[Cryptography] Krugman blockchain currency skepticism

[John Levine]

In article <b2a201ad-62df-d573-27a1-2d3a79cdd714 at huitema.net> you write:
>Basically, there is no intrinsic value for a Bitcoin. It is purely what
>people want to pay for it, and if too few people wanted to buy it the
>value could drop to zero, because it is not tethered to anything.

Bitcoins only exist as long as there is an incentive for people to
mine them, and there are enough miners that users believe that the
miners aren't colluding and the ledger isn't being tampered with.

This means that unlike gold, if Bitcoin's value dropped to zero, the
Bitcoins would disappear.  We can argue how likely this is to happen,
probably a lot more for random alt-coins than for Bitcoin or Ethereum,
but it reminds us how fragile the edifice is.

R's,
John

PS: Krugman and I were college roommates but it's been a while since
we've been in touch.