Nassim Taleb’s War on Bitcoin: Technological Tulip or Dostoevskian Tragedy?

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In the half-shadowed corner of civilization’s vast parlor, Nassim Nicholas Taleb stood, peering at the glimmering apparition of Bitcoin with the skepticism of a man who had seen one too many roulette wheels spun and far too few honest games played. “A technological tulip!” he thundered, or perhaps sighed—one cannot always tell with prophets. 🌷💻

Four years ago, I wrote the Bitcoin Black Paper. Its purpose? To illuminate its absolute unsuitability as a transactional currency, as ridiculous as attempting to pay for rye bread in Rublev’s monastery with peacock feathers.

Four years later, lo and behold, the delusion persists. We don’t trade with it; rather, we gawk at it as we would a tulip under a microscope — or a Dostoevskian character preparing to gamble away his last copeck.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) May 3, 2025

Taleb, famed for scribbling “The Black Swan” in the margins of fate, once again sharpened his quill against Bitcoin, sending its faithful into paroxysms not seen since Raskolnikov fretted over pawning his mother’s earrings. The charges: the “currency” is neither currant, nor usable, nor particularly good at inspiring any confidence save among those who also collect beanie babies and dot-com domain names. In Taleb’s reckoning, the price of Bitcoin hovers not so much at zero, but at an existential abscess between zero and… existential dread.🙃

The gallery of doubters is an illustrious Rogues’ Gallery: Peter Schiff, the man who has never met a Bitcoin he couldn’t grumble at; Larry Fink, who now speaks of Bitcoin as he does of kale—once loathsome, now a superfood; Michael Saylor, whose Bitcoin conversion makes St. Augustine look half-hearted. But Taleb? Ah, his arc is Dostoevskian! Once, he hailed BTC as the “first organic currency,” possibly after one too many philosophical vodkas. Alas, 2021 saw a rupture worthy of an Epilogue: some claim he fell out with Saifedean Ammous (presumably over tea, and a minor treatise). Irony abounds—Taleb once declared Bitcoin an “insurance policy” against bureaucratic tsars. Oh, the irresistible longing for lost faith!

Now, Taleb’s hostility burns as consistently as Smerdyakov’s resentment. In 2023, he didn’t just critique Bitcoin—he called it a “detector of imbeciles.” How poetic! One imagines the crypto faithful clutching their digital wallets, muttering, “Is it I, Lord?”

And despite Bitcoin’s victorious march through the markets, Taleb watches from his existential window, face pressed solemnly to the glass, convinced this is less currency and more Dostoevskian comedy of errors. The roulette wheel spins, the gamblers sweat, and Taleb, like Ivan Karamazov, cannot quite banish his demons—nor his sarcasm. 🎲

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2025-05-04 11:08