8 ms·

Charlie Munger calls BTC disgusting and contrary to the interest of civilization

ObserverNeutral 5y ago
Comments made during Berkshire annual (remote) meeting yesterday. Interesting take and in line with what he said in the past, Druckenmiller and Soros on the other hand are bullish
- 0x008 5y ago
  Who says you cannot be bullish on something that is disgusting? There is a lot of money made with Food, Water, Weapons etc.
djohnston 5y ago
First they ignore, then they laugh, then they fight, then you win.
- dorkwood 5y ago
  Is that an Elizabeth Holmes quote?
  - __lazybyte 5y ago
    Gandhi edit: I checked and it seems it was wrongly attributed to Gandhi. It seems Nicholas Klein was the first to say this.
- FinanceAnon 5y ago
  Or then you lose
  - dopidop 5y ago
    Or then they buy you and make you danse like the monkey you have always been.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- africanboy 5y ago
  that's what cryptozealots don't understand you can laugh about it, but fiat money will stay in charge
Havoc 5y ago
I mean he is kinda right about the energy use being "disgusting". Very hard to justify that much juice on literally useless calculations. Their anger beyond that seems somewhat more deep seated than that though
- Tenoke 5y ago
  They are excessive but not 'literally useless' - there's clearly a use, it just would be a lot better if that use was being served with less energy. Not that I particularly like BTC at this point - it has been largely superseded by better projects.
  - yaa_minu 5y ago
    Bitcoin has been superseded by better projects like? care to give some examples?
    - Tenoke 5y ago
      I'd argue that every non-PoW blockchain is better than Bitcoin. Specifically smart-chains do both what Bitcoin does but also the coin is actually useful beyond a store of value (which they can also be used for). So e.g. Ethereum 2.0, Cardano, Solana etc are all better on everything Bitcoin is criticized for. And if we talk about pure payments, projects like Stellar, Nano (yes, issues currently but getting fixed), and Monero have clear (different) benefits over it.
- o_p 5y ago
  The calculations are useful to ensure the transaction is valid.
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    That is the main point of mining, to solve the double spend problem in a trustless environment. So it's true that this is not useless. The parent (and sibling) shouldn't be downvoted for stating this.
- 5y ago
anovikov 5y ago
So what? It exists, and it's decentralised, and it solves many people's needs (and yes, these needs are usually criminal in nature, so they are not even supposed to be in the interest of civilization). Outlaw it and this is all they want - because it means unchecked existence.
- myspy 5y ago
  Read an interesting article that stated that crypto is not private enough to enable good money transfer for criminals. Cash is still the best. In general it stated that crypto currencies are rather useless. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/04/why-cryptocurrency-is-a-giant-fraud https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/04/why-cryptocurrency-is... And a couple notes about blockchain https://thecorrespondent.com/655/blockchain-the-amazing-solution-for-almost-nothing/86649455475-f933fe63 https://thecorrespondent.com/655/blockchain-the-amazing-solu... Personally I have not dig deeper into the pros and cons of crypto but my gut feeling is that it’s pretty useless. Would be better to improve existing structures.
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    You should dig a little deeper, so that you get an actual understanding instead of a gut feeling about something you don't know anything about. Read about the technology, learn how it works, read what proponents like about it and what opponents dislike about it. That way you can form a proper opinion.
  - Miner49er 5y ago
    This seems like a poorly researched article though. They didn't even mention any privacy coins that do offer privacy or at least plausible deniability like Monero. I admittedly just skimmed it, but I also didn't see them refute Bitcoin as a store of value.
    - capableweb 5y ago
      Ok, so you can't get any privacy when using Bitcoin, let's say you use Monero instead. So you kidnap someone, demand a payment in Monero and the family pays it. So now you have X Monero. Now what? In order to use it for something, either you need to purchase it with Monero (meaning you can only buy things like drugs and other illicit things, no popular stores offers Monero as payment), or you trade Monero for Y-coin and lose your privacy again or you sell Monero on a exchange for Z, again losing your privacy. Replace Monero with any other "privacy" coin and you have the same problem. Cryptocurrencies with public ledgers, "privacy" focused on not are simply not a good solution for crimes and preventing people from finding you. The best tool for that job is still cash.
o_p 5y ago
The elites are disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization.
- meepmorp 5y ago
  You're disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization, and you're disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization, and you're disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization!! Everyone is disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization!
- flyinglizard 5y ago
  BTC does nothing more than slightly expand the set of elites. If anything, its distribution is much more lopsided than that of fiat money.
hellothere1337 5y ago
Why are all these billionaires singling out bitcoin?
- lokimedes 5y ago
  They likely mean any cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is simply the only type that is generally known and hence synonymous with all things crypto.
- cableshaft 5y ago
  Well, in this case this was during a Q&A session, so he was likely asked about bitcoin by shareholders (it was a shareholder meeting) to get his opinion. Plus he makes it clear in the article that he finds it distasteful "shuffling out of your extra billions of billions of dollars to somebody who just invented a new financial product out of thin air." Which I mean, if you're somebody who has "extra billions of dollars" lying around, you might not care to shuffle it around either. As for other billionaires, at least one is actually into bitcoin (Elon Musk).
nabla9 5y ago
One BTC transaction consumes more energy than million visa transactions. BTC is the most energy inefficient financial transaction system ever developed.
- DSingularity 5y ago
  Maybe that is the price of censorship resistance. Maybe that is the price of sound money. Maybe if you don’t have a system like this imperial hegemonic nations like the US will print money to stay ahead with impunity. Maybe, for all those things, that’s a price worth paying.
  - nabla9 5y ago
    Conspiracy theories, money mystism and emotional rants.
  - africanboy 5y ago
    US hegemony is military, not monetary US army will be hegemomic even if the entire planet switch to BTC
  - enumjorge 5y ago
    I’m sorry but this is just appeal to emotion that does not match the current reality of Bitcoin. In what way is Bitcoin “sound”? It’s volatile, opaque, and at the peak of the frenzy (i.e. when usage was high) transactions were both expensive, and slow. I don’t see how the existence of BTC prevents the US Treasury from printing money. In some theoretical scenario maybe, but not in actuality. And I don’t buy that BTC is going to empower “the little guy”. Coinbase, the most accessible way to trade cryptocurrencies is now beholden to Wall Street and there are concerns about the amount of control China has over BTC [0]. The same people in control now will try to retain if the rules of the game change. [0] https://www.investopedia.com/news/bitcoin-wont-win-worldwide-adoption-because-china-controls-it-ripple-ceo/ https://www.investopedia.com/news/bitcoin-wont-win-worldwide...
    - DSingularity 5y ago
throwawayeixjsm 5y ago
People have found a new scapegoat for energy use so they can feel less guilty about their meat heavy diet and heavy carbon footprint. “Bitcoin is an energy grabbing monster that’s killing our planet!!! (And not us we swear!)
- rvieira 5y ago
  I'm all for greater accountability of big corp when it comes to climate change, but did I miss where they said "it's not us, we swear"? It will be much more difficult to replace fossil fuels, which have a direct upside (keeping a big chunk of the world moving, chemical industry, etc), despite the eco-devastation. I'm yet to see which fundamental, irreplaceable need cryptocurrencies fill. Also, as a note, fossil fuels and mass meat production started in a time where climate change was not a concern. They are deeply ingrained in the majority of societies, even though the trend since the end of the last century is to divest. I see the exact opposite in cryptocurrencies. They started to become mainstream in a period were people should know better about these things and the trend is to grow even more.
  - sumedh 5y ago
    > They started to become mainstream in a period were people should know better about these things They should know better about the climate but they also know better that you cannot trust the US financial system so its better to have a hedge in the form of crypto.
  - cableshaft 5y ago
    > I'm all for greater accountability of big corp when it comes to climate change, but did I miss where they said "it's not us, we swear"? Corporations gaslight consumers all the time for anything inconvenient to them and their profits. If you want to see a good case made for one example of it, plastics and plastic recycling, check out John Oliver's Last Week Tonight on plastics (you probably even believe a few of the lies they've been telling everyone about plastic recycling yourself right now. it even surprised me and I already knew plastic recycling was a little bit bullshit already). https://youtu.be/Fiu9GSOmt8E https://youtu.be/Fiu9GSOmt8E Here's a whole 11 episode podcast put out by the BBC called "How They Made Us Doubt Everything" about big business using the same techniques to tell us lies about smoking causing cancer to make us doubt climate change. I just found out about this now but I do intend to give it a listen: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000l7q1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000l7q1 Here's an article that's an excerpt from a book called "The New Climate War" that Michael Mann wrote about this very topic: "Then there’s the now iconic “Crying Indian” ad. Some readers may recall the commercial from the early 1970s. Featuring a tearful Indian named “Iron Eyes Cody,” it alerted viewers to the accumulating bottle and can waste littering our countryside. The ad, however, wasn’t quite what it appeared to be on the surface. A bit of sleuthing reveals that it was actually the centerpiece of a massive deflection campaign engineered by the beverage industry, which sought to point the finger at us, rather than corporations, emphasizing individual responsibility over collective action and governmental regulation." https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/michael-mann-climate-change/ https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/michael-mann-climate-... Not really in the mood to argue the crypto front. I'm actually in a bit of a quandary myself, as I was excited about bitcoin when it was first released, and didn't see how much energy it would eventually use, and I actually have some wealth (modest in these circles since a lot of you work in Silicon Valley and I don't) thanks to speculating on it and other cryptocurrencies. I want to see crypto succeed, but I also want it to not use tons of energy. I'm aware of alternatives to "Proof of Work" (which is why Crypto has started using so much energy) such as "Proof of Stake", but it's not going to be easy to shift Bitcoin to that, and as far as I'm aware we don't yet have any coin that's proven that Proof of Stake will work at scale yet (although Ethereum is working towards that, so hopefully it will show that more environmentally-friendly alternatives can exist). So long story short, I'm hoping that ultimately the environmental issues of bitcoin will eventually be significantly fixed, or people will shift to a coin that does fix it. In the meantime, however, there's tons of other industries that are severely damaging our environment and are doing little to nothing to stop it, and blaming everyone else for the problem instead of us.
rybosworld 5y ago
Looks like Buffet/Munger have moved from the denial stage to the anger stage?
Tenoke 5y ago
Bitcoin (or crypto in general) might be becoming one of the most divisive while really popular topics here. You rarely see quite that many downvotes on all sides on frequently discussed subjects.
SirensOfTitan 5y ago
Did Munger actually mention energy use as his reason for disliking Bitcoin? I don’t see that anywhere in the article. It seems that he doesn’t like BTC because it’s unregulated, highly volatile, and could be used for illegal behavior (I hope he doesn’t figure out what many people use USD for). Having worked in crypto for a little while, I do sort of agree with Charlie on his last point to some extent: “Bitcoin reminds me of what Oscar Wilde said about fox hunting. He said it was the pursuit of the uneatable by the unspeakable,” he added. I just don’t see any interesting use cases in crypto that don’t look like Ponzi schemes. The ecosystem is bifurcated into scam artists and philosopher engineers who work on impressive infrastructure projects to nowhere. The most popular crypto isn’t scalable or has governance issues. It’s so expensive to send and receive money on most of these block chains that they can’t even be used for basic commerce.
nemo44x 5y ago
Now do the Petro-Dollar. The problem with BTC is it won’t do you any good to drop bombs on people to force them to take it.
- zepto 5y ago
  You can’t eat Bitcoin or use it to power machines.
xondono 5y ago
I’m just hoping we get soon to the collapse of bitcoin so we can either normalize better cryptos or just abandon the concept of cryptocurrency as a whole. Right now we are just inflating the proverbial balloon until it pops.
sadmann1 5y ago
I'm not sure crypto believer but seeing some one who's wealth rests on the bloodsoaked petrodollar calling bitcoin disgusting is rich
diamondhandle 5y ago
Bitcoin is Pachinko for middle-aged white men. You can quote me on that. (And, really, do some research into the $200B a year Pachinko industry, and you’ll see some disturbing parallels.)
jokoon 5y ago
Currency and money are weird and ancient concepts, in my view. Of course they are part of society as common tools, but money can be corrupt or just a misleading way to measure value in society, especially with ecology and a very sophisticated society. With the end of the cold war and the soviet union, there will be an endless supply of people arguing against planned economy, while it's clearly undeniable that all modern world governments are somewhat already centralized in a way or another, would it be by law, lobbies, government or monopolies. It's really weird how bitcoin showed that normal banks are actually the best way to handle money. Government-regulated currencies are best because voters can actually have a saying in how money gets handled. You cannot say such thing about BTC. BTC is at the mercy of malware and BTC-to-dollar exchanges. BTC really is the most shiny software gadget ever invented. Most people don't know how it work.
- ObserverNeutral 5y ago
  > Government-regulated currencies are best because voters can actually have a saying in how money gets handled No, they don't. BTC is successful because citizens were against bailouts and yet government did bailouts to secure the "common good" It's also popular because the Fed has a 2% inflation target whereas the population prefers a -2% Government can kill btc in 3 seconds if it wants to do so...it just needs to give people what they want, what's popular so to speak, regardless of outcomes
bitcoinmonger 5y ago
We need more people with years of experience in finance to warn against the risks of cryptocurrency. The existing financial system has been designed fairly and has systems in place to prevent corruption. We can't have an open source version of money that just anyone can contribute to. It's not in our best interest as a society. Tight capital controls are there for our safety and to create a fair playing field for everyone. Bitcoin only serves to circumvent this, and it should be stopped.
DesiLurker 5y ago
I feel like in all of these near-focus discussions one very important thing tends to get lost. its that Bitcoin is the first realistic attempt to take the power of issuing money away from politicians & central bankers. we all know it is not perfect but we have to acknowledge if it becomes a bit stable and more players buy into it then there is a good chance it could be a currency hedge commodity like gold or other precious metals. eventually its possible that many small currencies can be keyed off of it directly or indirectly by easy convertibility. In that bitcoin itself may not succeed but IMO some other block-chain based effort would. I think given the size of world economy & currency markets, a couple of trillion USD of market cap may be justifiable if it becomes successful in that.

Comments made during Berkshire annual (remote) meeting yesterday. Interesting take and in line with what he said in the past, Druckenmiller and Soros on the other hand are bullish

0x008 5y ago
Who says you cannot be bullish on something that is disgusting? There is a lot of money made with Food, Water, Weapons etc.

djohnston 5y ago

First they ignore, then they laugh, then they fight, then you win.

dorkwood 5y ago
Is that an Elizabeth Holmes quote?
- __lazybyte 5y ago
  Gandhi edit: I checked and it seems it was wrongly attributed to Gandhi. It seems Nicholas Klein was the first to say this.
FinanceAnon 5y ago
Or then you lose
- dopidop 5y ago
  Or then they buy you and make you danse like the monkey you have always been.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
africanboy 5y ago
that's what cryptozealots don't understand you can laugh about it, but fiat money will stay in charge

Havoc 5y ago

I mean he is kinda right about the energy use being "disgusting". Very hard to justify that much juice on literally useless calculations. Their anger beyond that seems somewhat more deep seated than that though

Tenoke 5y ago
They are excessive but not 'literally useless' - there's clearly a use, it just would be a lot better if that use was being served with less energy. Not that I particularly like BTC at this point - it has been largely superseded by better projects.
- yaa_minu 5y ago
  Bitcoin has been superseded by better projects like? care to give some examples?
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    I'd argue that every non-PoW blockchain is better than Bitcoin. Specifically smart-chains do both what Bitcoin does but also the coin is actually useful beyond a store of value (which they can also be used for). So e.g. Ethereum 2.0, Cardano, Solana etc are all better on everything Bitcoin is criticized for. And if we talk about pure payments, projects like Stellar, Nano (yes, issues currently but getting fixed), and Monero have clear (different) benefits over it.
o_p 5y ago
The calculations are useful to ensure the transaction is valid.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  That is the main point of mining, to solve the double spend problem in a trustless environment. So it's true that this is not useless. The parent (and sibling) shouldn't be downvoted for stating this.
5y ago

anovikov 5y ago

So what? It exists, and it's decentralised, and it solves many people's needs (and yes, these needs are usually criminal in nature, so they are not even supposed to be in the interest of civilization). Outlaw it and this is all they want - because it means unchecked existence.

myspy 5y ago
Read an interesting article that stated that crypto is not private enough to enable good money transfer for criminals. Cash is still the best. In general it stated that crypto currencies are rather useless. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/04/why-cryptocurrency-is-a-giant-fraud https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/04/why-cryptocurrency-is... And a couple notes about blockchain https://thecorrespondent.com/655/blockchain-the-amazing-solution-for-almost-nothing/86649455475-f933fe63 https://thecorrespondent.com/655/blockchain-the-amazing-solu... Personally I have not dig deeper into the pros and cons of crypto but my gut feeling is that it’s pretty useless. Would be better to improve existing structures.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  You should dig a little deeper, so that you get an actual understanding instead of a gut feeling about something you don't know anything about. Read about the technology, learn how it works, read what proponents like about it and what opponents dislike about it. That way you can form a proper opinion.
- Miner49er 5y ago
  This seems like a poorly researched article though. They didn't even mention any privacy coins that do offer privacy or at least plausible deniability like Monero. I admittedly just skimmed it, but I also didn't see them refute Bitcoin as a store of value.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    Ok, so you can't get any privacy when using Bitcoin, let's say you use Monero instead. So you kidnap someone, demand a payment in Monero and the family pays it. So now you have X Monero. Now what? In order to use it for something, either you need to purchase it with Monero (meaning you can only buy things like drugs and other illicit things, no popular stores offers Monero as payment), or you trade Monero for Y-coin and lose your privacy again or you sell Monero on a exchange for Z, again losing your privacy. Replace Monero with any other "privacy" coin and you have the same problem. Cryptocurrencies with public ledgers, "privacy" focused on not are simply not a good solution for crimes and preventing people from finding you. The best tool for that job is still cash.

o_p 5y ago

The elites are disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization.

meepmorp 5y ago
You're disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization, and you're disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization, and you're disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization!! Everyone is disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization!
flyinglizard 5y ago
BTC does nothing more than slightly expand the set of elites. If anything, its distribution is much more lopsided than that of fiat money.

hellothere1337 5y ago

Why are all these billionaires singling out bitcoin?

lokimedes 5y ago
They likely mean any cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is simply the only type that is generally known and hence synonymous with all things crypto.
cableshaft 5y ago
Well, in this case this was during a Q&A session, so he was likely asked about bitcoin by shareholders (it was a shareholder meeting) to get his opinion. Plus he makes it clear in the article that he finds it distasteful "shuffling out of your extra billions of billions of dollars to somebody who just invented a new financial product out of thin air." Which I mean, if you're somebody who has "extra billions of dollars" lying around, you might not care to shuffle it around either. As for other billionaires, at least one is actually into bitcoin (Elon Musk).

nabla9 5y ago

One BTC transaction consumes more energy than million visa transactions. BTC is the most energy inefficient financial transaction system ever developed.

DSingularity 5y ago
Maybe that is the price of censorship resistance. Maybe that is the price of sound money. Maybe if you don’t have a system like this imperial hegemonic nations like the US will print money to stay ahead with impunity. Maybe, for all those things, that’s a price worth paying.
- nabla9 5y ago
  Conspiracy theories, money mystism and emotional rants.
- africanboy 5y ago
  US hegemony is military, not monetary US army will be hegemomic even if the entire planet switch to BTC
- enumjorge 5y ago
  I’m sorry but this is just appeal to emotion that does not match the current reality of Bitcoin. In what way is Bitcoin “sound”? It’s volatile, opaque, and at the peak of the frenzy (i.e. when usage was high) transactions were both expensive, and slow. I don’t see how the existence of BTC prevents the US Treasury from printing money. In some theoretical scenario maybe, but not in actuality. And I don’t buy that BTC is going to empower “the little guy”. Coinbase, the most accessible way to trade cryptocurrencies is now beholden to Wall Street and there are concerns about the amount of control China has over BTC [0]. The same people in control now will try to retain if the rules of the game change. [0] https://www.investopedia.com/news/bitcoin-wont-win-worldwide-adoption-because-china-controls-it-ripple-ceo/ https://www.investopedia.com/news/bitcoin-wont-win-worldwide...
  - DSingularity 5y ago

throwawayeixjsm 5y ago

People have found a new scapegoat for energy use so they can feel less guilty about their meat heavy diet and heavy carbon footprint. “Bitcoin is an energy grabbing monster that’s killing our planet!!! (And not us we swear!)

rvieira 5y ago
I'm all for greater accountability of big corp when it comes to climate change, but did I miss where they said "it's not us, we swear"? It will be much more difficult to replace fossil fuels, which have a direct upside (keeping a big chunk of the world moving, chemical industry, etc), despite the eco-devastation. I'm yet to see which fundamental, irreplaceable need cryptocurrencies fill. Also, as a note, fossil fuels and mass meat production started in a time where climate change was not a concern. They are deeply ingrained in the majority of societies, even though the trend since the end of the last century is to divest. I see the exact opposite in cryptocurrencies. They started to become mainstream in a period were people should know better about these things and the trend is to grow even more.
- sumedh 5y ago
  > They started to become mainstream in a period were people should know better about these things They should know better about the climate but they also know better that you cannot trust the US financial system so its better to have a hedge in the form of crypto.
- cableshaft 5y ago
  > I'm all for greater accountability of big corp when it comes to climate change, but did I miss where they said "it's not us, we swear"? Corporations gaslight consumers all the time for anything inconvenient to them and their profits. If you want to see a good case made for one example of it, plastics and plastic recycling, check out John Oliver's Last Week Tonight on plastics (you probably even believe a few of the lies they've been telling everyone about plastic recycling yourself right now. it even surprised me and I already knew plastic recycling was a little bit bullshit already). https://youtu.be/Fiu9GSOmt8E https://youtu.be/Fiu9GSOmt8E Here's a whole 11 episode podcast put out by the BBC called "How They Made Us Doubt Everything" about big business using the same techniques to tell us lies about smoking causing cancer to make us doubt climate change. I just found out about this now but I do intend to give it a listen: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000l7q1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000l7q1 Here's an article that's an excerpt from a book called "The New Climate War" that Michael Mann wrote about this very topic: "Then there’s the now iconic “Crying Indian” ad. Some readers may recall the commercial from the early 1970s. Featuring a tearful Indian named “Iron Eyes Cody,” it alerted viewers to the accumulating bottle and can waste littering our countryside. The ad, however, wasn’t quite what it appeared to be on the surface. A bit of sleuthing reveals that it was actually the centerpiece of a massive deflection campaign engineered by the beverage industry, which sought to point the finger at us, rather than corporations, emphasizing individual responsibility over collective action and governmental regulation." https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/michael-mann-climate-change/ https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/michael-mann-climate-... Not really in the mood to argue the crypto front. I'm actually in a bit of a quandary myself, as I was excited about bitcoin when it was first released, and didn't see how much energy it would eventually use, and I actually have some wealth (modest in these circles since a lot of you work in Silicon Valley and I don't) thanks to speculating on it and other cryptocurrencies. I want to see crypto succeed, but I also want it to not use tons of energy. I'm aware of alternatives to "Proof of Work" (which is why Crypto has started using so much energy) such as "Proof of Stake", but it's not going to be easy to shift Bitcoin to that, and as far as I'm aware we don't yet have any coin that's proven that Proof of Stake will work at scale yet (although Ethereum is working towards that, so hopefully it will show that more environmentally-friendly alternatives can exist). So long story short, I'm hoping that ultimately the environmental issues of bitcoin will eventually be significantly fixed, or people will shift to a coin that does fix it. In the meantime, however, there's tons of other industries that are severely damaging our environment and are doing little to nothing to stop it, and blaming everyone else for the problem instead of us.

rybosworld 5y ago

Looks like Buffet/Munger have moved from the denial stage to the anger stage?

Tenoke 5y ago

Bitcoin (or crypto in general) might be becoming one of the most divisive while really popular topics here. You rarely see quite that many downvotes on all sides on frequently discussed subjects.

SirensOfTitan 5y ago

Did Munger actually mention energy use as his reason for disliking Bitcoin? I don’t see that anywhere in the article. It seems that he doesn’t like BTC because it’s unregulated, highly volatile, and could be used for illegal behavior (I hope he doesn’t figure out what many people use USD for). Having worked in crypto for a little while, I do sort of agree with Charlie on his last point to some extent: “Bitcoin reminds me of what Oscar Wilde said about fox hunting. He said it was the pursuit of the uneatable by the unspeakable,” he added. I just don’t see any interesting use cases in crypto that don’t look like Ponzi schemes. The ecosystem is bifurcated into scam artists and philosopher engineers who work on impressive infrastructure projects to nowhere. The most popular crypto isn’t scalable or has governance issues. It’s so expensive to send and receive money on most of these block chains that they can’t even be used for basic commerce.

nemo44x 5y ago

Now do the Petro-Dollar. The problem with BTC is it won’t do you any good to drop bombs on people to force them to take it.

zepto 5y ago
You can’t eat Bitcoin or use it to power machines.

xondono 5y ago

I’m just hoping we get soon to the collapse of bitcoin so we can either normalize better cryptos or just abandon the concept of cryptocurrency as a whole. Right now we are just inflating the proverbial balloon until it pops.

sadmann1 5y ago

I'm not sure crypto believer but seeing some one who's wealth rests on the bloodsoaked petrodollar calling bitcoin disgusting is rich

diamondhandle 5y ago

Bitcoin is Pachinko for middle-aged white men. You can quote me on that. (And, really, do some research into the $200B a year Pachinko industry, and you’ll see some disturbing parallels.)

jokoon 5y ago

Currency and money are weird and ancient concepts, in my view. Of course they are part of society as common tools, but money can be corrupt or just a misleading way to measure value in society, especially with ecology and a very sophisticated society. With the end of the cold war and the soviet union, there will be an endless supply of people arguing against planned economy, while it's clearly undeniable that all modern world governments are somewhat already centralized in a way or another, would it be by law, lobbies, government or monopolies. It's really weird how bitcoin showed that normal banks are actually the best way to handle money. Government-regulated currencies are best because voters can actually have a saying in how money gets handled. You cannot say such thing about BTC. BTC is at the mercy of malware and BTC-to-dollar exchanges. BTC really is the most shiny software gadget ever invented. Most people don't know how it work.

ObserverNeutral 5y ago
> Government-regulated currencies are best because voters can actually have a saying in how money gets handled No, they don't. BTC is successful because citizens were against bailouts and yet government did bailouts to secure the "common good" It's also popular because the Fed has a 2% inflation target whereas the population prefers a -2% Government can kill btc in 3 seconds if it wants to do so...it just needs to give people what they want, what's popular so to speak, regardless of outcomes

bitcoinmonger 5y ago

We need more people with years of experience in finance to warn against the risks of cryptocurrency. The existing financial system has been designed fairly and has systems in place to prevent corruption. We can't have an open source version of money that just anyone can contribute to. It's not in our best interest as a society. Tight capital controls are there for our safety and to create a fair playing field for everyone. Bitcoin only serves to circumvent this, and it should be stopped.

DesiLurker 5y ago

I feel like in all of these near-focus discussions one very important thing tends to get lost. its that Bitcoin is the first realistic attempt to take the power of issuing money away from politicians & central bankers. we all know it is not perfect but we have to acknowledge if it becomes a bit stable and more players buy into it then there is a good chance it could be a currency hedge commodity like gold or other precious metals. eventually its possible that many small currencies can be keyed off of it directly or indirectly by easy convertibility. In that bitcoin itself may not succeed but IMO some other block-chain based effort would. I think given the size of world economy & currency markets, a couple of trillion USD of market cap may be justifiable if it becomes successful in that.