344 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 5h \ on: Bitcoin Economics And Finance Survey bitcoin
Reading through the first cited paper (Aalborg et al. 2019), a couple of things come to mind immediately:
- Mainstream economists have a shockingly poor understanding of bubbles (not shocking to me anymore, but you would be shocked, Dear Reader).
- Mainstream economists don't realize that when they're doing econometric analysis it is at best an exercise in economic history.
The first point is relevant to the multiple concurring expert opinions that bitcoin is in a speculative bubble, back in 2015, just based on the amount of speculative investment. These people do not understand the role of entrepreneurship at all.
The second point means that economists are going to think the same factors drive Bitcoin trading volume in 2024 as in 2015.
I don't think these authors (or perhaps their reviewers) have much confidence in their methodology, because they avoid describing their findings as "causal" and opt for the safer language of "predicts". They deserve credit for having appropriate humility, but if they aren't making causal claims then I don't need to pick them apart.
Thanks for this. I was wondering as I was going through it whether it would make a difference if the survey was done from post 2021 papers. I'm sure this stuff is still being cranked out, but it would be tough to find them all in one place.
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It would make a huge difference. One thing to keep in mind is that there are significant lags in research. By the time a paper comes out the data could easily be several years out of date, as well as the approach and hypotheses.
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