Lex Fridman
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2022–2023
4:14:41 · 807K views · May 11, 2022
A long Lex Fridman podcast conversation with Austrian economist Saifedean Ammous, author of The Bitcoin Standard. They cover Bitcoin, fiat money, anarchy and Austrian economics.
Cited as a thorough statement of the bitcoin-maximalist case, with the host pushing back.
3 comments from Hacker News
I recommend Saifedean Ammous' interview with Lex Fridman. He's got strong opinions and a somewhat dour persona, but as Lebanese-Palestinese he's lived in a very different environment than what we're used to here in the West. If you keep an open mind and understand where he's coming from, I think he's good some insightful ideas on Bitcoin and its role in economic upheaval. this video FWIW this episode turned me from a "fuck any form of crypto" stance to an appreciation of BTC the technology. All the other scam coins and Ponzi schemes can't collapse to zero soon enough.
> But "Crypto" (specifically the energy intensive kind) has a different problem, and that's that it has /massive/ externalities that it simply ignores, forcing us, the people who want nothing to do with it, to now deal with it Grossly inefficient personal transportation and industrial farming have massive externalities forcing people who want nothing to do with it to deal with it. That doesn't seem to be a concern that matters to most people. And they're exacerbating the same climate and energy issues. Public blockchain can be powered by renewable energy, using its own value to pay for it, and can harness power in areas where it is not feasible to harness that power for other purposes. Here's a podcast[1] episode with Saifedean Ammous, if you're interested in the value proposition. He claims Bitcoin actually saved his life, so obviously incredibly valuable to him. Lex does a pretty good job at pushing back on his evangelism. [1]: this video
According to one bitcoin maximalist[0] this was the real origin of fiat currency. I’m not sure I understand everything that is said nor fully believe, given that it’s a bitcoin maximalist dumping on fiat currency, but what I took away was that the english pound was redeemable for gold. When they did this fake bond purchase, they just minted new pounds (that didn’t have gold backing it) and used that to buy back these bonds in secret. This is significant because there was a fear of a bank run in England at the start of the war where everyone was afraid that this would happen. The Bank of England had to assure everyone that they wouldn’t do this to stop the bank run - and so, when they actually went ahead and did it, they kind of had to keep it secret [0]. this video