Bitcoin Historical Examination By Robert Shiller

Professor Robert Shiller is famous for the Case-Shiller Index. He received the 2013 Nobel prize in economics. He published an article on Monday in which he was trying to answer the question to know how cryptocurrency users can maintain a high level of enthusiasm while having to face the constant warning that this whole thing is nothing but a scam. He did not compare bitcoin to past technological solutions but rather contextualized it to time-based and electricity-backed experimental forms of alternative money.

Shiller later explained that: “Each of these monetary innovations has been coupled with a unique technological story. But, more fundamentally, all are connected with a deep yearning for some kind of revolution in society. The cryptocurrencies are a statement of faith in a new community of entrepreneurial cosmopolitans who hold themselves above national governments, which are viewed as the drivers of a long train of inequality and war.”

He concluded by saying that: “And, as in the past, the public’s fascination with cryptocurrencies is tied to a sort of mystery, like the mystery of the value of money itself, consisting in the new money’s connection to advanced science. Practically no one, outside of computer science departments, can explain how cryptocurrencies work. That mystery creates an aura of exclusivity, gives the new money glamour, and fills devotees with revolutionary zeal. None of this is new, and, as with past monetary innovations, a compelling story may not be enough.”

Bitcoin entrepreneurs relentlessly work on exciting use cases only made possible with the bitcoin technology, whether they understand it or not – as it is said that only computer scientists have the real understanding of cryptocurrencies today.