<story><title>Vanguard Founder Jack Bogle Says ‘Avoid Bitcoin Like the Plague’</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-28/vanguard-founder-jack-bogle-says-avoid-bitcoin-like-the-plague</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nerdponx</author><text>&lt;i&gt;There is nothing to support bitcoin&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s what I&amp;#x27;ve been realizing latey: there &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; something to support Bitcoin, and that something is the blockchain. The reason banks and big financial companies are interested in it is &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; for its speculative value. They are interested in the fact that it is both decentralized and immutable. As long as financial corporations are willing to exchange Bitcoin for USD, then Bitcoin is a reasonable store of value.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s also value in Bitcoin because it&amp;#x27;s a good entry point into other cryptocurrencies that could turn out to be better general-purpose exchange media, like Litecoin.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a bit like US Treasury Bonds. Nobody buys them for the tiny rate of return they offer, but they have genuine, valid use as a financial instrument. Normal people, however don&amp;#x27;t typically buy them, and normal people probably shouldn&amp;#x27;t be buying Bitcoin either unless they have some spare cash to gamble on it.</text></item><item><author>non_sequitur</author><text>“Bitcoin has no underlying rate of return,” said Bogle, 88, who started the first index fund in 1976. “You know bonds have an interest coupon, stocks have earnings and dividends, gold has nothing. There is nothing to support bitcoin except the hope that you will sell it to someone for more than you paid for it.”&lt;p&gt;Didnt quite understand this quote - is he down on gold too?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chiaro</author><text>Nah. Banks and big financial companies interested in the blockchain will spin up their own version without tying it to the unstable mess of bitcoin. e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ripple.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ripple.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;And people do by treasury bonds for their rate of return, when the investment must be as riskless as possible.</text></comment>
<story><title>Vanguard Founder Jack Bogle Says ‘Avoid Bitcoin Like the Plague’</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-28/vanguard-founder-jack-bogle-says-avoid-bitcoin-like-the-plague</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nerdponx</author><text>&lt;i&gt;There is nothing to support bitcoin&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s what I&amp;#x27;ve been realizing latey: there &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; something to support Bitcoin, and that something is the blockchain. The reason banks and big financial companies are interested in it is &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; for its speculative value. They are interested in the fact that it is both decentralized and immutable. As long as financial corporations are willing to exchange Bitcoin for USD, then Bitcoin is a reasonable store of value.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s also value in Bitcoin because it&amp;#x27;s a good entry point into other cryptocurrencies that could turn out to be better general-purpose exchange media, like Litecoin.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a bit like US Treasury Bonds. Nobody buys them for the tiny rate of return they offer, but they have genuine, valid use as a financial instrument. Normal people, however don&amp;#x27;t typically buy them, and normal people probably shouldn&amp;#x27;t be buying Bitcoin either unless they have some spare cash to gamble on it.</text></item><item><author>non_sequitur</author><text>“Bitcoin has no underlying rate of return,” said Bogle, 88, who started the first index fund in 1976. “You know bonds have an interest coupon, stocks have earnings and dividends, gold has nothing. There is nothing to support bitcoin except the hope that you will sell it to someone for more than you paid for it.”&lt;p&gt;Didnt quite understand this quote - is he down on gold too?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dsacco</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; The reason banks and big financial companies are interested in it is not for its speculative value. They are interested in the fact that it is both decentralized and immutable.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;None of the blockchain projects or proposals being worked on by enterprise financial institutions are decentralized. A decentralized ledger is conceptually antithetical to a small group of organizations which trust each other and want to retain control over the shared ledger.&lt;p&gt;It can be immutable, but for that matter I don&amp;#x27;t really think it&amp;#x27;s immutable in the same sense as a decentralized, permissionless ledger is. The organizations in charge of the blockchain can create a hard fork, which everyone participating with the organizations will have to abide by, because the blockchain is not decentralized.&lt;p&gt;In fact, what we actually have is a consortium of companies deploying distributed database structures and calling them blockchains. I&amp;#x27;m sure there is a legitimately new innovation that can emerge from this sort of blockchain, but it won&amp;#x27;t be decentralization or immutability.</text></comment>