I made a mistake. I took Publish0x, and the Crypto community's open-mindedness for granted. It's amusing to see the stark contrast between the communities on platforms such as PUBLISH0X and r/economics (apparently know-it-all amateur Reddit 'Economists'). Notice the deliberate unwillingness to deem them actual Economists. Well can you blame me when to a post titled "What makes Bitcoin a better store of value than the Dollar?" this is the sort of response:
Artificially create something to digitally do what gold has done for centuries, form a cult of hip people to say it's hip and only boomers buy gold, convince Libertarian's it is the gateway to liberty despite the fact that everyone knows regulation will destroy any privacy in transactions, sell for massive profits in USD and exit the cult. That's your bitcoin.
I cannot begin to explain how triggered this got me, but I do not have the time to be a keyboard warrior. No, what would be the point in that? Instead I can share it with you all so we can all laugh at ignorance together.
The fallacies I came across
Ah where do we begin... I think it would be natural to start with why the argument posed is inherently flawed. By that I do not mean the ways in which we can negate the opinion (no, no, no... to grant this the title of a valid argument in the first place would do it too much of an honour). Rather, I will highlight the fallacies in logical structure. If you do not know what a fallacy is, there is a great resource I have linked to the bottom of this page. Let's begin:
False Dichotomy
"...everyone knows regulation will destroy any privacy..."
Will it, boomer, will it? When you have to stoop to saying "everyone knows" something, you sure as hell are not keeping an open-mind to the possibility of something else even existing. This is what we can refer to as the false dichotomy or the false binary fallacy; when you paint something out to only be one way, or another, but rarely consider the spectrum of other possibilities.
Clearly this Redditer believes he knows the precise two paths for cryptocurrency, and instead refutes the actual Economic institutions such as Harvard Business Review and Wharton School of UPenn, which are clearly of the opinion that regulation isn't necessarily harmful for crypto. If anything, shaped in the right way, it may aid its adoption.
Ad Hominem
"... form a cult of hip people to say it's hip and only boomers buy gold, convince Libertarian's it is the gateway to liberty... "
This fallacy is the attack on the proponent, rather than the argument.
There isn't much explanation to do here when the Redditer Economists consider themselves better than the Crypto community (after all they all have degrees in Economics whereas no one in my "cult", and certainly no "libertarian" I know could possibly ever come close to their level of intellect). Sarcasm. Very much sarcasm.
No we don't believe in a cult, and certainly aren't all libertarians; there's no excuse for ignorance.
Slippery Slope
"...sell for massive profits in USD, and exit the cult..."
This is the fallacy that one thing inevitably leads to another. The Redditor commits this when he believes that the rise in price of Bitcoin and it's consequent success will somehow, under his imaginary cult hypothesis, lead to holders cashing out and exiting the "cult".
Wrong. Maybe he feels this is a cult because we believe in an optimistic future post-financial revolution that blockchain can bring about; and, we are united in this. This in itself would mean that we commit to a better version of the future so why would we cash out, when we to the core believe in this vision?
Clearly he doesn't know what "whales" are or the people that HODL. His ignorance is his bliss and his assumptions are our poison. I will not have it.
And more...
I sincerely encourage everyone to go over what fallacies are so the next time you have to explain your love for this industry, or even your investment decisions, you won't have to come across the want-to-be economist and be left wondering what you said wrong...
Inability to distinguish "store of value" from currency
Okay so they want to argue on Economic grounds, and yet do not know what the difference between the two is. A "store of value" is merely an asset, such as Gold, which can be deemed to maintain its value over time rather than depreciating whilst a currency is inherently transactable "stores of value". Essentially, every currency is a store of value, but every store of value is not a currency.
This does not mean that illiquid assets are worth less. No. Not at all. They can be perfectly capable of being stores of value and as far as the conversation with the Redditors hell-bent on defaming Crypto for whatever reason, went, they completely ignored this fact.
As I had to point out, "Store of value. Just like art and many assets. After all, you don't ask people on the road to buy your prized Van Gogh in exchange for some apples". Bitcoin is legitimate; they fear it because they don't understand it.
Value is Arbitrary
"Bitcoin does not have any inherent value"
That's right, value is socially constructed and the best way to approach this is to understand the context-dependence of value. As assets can change value within different contexts (see below), it cannot be claimed that anything has an exact, non-arbitrary value.
Here's a useful thought exercise:
Suppose you were stranded on a desert island with one other person. 'All' you had on your person was a gold bar. The other person had the only bottle of drinkable water. What do you think, in that economy, has higher "value"?
It didn't necessarily cost more to make the bottle nor put water in it, and yet, its worth more. They'd do well to remember this lest they be left with their precious dollar notes, worth nothing, and yet still worth exactly as much as the arbitrary value printed on it.
"Artificial"
"Bitcoin is artificial..."
At this point I had to come to explaining to them what Blockchain actually is. You see, Economics is the mechanism of allocating resources under scarcity. I had to point out that blockchain creates scarcity as they were unaware that this isn't just some money printing magic machine central bans have.
Oh but they would never call those artificial would they. At one point or another, I had to save my energy and leave with the last two brain cells I had.
I love Reddit, but it's always the least informed who are the loudest
I said it before and I'll say it here at the end again: Bitcoin is legitimate; they fear it because they do not understand it. Besides, it would've been fun if well-informed economists had shared their take on the post. However, it seems the amateurs who believe they know everything, came out to attack what they do not understand.
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