Bitcoin Education

Bitcoin Economist Saifedean Ammous Rips ‘Relics of the 20th Century’

Christina Comben | Dec 17, 2018 | 20:00

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What happens when you gather together a bunch of staunch, skeptical, middle-aged financial capitalists with a feisty, quick-witted Bitcoin economist like Saifedean Ammous? A whole bunch of sparks starts to fly.

If you do nothing else today, take the time to watch the below video in which author of the Bitcoin Standard, Saifedean Ammous, rips into The Spectator’s Business Editor Martin Vander Weyer.

Vander Weyer opens up the panel in a typically condescending manner, saying how good it is to be joining a “cult” meeting in the temple. He then goes on to compare Bitcoin to Sir Walter Reily when he brought back his first consignment of tobacco, and how utterly bizarre the concept of rolling it up and smoking it was back then. He says:

So what, you roll it up and set fire to it? I mean in 300 or 400 years time, what you’re saying might somehow enter the real world and become the norm but right now you would have to take a couple months in an asylum… to realize how completely bonkers most of it sounds.

Bitcoin Is Only Attractive to Gamblers

Vander Weyer goes on to call Bitcoin highly volatile and says that’s why it attracts gamblers and makes it unsurprising that almost all the action is happening in North Asia–or that the pseudonym for its creator Satoshi Nakamoto is Japanese.

He highlights his 43 years in financial markets and states that Bitcoin is so like many cults and waves of delusion, greed, and risk-taking wrapped up in smart ideological language.

Bitcoin Protocol Isn’t the Same as Bitcoin Exchanges

This is where Ammous swiftly picks up the reins saying that Vander Weyer clearly hasn’t read up on the subject:

He mistakes the Bitcoin protocol for the Bitcoin exchanges. This is as silly for thinking that if your dollars get stolen from your pocket then the federal reserve has been compromised.

In an entirely poised, eloquent, and highly comical way, he goes on to explain that we are witnessing the monetization of an asset, and that is always going to be volatile.

Moreover, he calls out Vander Weyer on his “racist” statements, reminding the audience that Bitcoin is a global phenomenon and not just limited to Asia and that in just 10 years, it went from zero to 100 billion.

At this point he really gets into his stride, saying that Keynesians like Vander Weyer cannot understand how people can talk about something that isn’t the next quarterly earnings or interest rate meeting. It won’t take “300 or 400 years,” as Vander Weyer said–but he packs the punch that it may not be in his lifetime, yet the rest of us will probably still be around.

“We’ll have to deal with the consequences of what your monetary system and your overindulgent 20th century excess of credit and war and garbage has left us as a society… By God, we’re going to clean it up,” says Ammous.

There are plenty more gems of insults and namecalling as the two go back and forth in this entertaining and educational debate where two men from different worlds, ideologies, beliefs, backgrounds, and generations collide.

Bitcoin or Shitcoin

Ammous goes on to say that all altcoins are doomed to failure. He says:

“Bitcoin Cash and all other altcoins are an IQ test, and basically, if you fall for them you fail.”

Moreover, he believes that Bitcoin has a chance of succeeding where none of the others do.

The idea that Bitcoin’s rise has to be disruptive economically I think is a very big misconception. Very few people hold significant amounts of wealth in their government currency… Very few people have a lot of their percentage of wealth in cash… Bitcoin will grow one user at a time.

Vander Weyer stands firm in his belief, however, saying that even if crypto does grow, it will eventually crash. And that central banks and governments will have to intervene; completely missing the point that Ammous is trying to make.

They can’t intervene. And if all this “shitcoin complex collapses, nobody can bail people out,” he says. He then goes on to brandish Vander Weyer as a relic of the 20th century.

We’re witnessing a genuine grassroots alternative to central banking emerging… Yes, it is volatile but it works.

You can check out the previous interview with Saifedean Ammous here.

Did Saifedean Ammous win this debate? Share your opinion below? 

Images courtesy of Shutterstock