Monday, April 8, 2013

Two more comments on wild and wooly markets


  1. Intrade and Bitcoin are two entirely different markets, with little in common beyond operating on the web and more or less separately from the more conventional financial markets.  I don't mean to imply anything more than that by mentioning them in the same post.
  2. Much of the recent excitement about Bitcoin has been due to its value increasing sharply lately.  Its value, that is, in dollars.  Just sayin'.

1 comment:

earl said...

I just today heard on NPR an economist discussing seriously (though not approvingly) the possibility of a return to the gold standard: http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=175950416&m=176572459.

I was surprised that he didn't note that most of the value of gold is not intrinsic, but more like the value of baseball cards or 1947 Hudson automobiles. Though gold makes pretty jewelry and very good teeth, as a basis for an economy it's worth a great deal less than Rand Paul imagines. The value of gold and the value of the dollar are what people agree they are.

Of course if their "value" is defined in terms of each other, it does get a little weird.