
"Likewise, the internet is not controlled or owned by anyone."
It's not a question of who owns the Internet. It's a question of who has the power and means to kill the Internet at a moments notice. The answer is Government.
So "silvertrain" is quite right: Bitcoin has a counterparty risk attached to it.
On energy, even if there is no monopoly on its supply as you say, there is nevertheless a serious potential disruption factor which implies that Bitcoin owners can easily be impaired (ie: not being able to get at them due to a power outage etc).
That's exactly why I said no one controls the internet.
I'm guessing you're not very technical if you think that "government" has an off switch for the internet. Like I said, look into meshnets if you're concerned about internet censorship. Governments are already losing the battle, and they will definitely not win in the long term. Information travels at the speed of light and is impossible to censor since it can move over so many different physical and logical mediums.
"Can you hear me now?" Ben Lawsky as the Verizon guy...
The vast majority of people use the Internet to communicate around the world these days (e-mail, forums, blogs, chat, skype et al). They invariably use servers owned/controlled by ISPs who are subject to the law.
You can bet that governments everywhere have already given themselves the powers to order ISPs to switch off at a moments notice if they saw fit. It may not be the proverbial "kill switch" but it essentially has the same effect, being a legal kill switch. The actual kill switch will probably come later.
Other networks may then come into use but that would take time and only benefit a tiny minority of people. Lots of people would never get there.
Can "the government" kill Internet?
Maybe.
Do they will kill telephone, radio and TV?
Because data can and will move thru these if needed or convenient.
> One explanation could be that while the regression theorem looks only at past value, it neglects to take into account the expectations of future value, which is what have driven Bitcoin. Another possibility is that only when commodities are actively prohibited as currencies by government, can a digital fiat money arise and gain popularity. AT this point, it’s too early to tell.
It's neither. You just need to look to the history of Bitcoin to get the answer.
The first transaction did not occur because the person expected future value of bitcoin, nor were they seeking an alternative due to being prohibited from precious metals. Long before having *any* value, Bitcoin was a software project where many people put in hundreds of hours of work without being paid? Why? Because they were committed to the idea. They wanted to see this vision become a reality. They read Satoshi's paper and saw a future they wanted to make a reality.
The first real economic transaction with Bitcoin was by a man who purchased two pizzes for 10,000 BTC. He did this because he wanted to make the dream real. And with that moment, a real market was born, and grew from there.
Early users built exchanges, wallets, faucets, and shops, because they felt the need to give their time to a cause that had meaning to them, rather than wasting their talent on some frivolous other project.
Bitcoin is People's Money. It has value, because it's ours, and we love it and we love everything it represents.
Bitcoin is NOT money... it is digital fiat currency.
Nothing is fiat about it. It's completely voluntary.
Fiat is money that is declared legal tender by a government. Essentially people are forced into using fiat, and fiat monies are always controlled by a central issuer.
Bitcoin is very sound money.
Bitcoin is actually not money or even digital 'coin', it's a ledger. All those pictures of coins with a big B on them are total nonsense. No such thing. THat being said,
Bitcoin does fulfill a very needed service when it comes to micro payments and/or quick person to person transfers. Something the banks are not good at at all.
Bitcoin is NOT money, nor is it sound.
Bitcoin is nothing more than a digital payment instrument... like Paypal. Fully traceable and hackable.
Anything that can be created with a keystroke can be deleted with a keystroke.
Hardcore bitcoin devotees are mentally ill.
A bitcoin is a token of exchange and a market of sellers and buyers sets the exchange value. What is so coo coo for coco puffs about that? How is it any different then an ounce of gold?
There's $7billion in market value there if you get off your ass and go ahead and hack bitcoin, double dog dare you.
You need to look at this history of love. ? Love is in the air.... ? Love is in the air...
"You need to look at this history of love. ? Love is in the air.... ? Love is in the air..."
Man, that got me tickled! lol +1
"The only trouble is that Bitcoin is in the process of proving it wrong."
Logan Albright makes the mistake of comparing Bitcoin's apparent success today with the Mises theory of 1912 and concludes that Mises was wrong.
This is nonsense. He needs to realise that the Mises theory was articulated at a time when we didn't even have computers, let alone digital currencies. And nobody was thinking about them appearing in the future. So the Mises theory was created based upon facts and knowledge available at that time.
Mises was a brilliant person who would certainly modify his opinions on anything if the facts changed. If he were alive today I am sure he would produce a modified theory which took account of digital currencies. Or prhaps he wouldn't but instead, explain why.
Bitcoin is not a currency, and neither is gold.
The Regression Theorem is right and Bitcoin support it.
The only problem is a large number of people (even learned ones) do not really understand the Regression Theorem and what it say and not say (and what, apparently, Mises said and not said).
What Mises wrote is clear, if people do not project their personal interpretation of the words.
The point to make clear here are two:
1) The "value independent of its use as a medium of exchange" need not to be large. It need to be just positive. There just the need of a "price to hold" for the seller and an higher "price to get" for the buyer.
In fact, Bitcoin started to be freely exchanged for 10.000 for 1 $ and climbed all the way up to 1100 $ for one bitcoin. Not because it great value as a commodity, but because it was designed to have the properties of a good mean of indirect exchange. As it become better than fiat money for some uses it started to get a value and raise in value (initially the inflation was insane and the proof-of-work ridicly easy to defeat, but they get a lot better better with time)
2) The "in order for those first adopters to accept it" if fundamentally misunderstood: the value as a commodity must be in the eyes of the first adopters, not in the eyes of later adopters. Later adopters rely on their observations of the behavior of previous adopters to assign a value to the commodity used as money. They could not even know what use as a commodity that type of money could have.
Think about gold, silver, platinum and palladium: they have two competing uses: industrial and monetary (store of value and indirect exchange).
The demand for either use is independent from the other.
The demand for industrial use increase as the price go down (because the good and service I produce cost less to produce increasing my profit margin)
The demand as a money increase as the value go up (because become possible, with the same amount of commodity, to exchange larger values).
More inelastic is the total supply of these commodieties (the price could increase but the quantity produced will not increase at the same rate) more they have monetary value.
Gold, for example, could increase its price ten fold today and new miners would not come online before five years and production could not increase substantially anyway. But at that price, industrial application would become very very rare.
The Regression Theorem is right and Bitcoin support it.
The only problem is a large number of people (even learned ones) do not really understand the Regression Theorem and what it say and not say (and what, apparently, Mises said and not said).
What Mises wrote is clear, if people do not project their personal interpretation of the words.
The point to make clear here are two:
1) The "value independent of its use as a medium of exchange" need not to be large. It need to be just positive. There just the need of a "price to hold" for the seller and an higher "price to get" for the buyer.
In fact, Bitcoin started to be freely exchanged for 10.000 for 1 $ and climbed all the way up to 1100 $ for one bitcoin. Not because it great value as a commodity, but because it was designed to have the properties of a good mean of indirect exchange. As it become better than fiat money for some uses it started to get a value and raise in value (initially the inflation was insane and the proof-of-work ridicly easy to defeat, but they get a lot better better with time)
2) The "in order for those first adopters to accept it" if fundamentally misunderstood: the value as a commodity must be in the eyes of the first adopters, not in the eyes of later adopters. Later adopters rely on their observations of the behavior of previous adopters to assign a value to the commodity used as money. They could not even know what use as a commodity that type of money could have.
The Regression Theorem is right and Bitcoin support it.
The only problem is a large number of people (even learned ones) do not really understand the Regression Theorem and what it say and not say (and what, apparently, Mises said and not said).
What Mises wrote is clear, if people do not project their personal interpretation of the words.
The point to make clear here are two:
1) The "value independent of its use as a medium of exchange" need not to be large. It need to be just positive. There just the need of a "price to hold" for the seller and an higher "price to get" for the buyer.
In fact, Bitcoin started to be freely exchanged for 10.000 for 1 $ and climbed all the way up to 1100 $ for one bitcoin. Not because it great value as a commodity, but because it was designed to have the properties of a good mean of indirect exchange. As it become better than fiat money for some uses it started to get a value and raise in value (initially the inflation was insane and the proof-of-work ridicly easy to defeat, but they get a lot better better with time)
2) The "in order for those first adopters to accept it" if fundamentally misunderstood: the value as a commodity must be in the eyes of the first adopters, not in the eyes of later adopters. Later adopters rely on their observations of the behavior of previous adopters to assign a value to the commodity used as money. They could not even know what use as a commodity that type of money could have.
It may have been helpful to consider the reversal of Gresham's law back in 2012, or at least prior to paying $1,000+ for a bitcoin.
Menger Mixed Messages On Mises Regression: http://tradewithdave.com/?p=12274
and others....
http://tradewithdave.com/?s=mises+and+gresham+and+reverse
Bitcoin is sooooo 2013.
It has not caught on and never will, no matter what the devotees say.
The get rich quick scheme is over. Move on.
bookmarked.
The diversity of goods I can have delivered to my door in a day or 2 using bitcoin as payment dwarfs what is available using REAL gold.
Bitcoin has a long, LONG, LONG way to go before it can be used to disprove the theory of regression. It still remains a fad, few if any are using it for actual purchases. The persistence of bitcoin seems to rely on the fact that some people buy it because they believe other people will buy it. That doesn't make it money.
The article seems to premimse on the idea that 'bitcoin' is in the process of proving Mises wrong. It isn't. It isn't accepted as payment for 99.999% of transactions around the world. Mises regression theorem remains as correct today as it did the day he wrote it. Article is wishful thinking by someone who obviously bought in to the fad,
Simple question,
You are offered a gold brick or bitcoins. Take one or the other and you can swap them for any fiat ponzi paper you want and back again,
But you can never swap the bitcoins for gold or the gold for bitcoins.
which are you going to take.
Then ask any china-man or indian
People think ancient cultures are too simple to grasp the future. Funny thing that it was the Song Dynasty that invented fiat paper. It eventually devalued to the point of rejection, imagine that.
I had a starter stack of PMs. Then I started building my Bitcoin stack fiendishly. Now it is a respectable size and I've switched to growing my PM stack faster. To answer your question, probably Bitcoin. They both could "fail", as in lose much value. Bitcoin has much greater potential to "fail" than gold. But I'm young and believe bitcoin has much greater upside potential.
BitCon--yet another tool employed by the Western CB's to steer your fiat away from REAL hard money.
I was skeptical of this "cyptocurrency" and its mythical creator 'Satoshi' all along, but when I watched CSPAN a few months back and saw every relevant government agency show relative support for it, I was certain this was what I believed it to be all along: a system contrived and controlled by Western CB's that would serve to herd some of the anti-fiat crowd into a place they perceived as "free" and "safe".
The government support for such a medium of exchange that can operate without dollars does NOT make sense. Eventual, mass adoption of BitCon, would yield a Fed that is no longer able to control the masses with its printing press, and alter economic responses via monetary policy adjustments.
It must be said that the fed will do whatever it can to keep you inside its "dollar box". Any government endorsement of a "currency" that acts to get outside of that box, is a very ominous red flag.
If you don't hold it, you don't own it. Get physical precious metals, and stay the hell away from BitCon.
You seem to have it all figured out.
http://www.wired.com/2013/12/casascius/
http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/27/technology/security/bitcoin-arrest/index.html
http://moneyandstate.com/reflections-right-privacy-response-nydfs-bitcoin-proposal/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSTo9XgOgtY
Ever wonder why the East wants nothing to do with BitCon???
The East is buying physical metal--you should be too. Follow the money.
Chinese bitcoin exchanges have 400% the volume of western bitcoin exchanges. Bitcoin mining equipment is primarily of Chinese manufacture and much of the hashrate as well. It is cute them senators took time out of their schedule to deal with a tiny $7billion industry that they don't understand (and probably never will). But what are they gonna do, outlaw math?
Feeling "strongly" about "the promise." If you can't trust this guy... who can you trust?
http://newsbtc.com/2014/08/08/former-director-u-s-mint-feel-strongly-pro...
Back country people around here are setting up labor exchanges where people exchange hours of work, goods are priced in hours of work, and credits are built up and drawn from a kind of bank, or paper credits are passed around. The thing of value there is not the paper but the hours of work. Some place more value on an hour of a doctor or dentist's work than an hour of labor, some don't.
It's a lot like the situation before and during the Revolution of 1774-6, when the economy was strangling because people had no money and all kinds of alternative paper scrips were invented. This actually outlasted the Revolution by almost a century.
The original thing of value was the work.
I am/was a Cryptocurrency miner. Not big time but a bigger home miner. For me it was more a tech challenge getting the miners all to work right as most run under linux and there are also electic issues that need to be dealt with. Anyhow...the real story, unknown to most, is that the producers of mining machines (mostly Chinese but also Israeli) figured out that they can maximise profits if they run their machines themselves for 2 months before releasing them (as new, hahaha) to customers. That way they milk the cow way in advance of everybody else. After those 2 months the difficulty becomes much greater and the fast money has been made. Wonder how this will all pan out. Global hash rate is inceasing exponentially, not a good thing.
Another bubble waiting to burst. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Cryptocurrencies only have the future that major countries allow them to have. If the ruling class decides bitcoins are not in their best interest then bye bye bitcoins. Simple as that. All this chatter about what makes a currency or what's a commodity is meaningless chitchat. The ruling class will decide and you will piss and moan and fall in line just like in the 30's when Roosevelt took all the gold currency away.
Unfortunately you are probably right. Some claim cryptocurrencies cannot be controlled or outlawed. Just wait until the FED releases Omnivore2 which will scour the net for any BTC transaction and will simply remove it. Once everybody has lost some money it's game over cause nobody will even try and use it. Sucks but thats reality, Matrix style.
Fixed for you.
There are other super heroes at the government service we should know about?
Which brand makes the best popcorn these days? Maybe I should stock up a little.
Harry, you sound like a broken man. Are you a broken man?
Bitcoin exists only thanks to the existence of other commodity: electric energy. Without that there is no bitcoin. In the offline world there is gold and friends only considered as money. Mises' regression theorem is fine.
In other news, the gov't has banned the carrying of spears.
Bitcon is NOT in the process of refuting the regression theorem. To even say so is to demonstrate one does not grok the regression theorem which is a priori: http://peacefreedomprosperity.com/7776/inability-bitcoin-serve-rational-...
Until it isn't. Now that we get off on that point, exactly how many ounces of silver is a Toyota Camry worth and how did you come up with that figure? Were you willing to pay the same amount of silver 3 years ago for the same car?
Funny I saw multiple versions of this same article back in the late 90's and early 2000, but involving high flying internet stocks and valuations methods used to justify equity prices. Its not different this time. I suspect massive manipulation in bitcoin right now. It will unwind and do so very shortly.
You can short it, brainiac...