With any luck, they’ll crack down hard on those who are holding bitcoin.
Steve Jolly
3 months ago
There’s an argument to be made that the US economy is not nearly as healthy as stock prices suggest and/or that stock prices are a poor measure of economic health to begin with.
Either way, China has an easy out that nobody seems to realize. They can take a page out of the Nazi playbook and militarize the economy. They can turn their productive capacity towards building weapons for themselves, the Russians, the North Koreans, etc. They can make the numbers say whatever they want them to say and to the domestic population insulated from foreign media, it will look like there are plenty of jobs and everything is fine. This was Hitler’s answer to the Great Depression and it worked well enough for him to make himself Fuhrer without much argument.
Jon Hawksley
3 months ago
Every article on market values, and especially bitcoins, needs to draw the distinction between valuing something by what someone else will pay versus its intrinsic value. Intrinsic value is what it is worth based on the income it gives and the eventual sale of the assets in it. With bitcoins intrinsic value is zero. With tech stocks it is the net present value of their projected revenues less projected costs for as long as there is a demand. Eventually something better always comes along. Paying more than intrinsic value can be profitable if someone else buys it from you at a yet higher price but it inevitably leads to investment bubbles, that are full of wishful thinking, and eventually substantial losses.
As many do, you are confusing a means of exchange for an asset. What is the intrinsic value of a dollar bill?! Nothing. Since Nixon nixed gold convertibility it is solely based on confidence in the US government. And yet the dollar is one of the most important entities in the modern world. What is the intrinsic value of gold?! Again, not much according to your metric. It throws off no income. It has a little bit of industrial use, some use in jewellery (which could use other metals equally well) and yet it has maintained its value for 5000 years. In Ancient Rome you could buy a fine toga for an ounce of gold. Now an ounce of gold will get you a nice Savile Row suit. Still don’t see it’s value? If I was forced to buy either Bitcoin or Tesla and could only collect in 5000 years, I know which I’d choose.
Don’t worry, the Chinese government will release some new statistics shortly that will smooth all this over.
Indeed, their numbers are about as reliable as our own
With any luck, they’ll crack down hard on those who are holding bitcoin.
There’s an argument to be made that the US economy is not nearly as healthy as stock prices suggest and/or that stock prices are a poor measure of economic health to begin with.
Either way, China has an easy out that nobody seems to realize. They can take a page out of the Nazi playbook and militarize the economy. They can turn their productive capacity towards building weapons for themselves, the Russians, the North Koreans, etc. They can make the numbers say whatever they want them to say and to the domestic population insulated from foreign media, it will look like there are plenty of jobs and everything is fine. This was Hitler’s answer to the Great Depression and it worked well enough for him to make himself Fuhrer without much argument.
Every article on market values, and especially bitcoins, needs to draw the distinction between valuing something by what someone else will pay versus its intrinsic value. Intrinsic value is what it is worth based on the income it gives and the eventual sale of the assets in it. With bitcoins intrinsic value is zero. With tech stocks it is the net present value of their projected revenues less projected costs for as long as there is a demand. Eventually something better always comes along. Paying more than intrinsic value can be profitable if someone else buys it from you at a yet higher price but it inevitably leads to investment bubbles, that are full of wishful thinking, and eventually substantial losses.
As many do, you are confusing a means of exchange for an asset. What is the intrinsic value of a dollar bill?! Nothing. Since Nixon nixed gold convertibility it is solely based on confidence in the US government. And yet the dollar is one of the most important entities in the modern world. What is the intrinsic value of gold?! Again, not much according to your metric. It throws off no income. It has a little bit of industrial use, some use in jewellery (which could use other metals equally well) and yet it has maintained its value for 5000 years. In Ancient Rome you could buy a fine toga for an ounce of gold. Now an ounce of gold will get you a nice Savile Row suit. Still don’t see it’s value? If I was forced to buy either Bitcoin or Tesla and could only collect in 5000 years, I know which I’d choose.