Nobel Prize winners’ “cultural” Bitcoin commentary strikes at the core of BTC

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Longtime cryptocurrency critic and Nobel laureate in economics, Paul Krugman (Paul Krugman) stated in a series of tweets on Wednesday that Bitcoin (Bitcoin) Can survive indefinitely, but only as a fundamentally useless cult.

Krugman’s harsh remarks were in response to Wednesday’s market crash, which caused many tokens to lose nearly 50% of their value, and caused nearly $1 trillion in value to deviate from global market value, and then rebounded, making part of it. Fall back.

“I didn’t write much about Bitcoin because I didn’t have any basic knowledge to discuss,” Tweet Krugman wrote about Bitcoin in his New York Times blog as early as 2013, calling it Bitcoin. “evil” then.

“Bitcoin is not a new innovation; it has been around since 2009, and no one seems to have found any good legal uses for it during this time. It is not a convenient means of communication; it is not a stable store of value ; This is definitely not an account unit,” carry on Krugman looks at two use cases commonly attributed to Bitcoin: a payment method and a store of value.

Although faithful cryptographers may quickly defend Bitcoin from any and all attacks (perceived or real), Krugman criticizes many in the cryptocurrency field, arguing that it has been due to misunderstanding and misleading development decisions in recent years. It hinders the utility of Bitcoin.

For example, the average transaction fee of Bitcoin rose to $62.77 in late April. This is a single statistic that caused Bitcoin’s reputation as an everyday currency to disappear before our eyes.This is mainly because Bitcoin block size Although it has higher transaction throughput, it is still limited to 1MB (third-party applications will increase this number).

The block size debate caused a rift in the Bitcoin community in 2017 and saw a large faction split to form Bitcoin Cash (Biosafety Information Clearing House). Bitcoin Cash Increase the block size of the basic protocol to 8MB and then to 32MB to realize the vision of peer-to-peer electronic cash proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto in the original white paper.

Bitcoin developers refused to increase the block size, and there followed a narrative shift in which Bitcoin was renamed “Digital Gold” -A store of value, not something used as a transaction currency. The reason why this transfer is considered necessary is that increasing the block size to contain more transactions will mean that the blockchain will become larger, and over time, node operators will require more hard disk space .

Those who oppose the vision of digital gold believe that hard disk space is getting cheaper every day, and it will not pose an obstacle to possible miners or node operators.Indeed, since 2015 alone, the average cost per GB of hard drive space fall down From $0.038 to the current price of $0.021 witnessed at the time of release.This 400GB The Bitcoin blockchain can hold 25 times as many consumer hard drives and is currently available for purchase Approximately $200.

Although analysts claim that Bitcoin will eventually find price stability at some point in the future, that day has yet to come.recent Price fluctuations This is clearly reminded, Large amount of bitcoin Conduct centralized transactions, such as whales Constantly looking for capital According to market fluctuations.

Krugman said that the perceived value of Bitcoin lies in the illusion of it, which is a technical solution to the impending collapse of the legal system, which he considers to be a libertarian stupidity.

Krugman said: “Its value is that people think that this is a technical means to protect themselves from the inevitable collapse of fiat currency. This is one of the current era, or perhaps one of the centuries.” Say, And added: “Or, as I said, it’s the liberal Delp plus technical quirks.”

Krugman performed a week-long theatrical performance in the cryptocurrency field by extending the thorny olive branch to the Bitcoin crowd. Krugman believes that the longevity of Bitcoin is guaranteed, but this is only because new members will continue to be recruited as a “cult”.

“But I have given up the prediction of imminent death. There always seems to be a new group of believers. Maybe it’s just a cult that can survive indefinitely,” he Say.