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Nassim Taleb, Erstwhile Bitcoin Admirer, Publishes Paper Trashing It
Bitcoin "can be neither a long or short term store of value (its expected value is no higher than 0)," writes the "Black Swan" author.
Nassim Taleb, the author of several well-regarded books on finance and risk and a onetime bitcoin fan, has published a draft paper explaining his recent 180 about the asset.
"[I]n spite of the hype, bitcoin failed to satisfy the notion of 'currency without government' (it proved to not even be a currency at all)," the self-described flaneur writes in "Bitcoin, Currencies and Bubbles," posted on his blog Sunday.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Bitcoin "can be neither a long or short term store of value (its expected value is no higher than 0), cannot operate as a reliable inflation hedge, and, worst of all, does not constitute, not even remotely, a tail protection vehicle for catastrophic episodes," Taleb goes on, with characteristic assertiveness.
It's a far cry from 2017, when Taleb wrote the foreword to "The Bitcoin Standard," economist Saifedean Ammous' book that made the case for the digital asset as a new form of sound money.
Bitcoin, Taleb wrote then, is "an excellent idea. It fulfills the needs of the complex system ... because it has no owner, no authority that can decide on its fate. It is owned by the crowd, its users. And it now has a track record of several years, enough for it to be an animal in its own right."
Taleb has since had a very public falling-out with Ammous, deleted his Medium post that contained the foreword and made his tweets private, meaning if you are not among the 743,000 people who already followed him on Twitter, you will now need his permission to see his posts. A new edition of Ammous' book is forthcoming with a foreword by MicroStrategy CEO and bitcoin bull Michael Saylor replacing Taleb's.
Contacted by CoinDesk Monday, Ammous, who can be as acerbic as Taleb, offered a two-word response to his erstwhile colleague's paper: "CRY HARDER."
Readers may judge Taleb's arguments for themselves by reading his full draft paper below.
"Bitcoin Currencies and Bubbles" by Nassim Taleb by CoinDesk on Scribd
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Marc Hochstein
As Deputy Editor-in-Chief for Features, Opinion, Ethics and Standards, Marc oversees CoinDesk's long-form content, sets editorial policies and acts as the ombudsman for our industry-leading newsroom. He is also spearheading our nascent coverage of prediction markets and helps compile The Node, our daily email newsletter rounding up the biggest stories in crypto. From November 2022 to June 2024 Marc was the Executive Editor of Consensus, CoinDesk's flagship annual event. He joined CoinDesk in 2017 as a managing editor and has steadily added responsibilities over the years. Marc is a veteran journalist with more than 25 years' experience, including 17 years at the trade publication American Banker, the last three as editor-in-chief, where he was responsible for some of the earliest mainstream news coverage of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. DISCLOSURE: Marc holds BTC above CoinDesk's disclosure threshold of $1,000; marginal amounts of ETH, SOL, XMR, ZEC, MATIC and EGIRL; an Urbit planet (~fodrex-malmev); two ENS domain names (MarcHochstein.eth and MarcusHNYC.eth); and NFTs from the Oekaki (pictured), Lil Skribblers, SSRWives, and Gwar collections.
