By
Steve Muchoki
April 19th, 2024
Today we can observe a dramatic shift in Taleb’s position from what he had in 2017.
Former Bitcoin supporter Nassim Taleb has written a draft paper detailing his reasons for changing his stance on the leading cryptocurrency. Taleb, a statistical mathematician and risk analyst is also an accomplished author, having published several books on finance and risk. Some of his most notable works are “Black Swan,” “Antifragile” and “Skin in the Game”.
In the draft paper, titled “Bitcoin, Currencies and Bubbles” and posted on his blog, Taleb writes:
“[I]n spite of the hype, Bitcoin failed to satisfy the notion of ‘currency without government’ (it proved to not even be a currency at all). [It] can be neither a long or short term store of value (its expected value is no higher than 0), cannot operate as a reliable inflation hedge, and, worst of all, does not constitute, not even remotely, a tail protection vehicle for catastrophic episodes.”
This is a dramatic shift from his position in 2017 when he penned the foreword to economist and educator Dr Saifedean Ammous’ book “The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking”. The book provided a ‘historical context to the rise of the first crypto currency’ and discusses its possible implications. It also argued for the use of bitcoin as sound money.
With regard to Bitcoin, Taleb wrote in the foreword:
“[it is] an excellent idea. It fulfills the needs of the complex system […] because it has no owner, no authority that can decide on its fate. It is owned by the crowd, its users. And it now has a track record of several years, enough for it to be an animal in its own right.”
After falling out with Ammous, Taleb has gone on to delete a post on Medium that had the foreword. He has also limited his Twitter audience by making his tweets private.
Ammous, on the other hand, is set to put out a new edition of the book in which Taleb’s foreword is replaced with MicroStrategy CEO and Bitcoin enthusiast Michael Saylor‘s.
CoinDesk reports that in response to their request for comment on the draft paper on Monday, Ammous’ brief response was: “CRY HARDER.”