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Peanuts. > Jan 1, 2021 In the past two years, President-elect Joe Biden's pick to be Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has raked in more than $7.2 million in s

by 1996 6y ago

Peanuts. > Jan 1, 2021 In the past two years, President-elect Joe Biden's pick to be Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has raked in more than $7.2 million in speaking fees from Wall Street and large corporations... https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/01/yellen-made-millions-in-wall-street-speeches-453223 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/01/yellen-made-million... And 5 days ago: > Janet Yellen cleared her final hurdle Monday on her historic path to secretary of the Treasury Department, gaining overwhelming Senate confirmation for the key economic position. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/25/janet-yellen-gets-senate-confirmation-as-first-woman-to-lead-the-treasury-department.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/25/janet-yellen-gets-senate-con... She will protect the US economy against the evil crypto and public enemy #1, bitcoin, you (and her generous donators) can count on her for that :-)

pbourke 6y ago
Is bitcoin meant to be a currency or an investment? If it’s a currency without price stability, what’s the point? If it’s an investment without any underlying economic value, what’s the point?
- arthurcolle 6y ago
  Bitcoin is peer-to-peer digital cash. I don't need to go to a bank, and I can send money to friends around the world without worrying about currency controls or other bullshit. It can be both. It can be one or the other. If you don't care about these things, that's cool. But this is a drum that's been beaten for years... not sure how useful continual discussion of skepticism of something that's been around for 13 years and seems to be working as expected... I personally like the idea of a unit of exchange, investment vehicle, and store of value that isn't exclusively backed by America's fleet of destroyers and aircraft carriers and trillion dollar war-machines, and that isn't forever devalued due to inflation. Given that a single BTC is divisible into 0.00000001 satoshis, maybe one day a BTC will be worth $100,000,000 USD per BTC. Probably not, but it's not entirely speculative. You can buy many things with BTC. People choose not to because they expect it to rise in value. People spend dollars because they either have to, or because they want to put it into cashflow generating assets. The dollar has lost 7% of its value in the past year because of ongoing emergency measures by the Fed. This is great for aggregate asset inflation, but is terrible for anyone's savings. Arguing about bitcoin's utility after the last year's monetary policy is a little funny to me.
  - arthurcolle 6y ago
    To clarify, assuming the actual float of BTC is around 15e6 max (around 6e6 is presumed missing forever due to user error) ever, once all the bitcoins have been mined, and you use my figure of 1e8 USD per single BTC, then you get a market cap of 1.5e15 (1.5 quadrillion). Right now there's around 90 trillion in "total money" (narrow + broad money) in the world, so 1.5 quadrillion is around 16.667~ times that amount. Again, with fiat currency inflation, implied economic growth projections and technological efficiencies to be gained, will total money be around 1.5 quadrillion dollars? Eventually, sure. Especially if you denominate this in dollars, which obviously have been devaluated to the extreme. These are huge figures, but that doesn't sound so crazy when you really think about it. Especially on a 50-100 year time horizon.
jjeaff 6y ago
You can hardly blame someone for accepting huge speaking fees. While I do think that the revolving door of government and private industry is a problem, I think if we set the bar too high, then no one will ever be pure enough. How exactly would one find an experienced industry expert, especially in finance that hasn't at some point been highly paid by industry? We could go with lifetime politicians, I guess... or academics, but we all know how the people usually respond to those types of appointees. Are we to presume that these industry insiders were paying huge speaking fees to Janet Yellen just in case the 75 year old received another high profile political appointment? Do companies worry about hiring a CEO who used to work for a competitor? I just don't see a problem per se unless there is evidence of undue influence.

by 1996 6y ago

pbourke 6y ago

Is bitcoin meant to be a currency or an investment? If it’s a currency without price stability, what’s the point? If it’s an investment without any underlying economic value, what’s the point?

arthurcolle 6y ago
Bitcoin is peer-to-peer digital cash. I don't need to go to a bank, and I can send money to friends around the world without worrying about currency controls or other bullshit. It can be both. It can be one or the other. If you don't care about these things, that's cool. But this is a drum that's been beaten for years... not sure how useful continual discussion of skepticism of something that's been around for 13 years and seems to be working as expected... I personally like the idea of a unit of exchange, investment vehicle, and store of value that isn't exclusively backed by America's fleet of destroyers and aircraft carriers and trillion dollar war-machines, and that isn't forever devalued due to inflation. Given that a single BTC is divisible into 0.00000001 satoshis, maybe one day a BTC will be worth $100,000,000 USD per BTC. Probably not, but it's not entirely speculative. You can buy many things with BTC. People choose not to because they expect it to rise in value. People spend dollars because they either have to, or because they want to put it into cashflow generating assets. The dollar has lost 7% of its value in the past year because of ongoing emergency measures by the Fed. This is great for aggregate asset inflation, but is terrible for anyone's savings. Arguing about bitcoin's utility after the last year's monetary policy is a little funny to me.
- arthurcolle 6y ago
  To clarify, assuming the actual float of BTC is around 15e6 max (around 6e6 is presumed missing forever due to user error) ever, once all the bitcoins have been mined, and you use my figure of 1e8 USD per single BTC, then you get a market cap of 1.5e15 (1.5 quadrillion). Right now there's around 90 trillion in "total money" (narrow + broad money) in the world, so 1.5 quadrillion is around 16.667~ times that amount. Again, with fiat currency inflation, implied economic growth projections and technological efficiencies to be gained, will total money be around 1.5 quadrillion dollars? Eventually, sure. Especially if you denominate this in dollars, which obviously have been devaluated to the extreme. These are huge figures, but that doesn't sound so crazy when you really think about it. Especially on a 50-100 year time horizon.

jjeaff 6y ago

You can hardly blame someone for accepting huge speaking fees. While I do think that the revolving door of government and private industry is a problem, I think if we set the bar too high, then no one will ever be pure enough. How exactly would one find an experienced industry expert, especially in finance that hasn't at some point been highly paid by industry? We could go with lifetime politicians, I guess... or academics, but we all know how the people usually respond to those types of appointees. Are we to presume that these industry insiders were paying huge speaking fees to Janet Yellen just in case the 75 year old received another high profile political appointment? Do companies worry about hiring a CEO who used to work for a competitor? I just don't see a problem per se unless there is evidence of undue influence.