Patrice Riemens on Thu, 14 Dec 2017 10:17:50 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> Never Mind the Bitcoin?


On 2017-12-13 20:41, Morlock Elloi wrote:
Bitcoin successfully hijacked a sizable amount of public belief, which
underwrites any fiat currency, and it doesn't get more fiat than
Bitcoin.

This is continuation of the phenomena of machine amplification of
human activities; machines do it better and faster. Socializing, sex,
education, transport. It's just that now they are getting into more
esoteric class of activities ... beliefs. The next is probably love,
and I'd be surprised if in few years we don't get new machine-mediated
religion which will engulf the current manual ones. Now, that's the
startup worth funding!

This is not necessarily 'bad'. We are finding out what our primitives
are, uncluttered by inefficient rituals.



Just after 'shipping' I read a very good article about Zygmunt Bauman in the French monthly 'La Decroissance' (highly recommended!), and realised, of course, Bitcoin is all about 'liquid modernity'. Which may also explain why the hype lasts so long and flies so high. And may be last forever, forever being taken as till the next switch, which should not be long coming.

Our critique of Bitcoin then probaly looks like being solidly grounded in ... solid modernity.

Cheerio, p+7D!

In the Dutch weekly De Groene Amsterdammer, economist Dirk Bezemer identified the Bitcoin craze with another form of liquidity: 'liquidity preference', a concept I always found a bit hazy - but hey, I'm not Keynes ...


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