The UpTake: Bitcoin is more than a currency. It's a community. And this week Paul Krugman is that community's least favorite columnist, but don't expect the liberal economist to back down from his doubts about they crypto-currency. If anything, he seems to enjoy kicking sand in the face of Bitcoin fans.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has angered the Bitcoin faithful. Of course, that was probably his intention given the fact that he slapped the tongue-in-cheek headline “Bitcoin is Evil” at the top of an otherwise level-headed post on his New York Times blog.
Hey, even wonks like Krugman aren’t above clickbait.
In the original column, Krugman wrote:
So far almost all of the Bitcoin discussion has been positive economics — can this actually work? And I have to say that I’m still deeply unconvinced. To be successful, money must be both a medium of exchange and a reasonably stable store of value. And it remains completely unclear why BitCoin should be a stable store of value.
Krugman, a dedicated Keynesian, also dislikes the libertarian bent of many fierce Bitcoin advocates.
Politics aside, one of the fascinating things about Bitcoin is how it is as much a community as it is a way to pay for things. In the case of Krugman’s column, the community responded.
He later explained that while his doubts about Bitcoin are real, his headline was a joke designed to tweak Bitcoin fans. They didn’t think it was funny, given the “rage-filled missives” Krugman said flooded his inbox. An old Krugman quote predicting comparing the Internet’s economic impact to the fax machine also started making the rounds.
Krugman’s response: Bitcoin fans don’t have a sense of humor.
I think that when one side in a debate lacks all sense of humor, and gets deeply offended when the other side cracks a joke, it’s an indicator of intellectual insecurity.
And also, this final Monty Python-inspired parting shot to Bitcoin : “Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.”
Alex Dalenberg
Upstart Business Journal contributor
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Alex Dalenberg is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer covering NYC startups and technology for the Upstart Business Journal.
