Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, and Twitter Critique

Bitcoin was not able to satisfy the notion of “currency without government” and turned out to be not a currency at all.

The phenomenon of cryptocurrencies is the result of the low-interest rate “Disneyland” economy in which we have been living for fifteen years.

The key defect and contradiction at the base of most cryptocurrencies is that initiators, miners and maintainers of the system were making money from the inflation of their currencies rather than the simple volume of the underlying transactions.

This has caused the total failure of bitcoin to become a currency, but at higher prices, generating profits (on paper) for a sufficiently large number of people.

At first, when cryptos appeared, you had people investing in them because they were making money from the inflation of their currencies.

However, as soon as cryptos lost their value, people started to invest in them because they were expecting to make money from the inflation of their currencies again.

This is what has caused the current crisis in the cryptocurrency sector.

Bitcoin transactions are considerably more visible than others, which makes it uninteresting for intelligent fraudsters.

The craze for cryptocurrencies comes from the fact that people are investing in them expecting to make money from the inflation of their currencies again.

The author is critical of the Federal Reserve's policy before and after the 2008 crisis, and believes that bitcoin was not a good bulwark against the monetary distortion caused by central banks.

He spends some time fighting on Twitter with crypto advocates, who he believes are manipulated by scammers and manipulators.

He believes that the cluster of people who are attracted to cryptos and bitcoin are filled with young people who have no experience and are likely to be deceived by scammers.

He believes that the cluster is prone to conspiracy theories, and that the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk is likely to have stimulated these beliefs.

Twitter is a mess, a mix of good and bad, with a high level of toxicity.

Twitter should be used for opinion debates, but it can also be used for false information.

Salience is a phenomenon that affects how people perceive information, and it favors the former over the latter.

Censorship remains limited to a few and unbearable trolls continue to thrive on this social network.

Twitter becomes chaotic and people spontaneously flee to networks where trade moderation is stronger.

In France, the right-wing shift translates into the rise of Eric Zemmour, who is completely xenophobic.

Bitcoin has had the same effect, it is now a magnet for idiots, a fool detector.

Christian Lebanese like me assimilate very well to the West, much better than in the East, but Zemmour makes me uncomfortable.

The French right is nationalist, centralist and in favor of the big state. It's like the opposition between Zelensky and Putin.

Recall De Gaulle saying "Maintenance will follow" (l’intendance suivra). This de facto means that the French right wants to maintain the status quo.