I think Nassim Taleb's nay-saying does have a useful purpose. He's effectively saying that the dominant ideology of the Bitcoiners (e.g. the "libertarianism" of

I think Nassim Taleb's nay-saying does have a useful purpose. He's effectively saying that the dominant ideology of the Bitcoiners (e.g. the "libertarianism" of the Chicago school) is not itself adequate to explain or justify Bitcoin. Where he seems to go wrong is in the wholesale rejection of Bitcoin and "crypto-currency" as a genuine historical/economic phenomenon. It may be true that the value of Bitcoin is zero in the context of rational expectations theory, but all that says is that rational expectations theory doesn't really explain Bitcoin. A die-hard adherent is forced to maintain that it's a mass delusion and everyone else is really just wrong. The hint that Taleb's theoretical framework isn't really adequate to the phenomenon is in his discussion of gold. Part of what Taleb misses regarding gold is that it never perfectly fit all the conditions for functioning as the "universal equivalent in exchange" or the "numeraire". It was simply good enough. He accepts that the reason for moving off the gold standard was that there simply was not enough gold to match the value of all commodities (not enough gold to accomodate the expanding money supply). This may be true but it suggests gold failed as a numeraire not for inherent reasons but more accidental reasons (we couldn't dig it up fast enough). In the same way, while it's pretty clear Bitcoin will never be a functional numeraire, its staying-power still needs to be explained. As a historical phenomenon, Bitcoin seems to have revealed another condition or desirable property of being the numeraire could be the ability to hold and move money privately, especially in large amounts. In other words, it could be said that the concept and existence of a vault was really a symptom of an inadequacy in gold. Another way to put it is that Bitcoin outperforms gold in that it lessens the need for extensive custodial services. Lastly, his demand that the historical horizon be on par with gold is displaced. In fact, what Bitcoin seems to show is that gold's historical horizon is really overkill. But perhaps fiat money had already demonstrated this.