Dec

24

We've had some talk (some might argue too much talk) about bitcoin this year on the site. I've come across a sentinel—about as good as one can get, I think—that the currency's demise is close at hand. "Bill Gross: The Bitcoin Age". This is one of those "End of Equities?" tells. The next few months should provide some insights into its accuracy.

Dylan Distasio writes: 

The Upside Down Man always has his own book to talk, so I take his comments with that always in mind.

Gross: Part 1of 2: We live not in a new gilded age but a bitcoin age where artificial money (from central banks) creates temporary prosperity

Unless I missed another tweet that speaks more directly to bitcoin, I interpret his comment as referencing the fact that central banks magically create money out of thin air. I'm not sure how this ties into the end of bitcoin just because he is aware of it, and using it as an analogy to central bank printing.

Bitcoin has a lot of issues, including the fact, as Stefan points out, that it's not legal tender. It also has a lot of digital competitors waiting in the wings. Maybe one of those like LiteCoin or dare I say DogeCoin ultimately wins out, or maybe they all fail and expire worthlessly. It's an interesting experiment either way.

Jeff Sasmor writes: 

The NYT reported about Overstock.com accepting Bitcoin.

Stefan Jovanovich writes: 

Details, details. Here is the link on Overstock's web site for the search results for "Bitcoin".

A guide to using Bitcoin.

What is amusing is that the price for the book is itself in dollars.

When the printing press was developed by Gutenberg, its first popular use was for the printing of indulgences. The Papal State needed the money for its military budget and the minor detail of paying for the beginning work on the new St. Peter's Basilica. Luther gets all the press for the Reformation; what is not mentioned are the effects of the invention of printing by typesetting having reduced the cost of producing an indulgence 1000-fold. For an indulgence to be real - something that you could literally take with you when you died - there had to be a document. The printing press was able to do in a morning what usually took a scribe a month. The boom in the buying and selling of indulgences that followed was spectacular. What came next was the bust; entrepreneurs (mostly minor nobles who were themselves members of the clergy or had relatives who were) started producing indulgences that had not been approved by Tetzel. When buyers questioned those documents, they were told that these indulgences were the "real" ones, not the ones produced by that fraud Tetzel. A great deal of the violence of the earlier rounds of the religious wars came from the mobs of the people who felt they had been defrauded or feared they would be.


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