Prediction certainty 3/5 debate potential 3/5

Felten: Bitcoin will become too large for traditional regulators to disrupt

Ed Felten · a16z Podcast | Beyond Bitcoin -- The Blockchain · Jan 2, 2019 · at 10:51

Ed Felten, computer science professor at Princeton, addresses how traditional financial regulators might respond as Bitcoin grows and whether government intervention could stop it.

0:00 / 0:26exact quote · 26.0s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I think a lot of people in the sort of old school finance, finance and financial regulation world just think this whole thing is a bubble and will go away if they ignore it. I don't think that's true, and I think that as they wake up, they may start looking at what they can do about it. But it's also the case that by the time that happens, it may seem larger and more established and more legit, and so they're more likely to keep their hands off.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Ed Felten

Assertion Supported
Felten: Bitcoin's 21 million supply cap is changeable by community consensus
“Right now the monetary policy is grow asymptotically to twenty-one million Bitcoins, but that could change by consensus of the community. That twenty-one million limit is not inherent mathematically. It's just a number that is hardwired into the currently used…”
Ed Felten Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 26:02 a16z Podcast | Beyond Bitcoin -- The Blockchain
Insight
Felten: Smart contracts, DACs, and virtual corporations are fundamentally equivalent
“They're sometimes called smart contracts or virtual corporations, etc. I really just, first, first, these things are fundamentally equivalent to each other. And second, I prefer just to use the term mechanism, right?”
Ed Felten Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 1:01 a16z Podcast | Beyond Bitcoin -- The Blockchain
Insight
Felten: Displacing incumbent cryptocurrencies requires superior utility to overcome network effects
“I think it's the case that if you can convince the community that your new thing is enough better in, along some dimension they really care about, then there will be a space for your currency to get a foothold. Maybe something that existed before falls away, r…”
Ed Felten Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 12:27 a16z Podcast | Beyond Bitcoin -- The Blockchain
Assertion Partly supported
Ed Felten: Reputable businesses must report large Bitcoin transactions
“It's already the case that if you are a reputable business that deals with large Bitcoin transactions, those have to be reported to the government, or you're going to end up in behind bars pretty quickly.”
Ed Felten Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 8:56 a16z Podcast | Beyond Bitcoin -- The Blockchain
Prediction Held up
Felten: Bitcoin volatility will decrease as adoption and liquidity grow
“I think the exchange rate of Bitcoin will settle down if it grows. You get more liquidity in the market, and you get more sophisticated economic modeling of what the fair price is. And then I think the volatility goes down somewhat.”
Ed Felten Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 21:12 a16z Podcast | Beyond Bitcoin -- The Blockchain
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 1,000 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.