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Vanguard Founder Jack Bogle Says ‘Avoid Bitcoin Like the Plague’

123 points by dionmanu 9y ago

gluestic 9y ago
Translation - "Don't move your money from our exchange to another"
- saryant 9y ago
  Virtually nobody has done more to give the average investor a fair shake than Jack Bogle. I think he deserves a little more credit than that.
- codingdave 9y ago
  Maybe partly, but he has a point - without anything backing it, its volatility doesn't work well with traditional long-term investing strategies. Vanguard investors are typically not high risk/high reward investors. They are low/med risk investors looking for a slower, steadier increase in their retirement funds, with many of them just putting money in index funds or target date retirement funds. Now, if you are not that kind of investor, and you have less aversion to risk, then his point doesn't matter to you. In which case, sure, go to town with Bitcoin.
- SaintGhurka 9y ago
  He's the founder of Vanguard, but he retired from the CEO role 19 years ago. In addition, the ownership structure of Vanguard is through the funds themselves, which are owned by the customers. I'd be surprised if Bogle retains any interest at all in the company.
westurner 9y ago
Over the past 7 years, Bitcoin has outperformed every security and portfolio that Jack Bogle has recommended.
- non_sequitur 9y ago
  7 years is a tiny sample size if you are hoping to retire off it (unless of course you cash out your millions during that time). His advice makes sense if you are looking at a 30 year retirement horizon - it may not be there in 30 years.
  - sjg007 9y ago
    Interesting.. the stock market will probably be there, just not necessarily the individual stocks you are currently invested in. Unless ICOs take off... now despite all of scams, ICOs allow a global stock market. Now maybe participating in that is dangerous.. maybe not.
    - longerthoughts 9y ago
      >the stock market will probably be there, just not necessarily the individual stocks you are currently invested in Part of the beauty of index investing - names can rotate in and out of your benchmark based on whatever criteria the index uses (e.g. market value) but you're not bound to a company that drops from the index (you are, however, exposed between the time it becomes ineligible and the next rebalance).
- wdn 9y ago
  What he probably means is if you missed the boat, it is too late to get on. Sure, it may still double or triple in the next few months. Or it can loss 50% over a matter of days
- nostrademons 9y ago
  Over the 7 years from 1993-2000, a portfolio of stocks with ".com" in the name far outperformed every other asset class out there. If you held that portfolio for the 7 years following, from 2000-2007, you would most likely go bankrupt.
  - uncoder0 9y ago
    How does one go bankrupt from holding an asset?
bazizbaziz 9y ago
"There is nothing to support bitcoin except the hope that you will sell it to someone for more than you paid for it.” Genuinely asking, isn't this the plan for many people? How is bitcoin different than other commodities or property in this regard? Would Bogle say the same thing about those investments?
- saryant 9y ago
  Property can be used to generate returns (rents). Bitcoin cannot.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- MrFantastic 9y ago
  Mature stocks will usually start paying a dividend. Equity in a company means you own part of that company. Owning Bitcoin means you own a BTC.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  If I buy stock in a company, and the company pays dividends, I get the dividend income until I sell the stock. That is, I bought a future income flow. Same thing if I bought an income-producing property. Raw land? Non-income-producing property? Gold? Not so much.
- CPLX 9y ago
  There is a big difference. If you buy wheat futures and nobody wants to buy them, you can take delivery of a bunch of wheat. If you buy investment real estate and nobody wants it, you can live in it, or build things on it. If you buy stock in a random Fortune 500 company and nobody wants it, you can take possession of a bunch of desks or factories or inventory or whatever their deal is. And if you take possession of a bunch of US currency you can be assured that you'll be able to use it to settle debts or pay your taxes as long as the US government is around and has better guns than everyone else. Bitcoin is different from all those things.
non_sequitur 9y ago
“Bitcoin has no underlying rate of return,” said Bogle, 88, who started the first index fund in 1976. “You know bonds have an interest coupon, stocks have earnings and dividends, gold has nothing. There is nothing to support bitcoin except the hope that you will sell it to someone for more than you paid for it.” Didnt quite understand this quote - is he down on gold too?
- HarryHirsch 9y ago
  At least gold is used in jewellery and electronics. What is bitcoin used for, except ransomware?
  - tootie 9y ago
    I think you just convinced me to buy bitcoins.
    - vas123 9y ago
      I lol’ed
  - taneq 9y ago
    Silk Road? :P
    - rebuilder 9y ago
      You jest, but go read bitcointalk.org's archives from a few years ago (and before) and I think you'll find that's exactly the purpose it seems expected to fulfill.
  - VMG 9y ago
    Start to explore why bitcoin can be used for ransomware and other things cannot.
  - StephenMelon 9y ago
    Well ransomware is a growth market...
csomar 9y ago
The common sense for the wealthy investor should have been to invest 1% of his portfolio into bitcoin and other digital currencies. If he did that two years ago he'd get x15-30 returns, making Digital currencies over 10% of his portfolio. That would be the time to "cash out" or "scale out" the original investment back into traditional channels. Is it late now? I think wait a bit and then start DCA that portion of your portfolio.
- UncleMeat 9y ago
  Why? Why was this common sense? What other things should people have invested 1% of their portfolio in? Is every thing that has the possibility of increasing in value dramatically worth investing 1% of my portfolio?
  - akozak 9y ago
    It's not a totally crazy idea to set aside a small portion of your portfolio for a bunch of long-shot investments that have huge upside potential (isn't that how seed funding works?). But I think practically speaking it'd be hard to come up with that list of assets in a rigorous way such that you expect some portion of them to succeed. (e.g. all crypto currencies? penny stocks? beanie babies? abstract art? water bottles, bullets, and cigarettes?)
  - csomar 9y ago
    Diversification. Preferably your portfolio will have a tech allocation and crypto could be part of it. Certainly there are many things that will appreciate ten folds in a year; and most things that don't. Had I opted for diversification in my investment, I'd have seen my wealth even triple that now. And this is not in crypto only.
    - monktastic1 9y ago
      I think the question is: given that you can find at least 100 long shots out there, how could you know this was among the <= 100 that you should put 1%+ into?
- 9y ago
desireco42 9y ago
Another day, another alarmist article. Nothing Jack Bogle says is not true. Yet, he is 88yr old guy, with all due respect, he has no idea what Bitcoin is. I have yet to hear something from Wall Street that is novel and relevant to Bitcoin. It is a new thing they are afraid of, often not understanding it fully. When I say Bitcoin, I mean all crypto-currencies. If you don't know what you are getting into, I would advise not to put any major sum in crypto. Go small and learn. Don't bet your life on something you don't understand. And don't listen to these guys. :)
- bpicolo 9y ago
  > he has no idea what Bitcoin is Are you insane? He built Vanguard, the most successful investment product in history. They have 3 trillion dollars of assets managed and literally invented the retail index fund. You think he doesn't follow every aspect of the financial markets?
  - rebuilder 9y ago
    The Bitcoin bet is that traditional financial markets have it wrong, or don't serve the market Bitcoin serves. You judge how likely that is to be true.
    - bpicolo 9y ago
      And yet that doesn't factor into the discussion. He built Vanguard on the entire concept of "traditional finance has it wrong". He's an insanely smart dude. I'm confident he understands the market dynamics of bitcoin more than the average person gambling on bitcoin.
- jpk 9y ago
  Ageism isn't a very compelling basis for an argument.
  - desireco42 9y ago
    I can see how this can be seen as bad. Just, I don't think he is familiar with underlying technology and that is why he can't see how this will work. In a way this is ageism and I accept your criticism. But I still don't think he is right and understand this correctly.
jozzas 9y ago
Bitcoin is becoming a value store. With slow transaction confirmation and high fees, what are the real-world applications for Bitcoin supposed to be now? And for those applications, are there not other cryptocurrencies more specifically targeted at being better at that application?
- justadudeama 9y ago
  And what makes it a good value store, with all of it volatility?
  - jozzas 9y ago
    nothing at the moment, it's being used as a speculative investment. I imagine in time the volatility will reduce as other cryptocurrencies become more mainstream and actually used for real-world purposes.
    - lern_too_spel 9y ago
      Reduce volatility by having its price approach zero? What use is Bitcoin if another cryptocurrency wins? Where can you find the greater fool to sell your Bitcoins to if it has no practical purpose and has been superceded by other currencies.
- ohhhlol 9y ago
  > With slow transaction confirmation and high fees This is being solved, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network
  - anthonybsd 9y ago
    Sigh, not this again. I have yet to see a working example of "off the chain" processing that is not plagued by all of the ills that bitcoin solves.
- ftlio 9y ago
  Bitcoin has the best security model. In 10 years does a single massive ledger make more sense than transactions at the edges? The value proposition of Bitcoin has always been transaction scalability by elimination of charge backs. With a fundamentally irreversible ledger as a base layer, networks and services will develop around it that provide whatever combination of speed, fees, and liquidity you're looking for.
kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
Forcing people into 401Ks was the greatest financial hack of the century. The bankers don't want competition for "their" money pile.
- sjg007 9y ago
  That is an interesting argument. These guys are selling financial products that are explicitly not pro bitcoin (yet). If they see value in bitcoin then they would probably pump them. That is most likely too soon. In a few years you will probably hear that bitcoin is a hedge against global instability. It might be rational for oil to trade in bitcoin. It's also a big way for the Chinese to get money out as well as the Russians. North Korea has nothing to lose with bitcoin unless it pisses off the Chinese and Russians.
jakenberg 9y ago
He has a point since I could always go down to the reserve and trade my dollars in for cold hard gold. Oh wait...
cs702 9y ago
> There is nothing to support bitcoin except the hope that you will sell it to someone for more than you paid for it. Not everyone agrees with that statement. For example, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15797380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15797380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15796880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15796880
- totalZero 9y ago
  The second link does nothing to refute the idea that bitcoin, as an investment instrument, is purely speculative. The author simply argues that bitcoin is unique among money-like assets. The first link describes the hypothetical utility of bitcoin, but does nothing to explain a natural reason that bitcoin should have returns or appreciation. In fact, since the author describes bitcoin as a "medium to store wealth," the assumption should be that every buying transaction has an opposite selling transaction, which means there would be little to no overall price impact from any of the described activities. I wouldn't scramble to dismiss what Jack Bogle says. He may be 88, but he has earned a reputation as a clever, knowledgeable, and decent fellow.
jorblumesea 9y ago
The biggest red flag is it's clear the exchanges don't have the liquidity for everyone to cash out. Since there are no banks to provide credit lines it's entirely dependent on people getting into the market to provide the fiat currency to cash out. A run on these exchanges will destroy the value of bitcoins and cause a panic.
- lostsock 9y ago
  How is it clear that the exchanges don't have liquidity?
  - jorblumesea 9y ago
    The way the system works provides little in any sense of a line of liquidity. Unlike normal banking the exchanges operate ledgers where the fiat currency they have on hand is directly tied to how many people have put fiat currency into the exchange network. Given the extremely rapid rise of the price of BTC, it's extremely unlikely they have anywhere close to the amount of fiat currency if large numbers of people cash out.
    - pas 9y ago
      Exchanges are not market makers. They don't have to be able to allow everyone to "cash out", they are not banks. Exchanges provide a venue for buy-sell to meet. If someone wants to "cash out", someone has to want to "cash in". Lately every time the price dropped folks saw it as the time to buy more, or just "finally buy bitcoin, because it'll go up soon". A big crash happens when the equilibrium shifts drastically, when more people wants to get out than get in, it'll crush the price (because more people wanting to get out will lead to even more people wanting to get out).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
xtracto 9y ago
> It’s “crazy” to invest in the digital asset, he added. “Bitcoin may well go to $20,000 but that won’t prove I’m wrong. When it gets back to $100, we’ll talk.” One more in the many death's of bitcoin... https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoinobituaries/page/10/ https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoinobituaries/page/10/
thoughtexprmnt 9y ago
Isn't the "value" of a currency in it's relative stability over time? That is, the confidence by those who use it that it will be exchangeable for roughly the same amount of goods and services today, tomorrow, six months or a year from now (accounting for nominal inflation, of course). If you accept that premise of what a viable currency should be, then it seems like the volatility of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have thus far made them failures. I mean, if a national currency had similarly rapid changes in value, wouldn't we see financial chaos, riots, and revolution?

123 points by dionmanu 9y ago

gluestic 9y ago

Translation - "Don't move your money from our exchange to another"

saryant 9y ago
Virtually nobody has done more to give the average investor a fair shake than Jack Bogle. I think he deserves a little more credit than that.
codingdave 9y ago
Maybe partly, but he has a point - without anything backing it, its volatility doesn't work well with traditional long-term investing strategies. Vanguard investors are typically not high risk/high reward investors. They are low/med risk investors looking for a slower, steadier increase in their retirement funds, with many of them just putting money in index funds or target date retirement funds. Now, if you are not that kind of investor, and you have less aversion to risk, then his point doesn't matter to you. In which case, sure, go to town with Bitcoin.
SaintGhurka 9y ago
He's the founder of Vanguard, but he retired from the CEO role 19 years ago. In addition, the ownership structure of Vanguard is through the funds themselves, which are owned by the customers. I'd be surprised if Bogle retains any interest at all in the company.

westurner 9y ago

Over the past 7 years, Bitcoin has outperformed every security and portfolio that Jack Bogle has recommended.

non_sequitur 9y ago
7 years is a tiny sample size if you are hoping to retire off it (unless of course you cash out your millions during that time). His advice makes sense if you are looking at a 30 year retirement horizon - it may not be there in 30 years.
- sjg007 9y ago
  Interesting.. the stock market will probably be there, just not necessarily the individual stocks you are currently invested in. Unless ICOs take off... now despite all of scams, ICOs allow a global stock market. Now maybe participating in that is dangerous.. maybe not.
  - longerthoughts 9y ago
    >the stock market will probably be there, just not necessarily the individual stocks you are currently invested in Part of the beauty of index investing - names can rotate in and out of your benchmark based on whatever criteria the index uses (e.g. market value) but you're not bound to a company that drops from the index (you are, however, exposed between the time it becomes ineligible and the next rebalance).
wdn 9y ago
What he probably means is if you missed the boat, it is too late to get on. Sure, it may still double or triple in the next few months. Or it can loss 50% over a matter of days
nostrademons 9y ago
Over the 7 years from 1993-2000, a portfolio of stocks with ".com" in the name far outperformed every other asset class out there. If you held that portfolio for the 7 years following, from 2000-2007, you would most likely go bankrupt.
- uncoder0 9y ago
  How does one go bankrupt from holding an asset?

bazizbaziz 9y ago

"There is nothing to support bitcoin except the hope that you will sell it to someone for more than you paid for it.” Genuinely asking, isn't this the plan for many people? How is bitcoin different than other commodities or property in this regard? Would Bogle say the same thing about those investments?

saryant 9y ago
Property can be used to generate returns (rents). Bitcoin cannot.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
MrFantastic 9y ago
Mature stocks will usually start paying a dividend. Equity in a company means you own part of that company. Owning Bitcoin means you own a BTC.
AnimalMuppet 9y ago
If I buy stock in a company, and the company pays dividends, I get the dividend income until I sell the stock. That is, I bought a future income flow. Same thing if I bought an income-producing property. Raw land? Non-income-producing property? Gold? Not so much.
CPLX 9y ago
There is a big difference. If you buy wheat futures and nobody wants to buy them, you can take delivery of a bunch of wheat. If you buy investment real estate and nobody wants it, you can live in it, or build things on it. If you buy stock in a random Fortune 500 company and nobody wants it, you can take possession of a bunch of desks or factories or inventory or whatever their deal is. And if you take possession of a bunch of US currency you can be assured that you'll be able to use it to settle debts or pay your taxes as long as the US government is around and has better guns than everyone else. Bitcoin is different from all those things.

non_sequitur 9y ago

“Bitcoin has no underlying rate of return,” said Bogle, 88, who started the first index fund in 1976. “You know bonds have an interest coupon, stocks have earnings and dividends, gold has nothing. There is nothing to support bitcoin except the hope that you will sell it to someone for more than you paid for it.” Didnt quite understand this quote - is he down on gold too?

HarryHirsch 9y ago
At least gold is used in jewellery and electronics. What is bitcoin used for, except ransomware?
- tootie 9y ago
  I think you just convinced me to buy bitcoins.
  - vas123 9y ago
    I lol’ed
- taneq 9y ago
  Silk Road? :P
  - rebuilder 9y ago
    You jest, but go read bitcointalk.org's archives from a few years ago (and before) and I think you'll find that's exactly the purpose it seems expected to fulfill.
- VMG 9y ago
  Start to explore why bitcoin can be used for ransomware and other things cannot.
- StephenMelon 9y ago
  Well ransomware is a growth market...

csomar 9y ago

The common sense for the wealthy investor should have been to invest 1% of his portfolio into bitcoin and other digital currencies. If he did that two years ago he'd get x15-30 returns, making Digital currencies over 10% of his portfolio. That would be the time to "cash out" or "scale out" the original investment back into traditional channels. Is it late now? I think wait a bit and then start DCA that portion of your portfolio.

UncleMeat 9y ago
Why? Why was this common sense? What other things should people have invested 1% of their portfolio in? Is every thing that has the possibility of increasing in value dramatically worth investing 1% of my portfolio?
- akozak 9y ago
  It's not a totally crazy idea to set aside a small portion of your portfolio for a bunch of long-shot investments that have huge upside potential (isn't that how seed funding works?). But I think practically speaking it'd be hard to come up with that list of assets in a rigorous way such that you expect some portion of them to succeed. (e.g. all crypto currencies? penny stocks? beanie babies? abstract art? water bottles, bullets, and cigarettes?)
- csomar 9y ago
  Diversification. Preferably your portfolio will have a tech allocation and crypto could be part of it. Certainly there are many things that will appreciate ten folds in a year; and most things that don't. Had I opted for diversification in my investment, I'd have seen my wealth even triple that now. And this is not in crypto only.
  - monktastic1 9y ago
    I think the question is: given that you can find at least 100 long shots out there, how could you know this was among the <= 100 that you should put 1%+ into?
9y ago

desireco42 9y ago

Another day, another alarmist article. Nothing Jack Bogle says is not true. Yet, he is 88yr old guy, with all due respect, he has no idea what Bitcoin is. I have yet to hear something from Wall Street that is novel and relevant to Bitcoin. It is a new thing they are afraid of, often not understanding it fully. When I say Bitcoin, I mean all crypto-currencies. If you don't know what you are getting into, I would advise not to put any major sum in crypto. Go small and learn. Don't bet your life on something you don't understand. And don't listen to these guys. :)

bpicolo 9y ago
> he has no idea what Bitcoin is Are you insane? He built Vanguard, the most successful investment product in history. They have 3 trillion dollars of assets managed and literally invented the retail index fund. You think he doesn't follow every aspect of the financial markets?
- rebuilder 9y ago
  The Bitcoin bet is that traditional financial markets have it wrong, or don't serve the market Bitcoin serves. You judge how likely that is to be true.
  - bpicolo 9y ago
    And yet that doesn't factor into the discussion. He built Vanguard on the entire concept of "traditional finance has it wrong". He's an insanely smart dude. I'm confident he understands the market dynamics of bitcoin more than the average person gambling on bitcoin.
jpk 9y ago
Ageism isn't a very compelling basis for an argument.
- desireco42 9y ago
  I can see how this can be seen as bad. Just, I don't think he is familiar with underlying technology and that is why he can't see how this will work. In a way this is ageism and I accept your criticism. But I still don't think he is right and understand this correctly.

jozzas 9y ago

Bitcoin is becoming a value store. With slow transaction confirmation and high fees, what are the real-world applications for Bitcoin supposed to be now? And for those applications, are there not other cryptocurrencies more specifically targeted at being better at that application?

justadudeama 9y ago
And what makes it a good value store, with all of it volatility?
- jozzas 9y ago
  nothing at the moment, it's being used as a speculative investment. I imagine in time the volatility will reduce as other cryptocurrencies become more mainstream and actually used for real-world purposes.
  - lern_too_spel 9y ago
    Reduce volatility by having its price approach zero? What use is Bitcoin if another cryptocurrency wins? Where can you find the greater fool to sell your Bitcoins to if it has no practical purpose and has been superceded by other currencies.
ohhhlol 9y ago
> With slow transaction confirmation and high fees This is being solved, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network
- anthonybsd 9y ago
  Sigh, not this again. I have yet to see a working example of "off the chain" processing that is not plagued by all of the ills that bitcoin solves.
ftlio 9y ago
Bitcoin has the best security model. In 10 years does a single massive ledger make more sense than transactions at the edges? The value proposition of Bitcoin has always been transaction scalability by elimination of charge backs. With a fundamentally irreversible ledger as a base layer, networks and services will develop around it that provide whatever combination of speed, fees, and liquidity you're looking for.

kevin_thibedeau 9y ago

Forcing people into 401Ks was the greatest financial hack of the century. The bankers don't want competition for "their" money pile.

sjg007 9y ago
That is an interesting argument. These guys are selling financial products that are explicitly not pro bitcoin (yet). If they see value in bitcoin then they would probably pump them. That is most likely too soon. In a few years you will probably hear that bitcoin is a hedge against global instability. It might be rational for oil to trade in bitcoin. It's also a big way for the Chinese to get money out as well as the Russians. North Korea has nothing to lose with bitcoin unless it pisses off the Chinese and Russians.

jakenberg 9y ago

He has a point since I could always go down to the reserve and trade my dollars in for cold hard gold. Oh wait...

cs702 9y ago

> There is nothing to support bitcoin except the hope that you will sell it to someone for more than you paid for it. Not everyone agrees with that statement. For example, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15797380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15797380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15796880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15796880

totalZero 9y ago
The second link does nothing to refute the idea that bitcoin, as an investment instrument, is purely speculative. The author simply argues that bitcoin is unique among money-like assets. The first link describes the hypothetical utility of bitcoin, but does nothing to explain a natural reason that bitcoin should have returns or appreciation. In fact, since the author describes bitcoin as a "medium to store wealth," the assumption should be that every buying transaction has an opposite selling transaction, which means there would be little to no overall price impact from any of the described activities. I wouldn't scramble to dismiss what Jack Bogle says. He may be 88, but he has earned a reputation as a clever, knowledgeable, and decent fellow.

jorblumesea 9y ago

The biggest red flag is it's clear the exchanges don't have the liquidity for everyone to cash out. Since there are no banks to provide credit lines it's entirely dependent on people getting into the market to provide the fiat currency to cash out. A run on these exchanges will destroy the value of bitcoins and cause a panic.

lostsock 9y ago
How is it clear that the exchanges don't have liquidity?
- jorblumesea 9y ago
  The way the system works provides little in any sense of a line of liquidity. Unlike normal banking the exchanges operate ledgers where the fiat currency they have on hand is directly tied to how many people have put fiat currency into the exchange network. Given the extremely rapid rise of the price of BTC, it's extremely unlikely they have anywhere close to the amount of fiat currency if large numbers of people cash out.
  - pas 9y ago
    Exchanges are not market makers. They don't have to be able to allow everyone to "cash out", they are not banks. Exchanges provide a venue for buy-sell to meet. If someone wants to "cash out", someone has to want to "cash in". Lately every time the price dropped folks saw it as the time to buy more, or just "finally buy bitcoin, because it'll go up soon". A big crash happens when the equilibrium shifts drastically, when more people wants to get out than get in, it'll crush the price (because more people wanting to get out will lead to even more people wanting to get out).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

xtracto 9y ago

> It’s “crazy” to invest in the digital asset, he added. “Bitcoin may well go to $20,000 but that won’t prove I’m wrong. When it gets back to $100, we’ll talk.” One more in the many death's of bitcoin... https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoinobituaries/page/10/ https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoinobituaries/page/10/

thoughtexprmnt 9y ago

Isn't the "value" of a currency in it's relative stability over time? That is, the confidence by those who use it that it will be exchangeable for roughly the same amount of goods and services today, tomorrow, six months or a year from now (accounting for nominal inflation, of course). If you accept that premise of what a viable currency should be, then it seems like the volatility of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have thus far made them failures. I mean, if a national currency had similarly rapid changes in value, wouldn't we see financial chaos, riots, and revolution?