From: Vincenzo lozzo Sent: Friday, July 18, 2014 9:34 PM To: jeffrey E. Subject: Re: "Money is not money" cool, I'll buy it On 18/lug/2014, at 17:32, jeffrey E. <[email protected]> wrote: > yes, read the autobigraphy of money > On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 3:25 PM, Vincenzo lozzo arote: > I thought a bit about this. Let me see if I understand what that =entence means: > Money has no intrinsic value (even when it was linked to gold, the =ntrinsic value was debatable) , fundamentally the value is given by two =hings: > 1) Wide acceptance as an exchange medium > 2) Trust in the country that prints the currency > On top of that there's a lot of anchoring and other cognitive biases =hat cause the currency to oscillate in value. > So in a way, money is a very simplified legal contract between =ultiple parties that is ultimately both enforced and backed by a =ation-state (the 'trust' in the nation-state acts as the collateral). > Is this what you meant? > If that's the case there are a few interesting consequences: > 1) Paradoxically Bitcoin has more intrinsic value than nation-state > =acked currencies. That is because mining bitcoins require natural > =esources that are limited&useful and hence valuable > 2) In this game (and I think by extension in the stock market game as > =ell) deception plays a significant role. You can make a currency > swing =f you can mess with the cognitive biases involved in the > valuation of =he currency > 3) At any given point in time you could replace any currency with =omething else as long as you can convince people that that something =Ise is both backed and enforced by a 'greater force' (in the bitcoin =ase, that would be cryptography). The easier it is to explain the =greater force' the easier the adoption of that 'something else' > Now one obvious way to make money out of this would be to play the =eception/cognitive bias game. I think a lot of that is made illegal by =he various law against market mani