Paradocracy

Over the previous week, bitcoin has declined a full 30 percent, marking a 78-percent decline from its peak back on December 17, 2017.  This hasn't kept the bitcoin bulls and hodlers from trying to sound smart. Faux crypto advisors still abound on YouTube , conducting spurious technical analyses and setting target buy-in prices for a speculative risk asset that is primarily owned and manipulated by a narrow segment of the population, that is visibly non-correlated against market developments, and that plainly lacks sufficient trading history and stability to support such public claims which serve exclusively as a platform for fame-hungry YouTubers to get in on the prediction front so they can look smart if the crypto asset, or cryptocurrency, trades accordingly.  Meanwhile, these talking heads have absolutely no idea about the asset's utility value, yet they stake claims about target levels which essentially operate from the yet-untested assumption of utility.  Mo...

In a 2017 interview with Fox Business, venture capitalist Peter Thiel identified bitcoin (XBT) as the "cyber equivalent to gold ."  While talk of this comparison has endured for just about as long as the cryptocurrency itself, Thiel's statement showcases more acutely just how highly imaginative and seductive the mental gymnastics have become: not only have successful entrepreneurs  bought into its functionality, they have also endorsed a comparison between one asset that is usable in and of itself, absent trade, and another whose usability stems exclusively from its tradability. Gold and silver are valuable not strictly because they require strenuous work to be extracted from the earth, but because of the valuable properties they present.  It's their unique set of properties that first makes gold and silver worth the effort, both of which operate from a "proof of utility" instead of some measly "proof of work."  The assignment of value ope...

In a recently-published video , a popular YouTuber strikes the ironic claim that there ought to be additional laws to protect his interests while he is admittedly speeding. He understandably denounces the use of retreads after his caravan of exotic cars is impacted by one as they roar down the highway.  For those readers who are unfamiliar with tire retreads, also known as recaps or remolds , they are a relatively-inexpensive re-manufacturing process for replacing treads on worn tires. They are commonly used on transport vehicles around the world for their enormous cost savings, a function of considerable material savings and even significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the total of which incidentally results in the minimization of environmental impact and the physical waste that ends up in landfills.  Notwithstanding this thread of logic, some impassioned drivers follow their emotions to the untested and wholly-unexamined conclusion that the world would b...