1
Bitcoin, Currencies, and Fragility
Nassim Nicholas Taleb† ‡
† Universa Investments
‡ Tandon School of Engineering, New York University
Forthcoming, Quantitative Finance
A technology should be judged in how it solves recognized problems, not by its technical appeal.
BTC Volatility 2013-2021
I NTRODUCTION /A BSTRACT 1.2
This discussion applies quantitative finance methods
and economic arguments to cryptocurrencies in general 1.0
and bitcoin in particular —as there are about 10, 000
0.8
cryptocurrencies, we focus (unless otherwise specified)
on the most discussed crypto of those that claim to hew
0.6
to the original protocol [1] and the one with, by far, the
largest market capitalization.
0.4
In its current version, in spite of the hype, bitcoin
failed to satisfy the notion of "currency without govern- 0.2
ment" (it proved to not even be a currency at all), can be
neither a short nor long term store of value (its expected 0.0
value is no higher than 0), cannot operate as a reliable 2016 2018 2020
inflation hedge, and, worst of all, does not constitute,
not even remotely, a safe haven for one’s investments, Fig. 1. BTC return, 3 months annualized volatility. It does not seem to drop
over time.
a shield against government tyranny, or a tail protection BTC Capitalization Volatility 2013-2021
vehicle for catastrophic episodes. 1 × 1012
Furthermore, bitcoin promoters appear to conflate the
success of a payment mechanism (as a decentralized
8 × 1011
mode of exchange), which so far has failed, with the
speculative variations in the price of a zero-sum maxi-
6 × 1011
mally fragile asset with massive negative externalities.
Going through monetary history, we show how a true
numeraire must be one of minimum variance with respect 4 × 1011
to an arbitrary basket of goods and services, how gold
and silver lost their inflation hedge status during the Hunt 2 × 1011
brothers squeeze in the late 1970s and what would be
required from a true inflation hedged store of value. 0
2016 2018 2020
Fig. 2. Too volatile to fail? We show the volatility of the capitalization of
T HE B LOCKCHAIN BTC. At higher levels of capitalization, return volatility compounds. In 2021
a swing of half a trillion dollars in the capitalization of bitcoin took place.
First, let us consider what cryptocurrencies do by examining
the notion of blockchain and its intellectual and mathematical
appeal.
The concept behind such a chain is quite intuitive to pseudorandom variables via some forms of chained nonlinear
early practitioners of quantitative finance. Consider that be- transformations, in the spirit of Von Neumann’s original idea
fore efficient software for Monte Carlo simulations became [2]. Indexing sequences by t = 1, 2, . . . n, with a seed at
widely available, some of us were using methods to generate t, a variable xt on the real line generates via nonlinear
transformations r : R → R, an output variable r(xt ).
NNT1@nyu.edu This output variable can serve as a pseudorandom seed to
The author thanks Gur Huberman, Mark Spitznagel, Brandon Yarkin, Arthur generate another pseudorandom variable, r(xt+1 ). For all
Breitman, Trishank Karthik Kuppusamy, Jim Gatheral, Joe Norman, Zhuo
Xi, David Boxenhorn, Antonis Polemitis, Joe Shipman, and others for useful t, knowledge of r(Xt ) allows knowledge of all subsequent
discussions. variables r(xτ )τ >t and replication of the entire sequence, thus
2
probabilistically mimicking the arrow of time. It is also crucial to concentration2 . Furthermore, by the very nature of the
that the same seed produces exactly the same pseudorandom blockchain, transactions are irreversible, no matter the reason.
variable, allowing verification of sequence, but disallowing Finally, note that bitcoins are zero-sum by virtue of the
easy reverse engineering. numerus clausus.
What the blockchain added, thanks to the hash function, As we will see, mathematical and combinatorial qualities
is the condition that r(.) must be functionally and proba- do not necessarily translate into financial benefits at either
bilistically bijective: no two seeds should produce the same individual or systemic levels.
output (or should produce a vanishingly low probability of that
happening), what, in computer science terminology, is called Comment 1: Why BTC is worth exactly 0
collision.
Gold and other precious metals are largely maintenance
This hard-wired attribute and absence of supervision of the
free, do not degrade over an historical horizon, and
blockchain allow the storage of activities on a public ledger to
do not require maintenance to refresh their physical
facilitate peer-to-peer commerce, transactions, and settlements.
properties over time.
The blockchain concept also allows for serial record keeping.
Cryptocurrencies require a sustained amount of inter-
This is supposed to help create what the original white paper
est in them.
[1] described as:
A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash
would allow online payments to be sent directly V ULNERABILITY OF REVENUE - FREE BUBBLES
from one party to another without going through a A central result (even principle) in the rational expectations
financial institution. and securities pricing literature is that, thanks to the law of
iterated expectations, if we expect now that we will expect the
From that paper, bitcoin makes use of three existing tech-
price to vary at some point in the future, then by backward
nologies: 1) the hash function, 2) the Merkle tree (to chain
induction such a variation must be incorporated in the price
blocks of transactions tagged by the hash function), and 3) the
now. When there are no dividends, as with growth companies,
concept of proof of work (used to deter spam by forcing agents
there is still an expectation of future earnings, and a future
to use computer time in order to qualify for a transaction)
expected reward to stockholders — directly via dividends, or
— technologies that, ironically, all came out of the academic
indirectly via reverse dilutions and buybacks. It remains that
literature[3]1 . The idea provides a game theoretic approach to
a stock is a claim on accumulated assets and their residual
mitigate the effects of the absence of custodian and lack of
value.
trust between participants in the maintenance of a permanent
Earnings-free assets with no residual value are problematic.
shared public ledger — attenuating or circumventing the coor-
The implication is that, owing to the absence of any explicit
dination quandary known as the "Byzantine general problem".
yield benefitting the holder of bitcoin, if we expect that at
The bitcoin transactional currency (BTC) system establishes any point in the future the value will be zero when miners are
an adversarial collaboration between the so-called "miners" extinct, the technology becomes obsolete, or future generations
who validate transactions by getting them on a public ledger; get into other such "assets" and bitcoin loses its appeal for
as a reward they get coins plus a fee from the underlying them, then the value must be zero now3 .
transactions, transfers of coins between parties. The proof The typical comparison of bitcoin to gold is lacking in
of work method has an adjustable degree of difficulty based elementary financial rigor4 . We will see below how precious
on the speed of blocks, which aims, in theory, to keep the metals lost their quality as a medium of exchange; gold and
incentive sufficiently high for miners to keep operating the
2 From public data, we were able to verify that the distribution of holdings
system. Such adjustments lead to an exponential increase in
computer power requirements, making at the time of writing of bitcoin follows a powerlaw with tail index ≈ 54 , no different from the
distribution of wealth in the U.S.
onerous energy demands on the system — energy that could 3 Using a traditional rational bubble model (see [4] and the review by
find alternatives in other computational and scientific uses. [5]), we get the following conditions. Let rd be a discount rate and π be
a probability of absorption over a period. To escape the barrier, bitcoin must
Miners derive their compensation from both seignorage grow at er+π forever, but no more, without remission, and with total certainty.
(the market value of a bitcoin minus its mining costs) and Should it grow then stabilize, it still would be prone to extinction. We note
transaction fees upon validation — with the plan to switch that traditionally, models rule out any continuous growth at an exponential rate
faster than r + π because the security or asset would then represent the entire
to transaction fees as the sole revenues upon the eventual economy. Bitcoin distinguishes itself from other assets because of its fragility
depletion of the coins, which are limited to a fixed number. as a mere book entry on a virtual ledger that requires constant refreshing ad
A central attribute is that bitcoin depends on the existence infinitum.
4 It is also a reasoning error to claim that an innovation, bitcoin, can become
of such miners for perpetuity. the "new gold" ab ovo, when gold wasn’t decided to be so by fiat thanks
Note that the entire ideological basis behind bitcoin is to a white paper; it organically became a reserve asset ex post, through
complete distrust of other operators — there are no par- centuries of competitive selection against other modes of storage, payment,
and collectibles. Gold elicited an aesthetic fascination and had been used as
tial custodians; the system is fully distributed, though prone jewelry and store of value for more than two millennia before it became,
literally, a currency or before there was such a thing as a currency. The
Phoenicians used it as store of value because there was demand for it, and it
1 As this discussion is focused on proof of work, we exclude from it was not until the 6th C. BCE that coins from Sardis became a widespread
Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. means of exchange [6].
3
other dividend-free precious items (such as other metals or a numeraire from which other goods could be priced. But
stones) have held some financial status for more than 6, 000 currently it is not, as we will see next.
years, and their physical status for several orders of magnitude
longer (i.e., they did not degrade or mutate into some other S UCCESS IN WRONG PLACES
alloy or mineral). So one can expect one’s gold or silver
More generally, the fundamental flaw and contradiction at
possessions to be around physically for at least the next
the base of most cryptocurrencies is, as we saw, that the
millennium, as well as having some residual economic value
originators, miners, and maintainers of the system currently
by iteration, for the same reason. Metals have ample industrial
make their money from the inflation of their currencies rather
uses with demand elasticity (and substitution for other raw
than just from the volume of underlying transactions in them.
materials). Currently, about half of gold production goes to
Hence the total failure of bitcoin to become a currency has
jewelry (for which there are often no storage costs), one tenth
been masked by the inflation of the currency value, generating
to industry, and a quarter to central bank reserves.
(paper) profits for a large enough number of people to enter
Path dependence is a problem. We cannot expect a book the discourse well ahead of its utility.
entry on a ledger that requires active maintenance by inter-
ested and incentivized people to keep its physical presence,
a condition for monetary value, for any period of time — Comment 2: Success for a digital currency
and of course we are not sure of the interests, mindsets, and There is a mistaken conflation between success for a
preferences of future generations. Once bitcoin drops below "digital currency", which requires some stability and
a certain threshold, it may hit an absorbing barrier and stays usability, and speculative price appreciation.
at 0 — gold on the other hand is not path dependent in its
physical properties5 . As discussed in [7], technologies tend to Transactions in bitcoin are considerably more expensive
be supplanted by other technologies with a vulnerability in than wire services or other modes of transfers, or ones in other
proportion to their past survival duration (>99% of the new is cryptocurrencies7 . They are order of magnitudes slower than
replaced by something newer), whereas items such as gold standard commercial systems used by credit card companies
and silver have proved resistant to extinction. Furthermore —anecdotally, while you can instantly buy a cup of coffee
bitcoin is supposed to be hacker-proof and is based on total with your cell phone, you would need to wait ten minutes if
infallibility in the future, not just at present. It is crucial that you used bitcoin8 . They cannot compete with African mobile
bitcoin is based on perfect immortality; unlike conventional money. 9 . Nor can the system outlined above —as per its very
assets, the slightest mortality rate puts its value at 06 . structure —accommodate a large volume of transactions —
which is something central for such an ambitious payment
Principle 1: Cumulative ruin system.
If any non-dividend yielding asset has the tiniest proba- To date, twelve years into its life, in spite of all the fanfare,
bility of hitting an absorbing barrier (causing its value but with the possible exception of the price tag of Salvadoran
to become 0), then its present value must be 0. permanent residence (3 bitcoins), there are currently no prices
fixed in bitcoin floating in fiat currencies in the economy.
We exclude collectibles from that category, as they have P RINCIPLES FOR A CURRENCY
an aesthetic utility as if one were, in a way, renting them
for an expense that maps to a dividend — and thus are no First, let’s discuss the demonetization of gold. In 1971, the
different from perishable consumer goods. The same applies U.S. government terminated the Bretton Woods Agreement,
to the jewelry side of gold: my gold necklace may be worth 0 ending the convertibility of the U.S. dollar into gold. Gold
in thirty years, but then I would have been wearing it for six stocks were growing too slowly, and, as mentioned earlier,
decades. much of it went to jewelry and industry — the most robust
theory is that there was not enough gold to keep up with
The difference between the current bitcoin bubble and
economic growth10 . Furthermore, there had been long debates
past recent ones, such as the dot-com episode spanning the
over the hampering of monetary policy by sticking to metals,
period over 1995-2000, is that shell companies were at least
as witnessed by the bullionist controversy11 . It appears that
promising some type of future revenue stream. Bitcoin would
be allowed to escape a valuation methodology had it proven 7 Transactions in bitcoin are orders of magnitude more expensive than those
to be a medium of exchange or satisfied the condition for done using African mobile phones.
8 "As it grew in popularity, Bitcoin became cumbersome, slow, and expen-
sive to use. It takes about 10 minutes to validate most transactions using the
5 The absorbing barrier does not have to be 0 for the price to spiral to 0 cryptocurrency and the transaction fee has been at a median of about $20 this
upon hitting the barrier. This is similar to saying "if the heart rate drops below year." By Eswar Prasad, New York Times, Jun 15, 2021.
9 There appear to be other protocols issued from the original white paper
ten beats per minutes, it will be 0 (death)" — nor does it necessarily have to
be caused by a drop in price. that claim to be more transaction focused; as with Ethereum, we exclude them
6 To counter the effect of the absorbing barrier, the asset must grow at an from this analysis.
10 Ironically the U.S. deficit caused the dollar to be more widely available
exponential rate forever, without remission, and with total certainty.
Belief in such an immortality for BTC — and its total infallibility — is in line and used, in stable supply, by what is called the Triffin paradox.
with the common observation that its enthusiastic investors have the attributes 11 Even Ricardo got drawn in, see Ricardo’s 1811-1816 arguments [8],[9],
of a religious cult. and commentary by Jevons [10].
4
Comment 3: Payment system
XAU 1975-1985
There is a conflation between "accepting bitcoin for
payments" and pricing goods in bitcoin. To "price" in
800 bitcoin, bitcoin the price must be fixed, with a conversion
into fiat floating, rather than the reverse.
600
Let us go deeper into how a currency can come about.
400 No transaction between two persons is analytically pairwise
in an open economy. The root of the confusion lies in the
200 prevalent naïve-libertarian illusion that a transaction between
two consenting adults, when devoid of coercion, is effectively
0 just a transaction between two consenting adults and can
1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 be isolated and discussed as such12 . But one must consider
the ensemble of transactions and the interactions between
XAG 1975-1985 agents: people happen to engage in contractual agreements
with others; for them a specific transaction is just one piece.
50 To be able to regularly buy goods denominated in bitcoin
(whose prices fixed in bitcoin but floating in U.S.$ or some
40 other fiat currency), one must have an income that is fixed in
bitcoin. Such an income must come from somewhere, say, an
30
employer. For an employer to pay a salary fixed in bitcoin, she
or he must be getting revenues fixed in bitcoin. Furthermore,
20
for the vendor to offer a can of beer in fixed bitcoins, she or
he must be paying for the raw material, and have the overhead
10
fixed in bitcoin. The same applies to the mismatch of assets
0
and obligations on a balance sheet. All this requires a parity
1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 in bitcoin-USD of low enough volatility to be tolerable and
for variations to remain inconsequential.
There are also arbitrage bounds present in any sufficiently
Fig. 3. The rise and fall of metals during the Hunt squeeze of silver and,
indirectly, gold. efficient economy with relatively free markets.
Furthermore, if a vendor prices goods in bitcoin, and the
value fluctuates from the initial fixing, the price will be
directly or indirectly arbitraged: when the conversion rate
to fiat is favorable, customers will buy from the bitcoiner;
when it is unfavorable they will either buy elsewhere (indirect
developed economies have trouble hooking their currencies to arbitrage), or if possible, return previously purchased goods
a commodity. (direct arbitrage). For the price to not be arbitrageable requires
the good to be unique and unavailable elsewhere at a price
In the early 1970s, the Hunt brothers started to hoard silver fixed in another currency –in this case it becomes, simply, a
(when they started, U.S. citizens were banned from directly proxy for bitcoin. The only items that currently appear to be
owning gold), and accelerated their hoarding in the late 1970s, somewhat priced in bitcoin are other cryptocurrencies, even
turning it into a squeeze. It lead to a speculative explosion in then not always.
the price of silver, as shown in Fig 3, leading by contagion to
Bimetalism did not last long [11], nor could commodities
between a fivefold and tenfold increase in the price of precious
last as currencies in developed economies[12].
metals. Then, upon the deflation of the bubble, metals gave
back more than half of their gains and languished for more More generally, the reasons multiple currencies exist (in the
than two decades. At the time of writing, 41 years later, neither absence of pegs) is because there is not enough globalization
gold nor silver have, inflation adjusted, reached their previous and markets are not entirely free between currency zones. And
peak. The same effect took place in 2008-2009 in the wake of some goods and services, "such as haircuts and auto repair
the banking crisis: gold and silver jumped upwards between cannot be traded internationally" [13] ; they are not, to use
80 and 120 % then subsequently lost most of their gains. the language of quantitative finance, arbitrageable.
In 2021, the governments (central and local) share of
Gold and silver proved then that they could neither be a GDP in Western economies is around 30-60%, one order
reliable numeraire, nor an inflation hedge. The world had of magnitude higher than it was in the 1900s. Government
become too sophisticated for precious metals. If we consider employees and contractors get paid in fiat currency; taxes are
the most effective numeraire, it must be the one in which the
bulk of salaries are paid, as we will show next. 12 www.libertarianism.org
5
collected similarly 13 . as a store of value. Even categories have their weights naturally
Finally, while within a modern currency zone a bimetallic revised over time: the share of food and clothing declined
style dual currency cannot easily exist, the same limitations ex- by almost threefold as a proportion of Western consumers
ist between currency zones; parity between currencies tend to expenditure since the great recession.
be subjected to volatility bounds. An observation we currency Thus we can look at an inflation hedge as the analog of a
option traders made while doing cross-currency volatility minimum variance numeraire.
arbitrages is that the volatility of a currency pair is inversely
Let us assume that there exists an efficient inflation hedge
proportional to the trade between the two currency zones —
for period [t0 , T ] for an index methodology, the one in
countries heavy into trade such as Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia,
which the index, constantly revised, is the most stable
the UAE, and Singapore (at some point) have maintained
when it is as a numeraire (adjusting for interest and
explicit pegs to the U.S. dollar or some basket. There could
dividend payments).
be an interactive relationship between trade and volatility: one
can argue that the stability of a currency-pair (adjusted for the
yield curve) encourages trade and trade in turn brings stability Can one find her or his own hedge?
to the pair14,15 . In the parable of the Christ in the temple, Jesus kicked the
Now bitcoin, as seen in Fig.1 has maintained extremely money changers out of the temple of Jerusalem... Now one
high volatility throughout its life (between 60% and 100% wonders why were there were money changers in a place of
annualized) and, what is worse, at higher prices, which makes worship? The answer is that the temple took for currency only
it’s capitalization considerably more volatile, rising in price as the shekel of Tyre, known for its 90% silver content and its
shown in Fig. 2 — is it too volatile to fail? ancestral quality control [18]17 .
Simply, there is a free market for fiat currencies, with the
T HE DIFFICULTY WITH INFLATION HEDGES most reliable at the time used by third parties. Before the
Euro, there were plenty of currencies in Europe. But long
This does not mean that a cryptocurrency cannot displace
term contracts, investments, and commitments were evaluated
fiat –it is indeed desirable to have at least one real currency
in deutschmarks or Swiss francs, sometimes the U.S. dollar;
without a government. But the new currency just needs to be
drachmas, liras, and pesetas were there mostly for petty
more appealing as a store of value by tracking a weighted
expenditures. So what we had was competition between fiat
basket of goods and services with minimum error.
currencies just as with the shekel-of-Tyre!
Displacing fiat is not easy, and has been done locally —
This competition provides for a vastly more convenient
though no single item has proved to be permanent and the
monetary store of value. For practitioners of quant finance,
difficulty is best represented in the following example. During
the most effective inflation hedge can be a combination of
the 1970s, the Italian national telephone tokens, the gettoni,
bets which includes the short bond.
were considered acceptable tender, almost always accepted as
payment. The price of the espresso when expressed in lira
varied over time, but it remained sticky to the gettone. For S OME ADDITIONAL FALLACIES
a while the gettone proved the closest money to track the 1) Fallacy of libertarianism: The belief that bitcoin is
Fisher Index across 12 communes[15]16 . And while the gettoni an offshoot of libertarian and Austrian economics has no
worked for daily purchases such as espresso, it is doubtful that solid backing — it has the same lack of rigor as the one
they could have been used as payment for an Alfa Romeo [17]. behind the belief that cryptos represent a "hedge for inflation".
Considering that communications get cheaper over time, Spitznagel [19] had already, in 2017, debunked the notion that
the notion of a telephone call is today, in the Zoom days, bitcoin can be a safe haven (as discussed next) or that the
obsolete. So the gettone story illustrates the fact that, owing to principles of Austrian economics can be invoked in support
technological changes, in the long term, no single item, such a of cryptocurrencies.
telephone call, will permanently track inflation indices and act
13 The use of the designation "fiat" may be a misleading stretch of language: Comment 4: Law vs. Regulations vs. Rules
money is not created by edict but largely via credit, by governments or the
private sectors — and both lenders and borrowers need the least volatile Libertarianism is about the rule of law in place of the
currency. rule of regulation. It is not about the rule of rules.
14 Currency pairs often show fake volatility as the spot price can be
fluctuating, but forward contracts do less so, owing to interest rate adjustments
in the weak currency: interest rates rise to compensate holders for the Libertarianism is fundamentally about the rule of law in
devaluation. place of the rule of regulation. It is not about the rule
15 We note here that quantitative finance operates along the lines of
of rules — mechanistic, automated rules with irreversible
neoclassical economic theory in that both share a central principle: absence
of arbitrage, which maps to the law of one price — the former, a concept outcomes. The real world is fraught with ambiguities and
initially aimed at goods and services, may be broadened to include asset
valuation [14]. When we apply the law of one price to currencies, we realize 17 This appears to be a Judean custom; in the Mishnah (Bekhorot 8): "The
using basic arbitrage arguments that the recent globalization does not allow five sela coins of the redemption of the firstborn son, with regard to which it
for different currencies to coexist in the same marke: one must win. is written: "Five shekels of silver, after the shekel of the Sanctuary" (Numbers
16 Likewise, the M-Pesa mobile currency used as tender in Africa is 18:16), are calculated using a Tyrian maneh. The silver content of the Tyrian
associated with transferable airtime minutes [16]. People can do microfinance coinage is significantly higher than that of provincial coinage, which is worth
via cell phones. one-eighth its value."
6
even Napoleonic law (far less mechanistic than crypto rules) would be cumulatively earning trillions, with many billionaire
cannot keep up — to wit, as a risk management directive, most "Hodlers" — in comparison the "evil civil servants" behind
commercial contracts traditionally prefer forums of dispute fiat money make, at best, lower middle class wages. This
resolution to be under the more flexible Anglo Saxon common situation represents a wealth transfer to the cartel of early
law (London, NY, Hong Kong) that rules on balance, intent, bitcoin accumulators.
and symmetry in contracts. This applies of course to quanti-
tative finance products such as complex derivatives contracts C ONCLUSION
for which one needs to minimize the legal risk. We have presented the attributes of the blockchain in general
Nor is libertarianism about total distrust. and bitcoin in particular. Few assets in financial history have
2) Fallacy of safe haven, I (protection for financial tail been more fragile than bitcoin.
risk): The experience of March 2020, during the market panic The customary standard argument is that "bitcoin has its
upon the onset of the pandemic, when bitcoin dropped farther flaws but we are getting a great technology; we will do
than the stock market —and subsequently recovered with it wonders with the blockchain". No, there is no evidence that
upon the massive injection of liquidity is sufficient evidence we are getting a great technology — unless "great technology"
that it cannot remotely be used as a tail hedge against systemic doesn’t mean "useful". And at the time of writing —in spite
risk. Furthermore, bitcoin appears to respond to liquidity, of all the fanfare — we have done still close to nothing with
exactly like other bubble items. the blockchain.
It is also uncertain what could happen should the internet So we close with a Damascus joke. One vendor was selling
experience a general, or an even a regional, outage — partic- the exact same variety of cucumbers at two different prices.
ularly if it takes place during a financial collapse. "Why is this one twice the price?", the merchant was asked.
3) Fallacy of safe haven, II (protection from tyrannical "They came on higher quality mules" was the answer.
regimes): To many paranoid antigovernment individuals and We only judge a technology by how it solves problems, not
of others distrustful of institutions, bitcoin has been marketed by what technological attributes it has.
as a safe haven — also with an open invitation to fall for the
fallacy that a volatile electronic token in a public setting is a R EFERENCES
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among civil servants and bankers. Unfortunately, there appears [18] J. Murphy-O’Connor, “Jesus and the money changers (mark 11: 15-17;
john 2: 13-17),” Revue Biblique (1946-), pp. 42–55, 2000.
to be a worse agency problem: a concentration of insiders [19] M. W. Spitznagel, “Why cryptocurrencies will never be safe havens,”
hoarding what they think will be the world currency, so Von Mises Institute, 2017.
others would have to go to them later on for supply. They [20] D. Porechna, “Darkside update: The fbi hacks the hackers?” Wolfram
Research, June 2021.
18 This is one of the weaknesses of total decentralization.
