Crypto Mania – Why “It Is Currently Rational To Be Irrational”

Following JP Morgan CEO, Jamie Dimon’s, now infamous rant about Bitcoin being a fraud, a great product for criminals and having no value, Adam Ludwin, CEO of Chain.com, wrote ‘A Letter to Jamie Dimon’, which received some coverage in the financial media for its balanced discussion regarding the outlook for cryptocurrencies.
In his letter, Ludwin noted…
In short: there’s a lot of noise. But there is also signal.
To find it, we need to start by defining cryptocurrency. Without a working definition we are lost. Most people arguing about cryptocurrencies are talking past each other because they don’t stop to ask the other side what they think cryptocurrencies are for.
Here’s my definition: cryptocurrencies are a new asset class that enable decentralized applications. If this is true, your (Jamie Dimon’s) point of view on cryptocurrencies has very little to do with what you think about them in comparison to traditional currencies or securities, and everything to do with your opinion of decentralized applications and their value relative to current software models. Don’t have an opinion on decentralized applications? Then you can’t possibly have one on cryptocurrencies yet… And since this isn’t about cryptocurrencies vs. fiat currencies let’s stop using the word currency. It’s a head fake. It has way too much baggage and I notice that when you talk about Bitcoin in public you keep comparing it to the Dollar, Euro, and Yen. That comparison won’t help you understand what’s going on. In fact, it’s getting in the way.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Oct 31, 2017.