No one understands bitcoin
It is pretty crazy when you think about it. Here we sit in 2019. Bitcoin has been producing blocks, providing the world with peer to peer money transfer and savings technology essentially non-stop for the last decade. Millions of individuals have decided to leverage the network to store some of their hard-earned money. Billions of dollars have poured into the system, driving the price from $0 to ~$10,000. Yet, it is extremely hard to find those in academia who are willing to take a dive into Bitcoin beyond a half-assed regurgitation of tried and true weak arguments against Bitcoin that have been debunked by many.
This regularly blows my mind too. An entire WORLD of economics academics, and barely a handful deem bitcoin worthy of a genuine investigation. Despite its historically unprecedented performance. When people say academia is broken, they aren't using strong enough words. https://t.co/tbgPFxleej
— Neil Woodfine (@nwoodfine) August 29, 2019
Some of our favorite reasons for dismissing Bitcoin trodded out by career academics that we like around these parts are; "Bitcoin consumes too much energy", "Governments won't allow Bitcoin to proliferate", and "Some company or community will make a newer, better coin that will make Bitcoin obsolete". For some reason, despite Bitcoin's success over the last decade, many mainstream economists and academics refuse to actually roll up their sleeves, dive into the data, hit the pavement to speak with users and actually, you know, try to understand Bitcoin as a system and a social phenomenon.
Some men and women of academia and mainstream economics are so entrenched in their ways and have so much sunk social cost in their worldview that they simply refuse to even entertain the idea that Bitcoin may, in fact, work. And even worse, make a lot more sense than the system they've erected and attempted to explain in retrospect over the course of the last five decades. What a shame. You really can't teach an old dog new tricks. Especially when they're in an industry built on ego.
With all of that being said, that does not mean that there are NO academics out there who are attempting to understand Bitcoin. Here's a great paper I read last weekend from Max Raskin, Fahad Saleh, and David Yermack that explores how private digital currencies like Bitcoin affect government policies. Highly recommend you check it out when you get a chance.
Final thought...
It's wedding season, baby!
Enjoy your weekend, freaks.
