The Financial Times has the article Why bitcoin is worse than a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme

A Ponzi scheme is a zero-sum enterprise. But bitcoin is a negative-sum phenomenon that you can’t even pursue a claim against, argues Robert McCauley.

This is an even stronger opinion on Bitcoin than I have been saying myself.

The greater fool theory of “investing” certainly applies to Bitcoin. The idea is that when you want to cash out, there will always be a greater fool than you were who will buy your bitcoins at a price higher than what you paid.

It is amazing how some notable people cannot figure this out.Here is Glenn Greenwald as an example.

Rokfin has the video Syria is NOT a ‘police state’ and Chomsky’s health fascism.

Robert Reich has the post Psst: You want to know the truth about inflation? (It’s not what the Fed thinks it is.)

In sum, inflation isn’t driving these price increases. Corporate power is driving them.

This is what I have been saying for years, but I don’t have the credentials that Robert Reich has.

Read the article MONOPOLY POWER AND MARKET POWER IN ANTITRUST LAW.

Examination of key antitrust law opinions, however, shows that courts define ‘market power’ and ‘monopoly power’ in ways that are both vague and inconsistent. We conclude that the present level of confusion is unnecessary and results from two different but related errors: (1) the belief or suspicion that market power and monopoly power are two different concepts, when they are in fact, for antitrust purposes, qualitatively identical, and (2) the failure to recognize that anticompetitive economic power may manifest itself in two distinct ways.

ProPublica has the article The Great Inheritors: How Three Families Shielded Their Fortunes From Taxes for Generations.

In the early 1900s some of the wealthiest Americans claimed their fortunes would never last through the generations. A century of tax avoidance later, the dynasties are going strong.

This is a long article which I have not completed reading yet. The part that I have read is enough to give me an idea of how our current wealth inequality was created, and who are the people who created it.

The Guardian has the article The search is on for $50m in lost cryptocurrency after two Australian exchanges collapse.

I’ll start with a quibble.

To get to the bottom of what has happened to the cash and coins held in the accounts of ACX customers, Yeo will need to cut through a jungle of claims and counter-claims that have been playing out in court since last year.

The author of that sentence just doesn’t get the concept of a cryptocurrency. There are no physical coins. Despite the picture they show, there is no such thing as a physical Bitcoin. A Bitcoin is a concept that is recorded on a computer, but has no physical existence

Later on in the article is this quote

She believes cryptocurrencies are worse investments than the tulip bulbs that changed hands for fortunes during the tulipmania that gripped the Dutch in the 17th century, an episode in history that’s regarded as a classic example of a speculative bubble.

This is my view of cryptocurrency. Whether or not this will end in a big crash remains to be seen.

I have been retired so long that I got my Greek letters mixed up. There is Omicron Ο and omicron ο. I had forgotten about Omega Ω and omega ω.

Glenn Greenwald has a great interview Cryptocurrency and Blockchain: Liberation or Hoax? Interview with a Left-Wing Crypto Advocate.

Rumble — Influential leaders in numerous economic and technological sectors have been championing the economic and political potential of blockchain and crypto technology with increasing fervor. One of the most vocal has been Jack Dorsey, who resigned from Twitter as he devotes more focus to these tools. Many on the right view it as a tool of liberation. Many on the left are already opposed. Many are still learning what all this means. But today we speak with the Blockchain Socialist who argues that this technology frees individuals and movements from the tyranny of the state and Big Tech.

From a MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) perspective, the one thing that has always bothered me about crypto-currency is that there is nothing that gives a bitcoin,say, a value the way a country’s currency gets a value. For over 6,000 years of history, every currency that MMT has studied gets its value because the power that creates the currency can insist that you pay a tax in that currency. The examples of crypto-currency we see now have no ability to impose a tax, yet people value each different type of crypto-currency. Either crypto-currency will eventually collapse like the tulip-bulb mania did in history, or MMT will have to come up with another explanation about how crypto-currency gets its value.

This interview has got me thinking about alternatives to reconciling MMT and crypto-currency.