On February 28 in Moscow, the famous trader and author of the cult work “The Black Swan ” Nassim Taleb gave a lecture “Risking his own skin” organized by BBI Club. During the event, the guests managed to ask the thinker questions about Bitcoin.

“Distributed systems are anti – fragile . All of us [in the US] must decide what the currency should be, and not just the Fed, whose representatives do not bear any risks. The emergence of cryptocurrency refreshed the situation and the central banks realized that it was necessary to compete with them. In this context, this is a positive phenomenon, as it puts pressure on the Fed , ”Taleb stressed.

He is convinced that after the financial crisis of 2008, central banks did not realize the essence of the problem, constantly increasing government debt, and the bureaucratic system does not learn, because people in it make decisions without taking any risks.

“Why does the forest like fire? Because fire cleans dead trees and makes room for new ones. The Fed did not understand this simple thing. If banks die, they do not need to be saved at the expense of taxpayers, they must be allowed to die. ”

Taleb added that according to the laws of Hammurabi, an architect who built a house that collapsed and killed residents was sentenced to death in ancient Babylon. In today's system, which glitches, people at the helm shift all responsibility to ordinary citizens.

“The nature of the blockchain technology is closest to the letter of credit, which was introduced by the Phoenicians. Without a letter of credit, there would be no commerce at all. ”

On the question of whether Bitcoin can be considered a digital analogue of gold, Taleb answered as follows:

“The main task of Bitcoin is to scare bankers. In the long run, I would prefer to keep Bitcoin, not the American dollar, but between the cryptocurrency and gold, I will choose the latter. Why do I need some piece of code? Gold is subject to the effect of Lindy and will exist for a long time. "

Recall that in the preface to the book by economist Saifedin Ammos “Bitcoin Standard” Taleb called Bitcoin an insurance policy.

“Its very existence is an insurance policy that will remind governments that they no longer have a monopoly on the last object that the state could control, namely, on the currency. This gives us, the crowd, insurance against the future according to Orwell’s scenario. ”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb – American trader, mathematician and philosopher of Lebanese descent. Over the years, he has been studying the nature of random and unpredictable events, their impact on the performance of complex systems, and the benefits such systems can extract from chaos and stress.

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