Tyler Cowen: observation

Transcript context

…Ooh, great question. I don’t think so. I’m very critical of cryptocurrency in general. I’m very skeptical about it, and I think it’s often just a vehicle for fraud. Is cryptocurrency really a currency? Do people really use it the way they use dollars and euros and other currencies? There are transactions that take place. There’s a lot of gray-market, black-market transactions, but the point is they could. It’s a kind of proof by existence. You can have an asset that’s fully market based. We definitely have cases of cryptocurrency-disappearing frauds and the like. Among cryptocurrency users, there is a common agreement that discounts for some things. Can that be sustained as a social phenomenon outside some niche users? Particularly, I think it really does matter that so much of the use of the currency, as currency, is happening outside the political system. A lot of the stuff that’s happening there is illegal. We’re talking about nongovernmental activity. To me, the experience with cryptocurrency points in the other direction, that you need some political management of this stuff for it to have real meaning. Otherwise, it’s a fleeting and not particularly useful medium.…

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