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The irony is that Taleb was a big promoter of bitcoin for many years, and even wrote the forward for the first edition of "The bitcoin standard" praising it for

by ak_111 4y ago

The irony is that Taleb was a big promoter of bitcoin for many years, and even wrote the forward for the first edition of "The bitcoin standard" praising it for being anti-fragile and a black swan event that mainstream financial experts will fail to understand. Around 2020 he fell out with some of the btc community due to their covid stance (he was and is very anti-anti-lockdowns and anti-anti-vaxers). Since then he gradually moved first to btc skeptic then to a major anti-btc figure.

gexla 4y ago
He seems anti BTC Twitter. BTC isn't a scam.
- worik 4y ago
  > BTC isn't a scam. Is it not? I think "scam" fits well. Unless buying illegal things on the Internet - but BTC is not anonymous, so even then
  - gexla 4y ago
    BTC is open source, decentralized, and you can mine it. The existing coins were mined. People may use the tool for scams, but that doesn't mean that the tech itself is a scam. By contrast, many alts were pre-mined or similar and initial coins were sold or given away via airdrops. Thus, the developers had greater control over the network.
karmakurtisaani 4y ago
To be fair, there was initially some very justified excitement around cryptos and BTC in particular. Once the drawbacks became obvious, it's totally fair to change one's mind.
- ak_111 4y ago
  Am not sure you can give him that much benefit of doubt. He was promoting btc heavily way after the initial excitement of crypto up until the end of 2019 (he gave a public lecture in Lebanon where he suggested it and blockchain technology are a good safe haven and solution for the country's currency crisis). He was basically a fan and promoter from 2015 - 2020, that is a really long time for a critical thinker like him not to notice the flaws. I think he was blinded by his ever growing fanbase he had in the BTC community.
  - karmakurtisaani 4y ago
    Thanks for the explanation, I'm not terribly familiar with the case so my point of view is not so refined.
  - tim333 4y ago
    BTC didn't really go above $12k in 2019 so anyone who bough in then and held would be ahead still (at about $19k now in the current slump). Maybe the flaws weren't that bad.
lawn 4y ago
He also seem against the move from Bitcoin as usable money to just a store of value.

by ak_111 4y ago

gexla 4y ago

He seems anti BTC Twitter. BTC isn't a scam.

worik 4y ago
> BTC isn't a scam. Is it not? I think "scam" fits well. Unless buying illegal things on the Internet - but BTC is not anonymous, so even then
- gexla 4y ago
  BTC is open source, decentralized, and you can mine it. The existing coins were mined. People may use the tool for scams, but that doesn't mean that the tech itself is a scam. By contrast, many alts were pre-mined or similar and initial coins were sold or given away via airdrops. Thus, the developers had greater control over the network.

karmakurtisaani 4y ago

To be fair, there was initially some very justified excitement around cryptos and BTC in particular. Once the drawbacks became obvious, it's totally fair to change one's mind.

ak_111 4y ago
Am not sure you can give him that much benefit of doubt. He was promoting btc heavily way after the initial excitement of crypto up until the end of 2019 (he gave a public lecture in Lebanon where he suggested it and blockchain technology are a good safe haven and solution for the country's currency crisis). He was basically a fan and promoter from 2015 - 2020, that is a really long time for a critical thinker like him not to notice the flaws. I think he was blinded by his ever growing fanbase he had in the BTC community.
- karmakurtisaani 4y ago
  Thanks for the explanation, I'm not terribly familiar with the case so my point of view is not so refined.
- tim333 4y ago
  BTC didn't really go above $12k in 2019 so anyone who bough in then and held would be ahead still (at about $19k now in the current slump). Maybe the flaws weren't that bad.

lawn 4y ago

He also seem against the move from Bitcoin as usable money to just a store of value.