crypto pundits and gold fans, like. Let's hope this message is heard

Michael Glenn


Von Mises holds tremendous sway with crypto pundits and gold fans, like. Let's hope this message is heard.

Why Cryptocurrencies Will Never Be Safe Havens

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200 COMMENTS
08/14/2017

Mark Spitznagel

Every further new high in the price of Bitcoin brings ever more claims that it is destined to become the preeminent safe haven investment of the modern age — the new gold.
But there’s no getting around the fact that Bitcoin is essentially a speculative investment in a new technology, specifically the blockchain. Think of the blockchain, very basically, as layers of independent electronic security that encapsulate a cryptocurrency and keep it frozen in time and space — like layers of amber around a fly. This is what makes a cryptocurrency “crypto.”
That’s not to say that the price of Bitcoin cannot make further (and further…) new highs. After all, that is what speculative bubbles do (until they don’t).
Bitcoin and each new initial coin offering (ICO) should be thought of as software infrastructure innovation tools, not competing currencies. It’s the amber that determines their value, not the flies. Cryptocurrencies are a very significant value-added technological innovation that calls directly into question the government monopoly over money. This insurrection against government-manipulated fiat money will only grow more pronounced as cryptocurrencies catch on as transactional fiduciary media; at that point, who will need government money? The blockchain, though still in its infancy, is a really big deal.
While governments can’t control cryptocurrencies directly, why shouldn’t we expect cryptocurrencies to face the same fate as what started happening to numbered Swiss bank accounts (whose secrecy remain legally enforced by Swiss law)? All local governments had to do was make it illegal to hide, and thus force law-abiding citizens to become criminals if they fail to disclose such accounts. We should expect similar anti-money laundering hygiene and taxation among the cryptocurrencies. The more electronic security layers inherent in a cryptocurrency’s perceived value, the more vulnerable its price is to such an eventual decree.
Bitcoins should be regarded as assets, or really equities, not as currencies. They are each little business plans — each perceived to create future value. They are not stores-of-value, but rather volatile expectations on the future success of these business plans. But most ICOs probably don’t have viable business plans; they are truly castles in the sky, relying only on momentum effects among the growing herd of crypto-investors. (The Securities and Exchange Commission is correct in looking at them as equities.) Thus, we should expect their current value to be derived by the same razor-thin equity risk premiums and bubbly growth expectations that we see throughout markets today. And we should expect that value to suffer the same fate as occurs at the end of every speculative bubble.
If you wanted to create your own private country with your own currency, no matter how safe you were from outside invaders, you’d be wise to start with some pre-existing store-of-value, such as a foreign currency, gold, or land. Otherwise, why would anyone trade for your new currency? Arbitrarily assigning a store-of-value component to a cryptocurrency, no matter how secure it is, is trying to do the same thing (except much easier than starting a new country). And somehow it’s been working.
Moreover, as competing cryptocurrencies are created, whether for specific applications (such as automating contracts, for instance), these ICOs seem to have the effect of driving up all cryptocurrencies. Clearly, there is the potential for additional cryptocurrencies to bolster the transactional value of each other—perhaps even adding to the fungibility of all cryptocurrencies. But as various cryptocurrencies start competing with each other, they will not be additive in value. The technology, like new innovations, can, in fact, create some value from thin air. But not so any underlying store-of-value component in the cryptocurrencies. As a new cryptocurrency is assigned units of a store-of-value, those units must, by necessity, leave other stores-of-value, whether gold or another cryptocurrency. New depositories of value must siphon off the existing depositories of value. On a global scale, it is very much a zero sum game.
Or, as we might say, we can improve the layers of amber, but we can’t create more flies.
This competition, both in the technology and the underlying store-of-value, must, by definition, constrain each specific cryptocurrency’s price appreciation. Put simply, cryptocurrencies have an enormous scarcity problem. The constraints on any one cryptocurrency’s supply are an enormous improvement over the lack of any constraint whatsoever on governments when it comes to printing currencies. However, unlike physical assets such as gold and silver that have unique physical attributes endowing them with monetary importance for millennia, the problem is that there is no barrier to entry for cryptocurrencies; as each new competing cryptocurrency finds success, it dilutes or inflates the universe of the others.
The store-of-value component of cryptocurrencies — which is, at a bare-minimum, a fundamental requirement for safe haven status — is a minuscule part of its value and appreciation. After all, stores of value are just that: stable and reliable holding places of value. They do not create new value, but are finite in supply and are merely intended to hold value that has already been created through savings and productive investment. To miss this point is to perpetuate the very same fallacy that global central banks blindly follow today. You simply cannot create money, or capital, from thin air (whether it be credit or a new cool cryptocurrency). Rather, it represents resources that have been created and saved for future consumption. There is simply no way around this fundamental truth.
Viewing cryptocurrencies as having safe haven status opens investors to layering more risk on their portfolios. Holding Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies likely constitutes a bigger bet on the same central bank-driven bubble that some hope to protect themselves against. The great irony is that both the libertarian supporters of cryptocurrencies and the interventionist supporters of central bank-manipulated fiat money both fall for this very same fallacy.
Cryptocurrencies are a very important development, and an enormous step in the direction toward the decentralization of monetary power. This has enormously positive potential, and I am a big cheerleader for their success. But caveat emptor—thinking that we are magically creating new stores-of-value and thus a new safe haven is a profound mistake.
Mark Spitznagel is Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Universa Investments. Spitznagel is the author of The Dao of Capital, and was the Senior Economic Advisor to U.S. Senator Rand Paul.


https://mises.org/blog/why-cryptocurrencies-will-never-be-safe-havens





Von Mises
Damn I didnt get the memo. I have owned bitcoin for near 2 years.

Michael Glenn
Good time to sell. My take is that crypto, overall, does not have the symbiotic relationship that gold has in order to act as a debt displacing agent to bring economic balance to the macro model of all currency in circulation.

We need some yang with our existing yin !!!

The USD has been courting gold to the alter of debt-free, real-time trades since Bretton Woods kicked off in 1944.

Gold is the bride to be, from all accounts.


Von Mises
Certainly a good price atm. I have them gold and silver as my alternate currencies. Particularly like silver.

Michael Glenn
Von Mises liquidity is key and gold is the slightly better monetary metal, besides gold can now be market monetized and distributed as a gold backed market currency , by consumers, P2P.

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Susan Lynne Schwenger
what happens if gold goes so high in value, it can NOT be used or, it gets outlawed as a method of store ?


Susan Lynne Schwenger
like swiss accounts where made to be illegal to have ? could gov'ts make this illegal too ?
Michael Glenn
There is no incentive for gold to be messed with on the part of the US government or the Fed. They built the very stage (at Bretton Woods) that now makes it possible for gold to be market monetized and circulated by consumers, bottom-up.

The circulation of gold currency saves the fiat currency paradigm (the dark side) as it supports real economy. Debt can then be safely purged and destroyed, thus strengthening all fiat currencies , which also get new jobs as real-time price measures for gold based transactions. The USD gets the biggest benefit as being the "measure of measures" and the only price tool for gold, which was developed in 1944.

Who needs a petro-dollar now when the dollar can measure gold instead of oil. ??? Just gotta put the gold in circulation.... that's all.

We need some Yang with our existing Yin. Just add assets .... and stir.


Shane Maness
How does the regression theorum apply to cryptocurrencies?

Michael Glenn
The only utility value any currency can have in the real economy is by circulation.
If they don't circulate, they are useless to economic activity and wheel greasing.

The crypto sector has an enormous challenge
because it doesn't dovetail with the global price model as created by central banks.

The global price model is what now supports debt-free trades by way of real-time price comparisons.