Economics: Why Outlawing Bitcoin Is A Stupid Idea

(Drivebycuriosity) - Even Nobel Prize winners have sometimes stupid ideas. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said "bitcoin ought to be outlawed" (bloomberg). He added "bitcoin is successful only because of its potential for circumvention, lack of oversight". I think outlawing bitcoin is just stupid. I won´t touch it, but I understand that people have fun with it - and why not.

Early buyers became rich. Since the start in 2010 the price bitcoin climbed from 1 cent to $11,000. (bloomberg). No one who is still holding bitcoins lost any money so far. It might crash some days, but so can stocks and real estate. People can lose money with many things, why not with bitcoin? Bitcoin is not comparable to stocks which give investors a stake in a company and it is not a currency (I explained that here driveby). But bitcoin is a software which might have many other useful functions and it is a highly speculative asset, which makes it perfectly suitable for gambling. Nobody else gets hurt when people put their own money on risky bets - they do it all the time in casinos.

Stiglitz is just one of these old school socialists who despise markets and don`t understand them. Stiglitz - and his kind - want that the government regulates and controls everything. The modern world doesn`t need to follow the playbook by Lenin and his devotees.