Been saying all of this for years. I like how he calls money laundering and drug addicts a 'class' of people
“Gold has some intrinsic uses, fiat currencies issued by the government have at least a central bank that attempts to stabilize their value in terms of goods and services,” he said. “The problem with Bitcoin is that it is finite in amount, and it is very costly to mine, which is what makes it wasteful, like gold. Gold is basically a shiny bitcoin.” Best resumé of currencies ever. W.H is a top world class tier 1 economist his insights are always gold. (pardon the pun) I think he is semantically wrong about one thing though, bitcoin's equilibrium value is negative given all the expensive mining around it. Does not men that speculating on those currencies and playing the game is useless. However, I think the mining ties bitcoin to energy and computing power which are not infinite and dare to imagine a sort of bitcoin standard in replacement of the gold standard.
Rubbish interview. Never rated Buiter. Says bitcoin worthless etc but blockchain technology useful. When asked why, said it could be used to make payments. Well, what do you think cryptocurrencies do?
The value of bitcoin is an interesting problem , in a sense it has uses , but 1 bitcoin worth 4000$ why not 4 million , or nothing? because there are only so many bitcoins, but what if you had started with 10 times the "number" of bitcoins , would they be worth a 10th ?because in a sense you could trade a tenth maybe the actual number is psychological , or is it , could it be available demand for the premier crypto currency ( i don't know say a trillion /by number of bitcoins. So yes in a way the value of bitcoin, is amount of money in the world that will use need want the first crypto / number of said crypto ( bitcoin in this case) , halve number of bitcoins double it's price ( allowing for tiny technical anomalies ). So yes bitcoin has a value due to it has x amount of demand , ( x/number of bitcoins=price , like the guy said many things have little or no inherent value accept demand , but that very demand has a value, Gold is an excellent example , little inherent value but where do people put money in troubled times.... GOLD and now probably bitcoin. It's easy to see it's uses , there must be billions in this world that do and will find it usefull . The key is there are only a finite number of bitcoins,it's in a sense a usefull service which you pay for on a sliding scale, divided between you and fellow uses and the fixed finite number that bitcoin started with , that's why they are worth money. The worry would be better competitors , but once established as the "one" very hard to knock it off perch ( like gold) . Now where do I buy some?