Monday, December 25, 2017

The Urban Dictionary is surprisingly up-to-date: nocoiner edition

Nocoiner is a person who has no Bitcoin. Nocoiners (usually Socialists, Lawyers or MBA Economists ) are people who missed their opportunity to buy Bitcoin at a low price because they thought it was a scam, and who is now bitter at having missed out. The nocoiner takes out his or her bitterness on Bitcoin Hodlers, by constantly claiming that Bitcoin will crash, is a scam, is a bubble, or other types of easily refuted FUD. Nocoiners have little to no computer skills or imagination; even when they see the price of Bitcoin go up and its adoption spread they consider all Bitcoin users to be in a collective delusion, with only themselves as the ones who can see what is happening. This attitude comes from being steeped in the elitist priest cultures found at Harvard, Yale and Columbia, where anyone who is not part of their clique is treated with suspicion by default. The worst nocoiners are tenured academics and goldbugs. Nocoiners believe that the world owes them everything they want because they are part of an elite; they are hysterical liars, brats, prostitutes and losers.
I'm pretty sure Emin is a Nocoiner. Yesterday he made a Tweet about how Bitcoin going up was just a fad, and that a crash was inevitable. He's always talking Bitcoin down; if he had Bitcoin, he would never trash his own stash.

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

HAHAHAHA. I hope you are not a nocoiner!!!
This is a new revolution, talking about bubbles is ridiculous. Was email a bubble? was Facebook? was electricity? Blockchain and cryptos will change the world for the better. If you havent spent 1 week behind closed doors understanding how all this works you are most probably a nocoiner.

John Hempton said...

guilty as charged.

I also own no gold.

Talorc said...

So does that mean you are a socialist, lawyer or MBA Economist? OR *GASP* even worse, one of the elitists from Harvard, Columbia or Yale?!?

John Hempton said...

Adelaide University. Surprisingly not elitist.

Also not a socialist or a lawyer.

Nor do I have an MBA.

But I am definitely a nocoiner.

obelix said...

I heard from a person in a Christmas party that long time ago Visa gave some European employees a Christmas gift of 6000 bitcoins each. They have some paperwork of this, and the codes are supposedly held at some sever in Malta. They are now attempting to get the codes and transfer the Bitcoin to some trading platform.

Whether this is true or not, it’s extremely interesting. I’m thinking that Bitcoin and other crypto tokens/currencies will in the long run earn a place next to Federal Reserve Bonds issued to the Chinese government and lost in the mountains of Philippines in a location that is described by a single map.

ADL said...

I'm pretty sure anonymous, above, is joking. But if everyone in Bitcoin has spent a week behind closed doors to understand how this all works, I will eat a stack of Bitcoins as tall as my optimistic college ID said I was.

Jefferson said...

Good for you John Hempton. Seems pretty difficult to justify managing other people's money and also to own Bitcoin. They appear to be incongruous at the moment.

Highgamma said...

I'm a nocoiner, too.

There are four types of risk management (and they are all inter-related):
1. Diversification
2. Insurance (including options)
3. Hedging
4. Avoidance (e.g., being a "nocoiner")

Avoidance gets the least respect because it requires the least math. But avoidance helps us from falling victim to the madness of the crowd.

Matt said...

John - can you give us a paragraph or 2 on your views on crypto currency?

Anonymous said...

Huh.

At first I laughed, but then I realized that this entry in the urban dictionary really resonates with me.

I guess I do lack imagination when I cannot see Bitcoin - a system that requires more work input per transaction the more participants there are and is already much less efficient than the status quo - replacing narrow money.

After I have picked up my MBA from Harvard, I definitely will aspire to be the most die-hard socialist lawyer one can be - despite my poor computer skills!

Anonymous said...

"Whether this is true or not, it’s extremely interesting" - haha classic

Nocoiners of the world unite!

brod said...

Great observation particularly in light of the recent announcement by Goldman Sachs that they were going to begin trading Bitcoins. They are like a new derivative with no intrinsic value and no underlying asset of any worth. Those who accept it as a payment in a financial transaction whether drug dealer or money launderer are the new market makers. Digital punters, no more, no less.

Anonymous said...

@ ADL. I was not joking. I am not saying that every Bitcoin investor did his research. Im sure far from it. Same this as everyone who is invested in Google, Amazon, GE...
However for someone whose job is to UNDERSTAND THE WORLD. I sure hope you people spend some time Understanding all this instead of just repeating the dumb Mainstream Rhetorics of its bubble, its used by criminals...
SPEND TIME UNDERSTANDING plzzzzzzz

Elf Owl said...

The strange thing about bitcoin is that it is 'coined' (allow me) a crypto-currency. But all the mediahype is about the apparent 'value' or lack thereof of this currency. I may be totally wrong about this, but it seems to me that the more the focus is on the value of one bitcoin, the less trading will be done in this currency. If there is little trading done using bitcoin, there really is no point to it and thus no value.

I am not against cryptocurrencies. The idea is quite nice. But it seems to me that (as with stocks) once something is expressed as a price, a totally new dynamic starts to get a hold of it.

ADL said...

@anonymous: fair point! And, as you note, one applicable to most things. I am fairly skeptical of the "change the world" narrative because far more thing soffer to change the world than actually do. That said, blockchain certainly does offer just such a possibility .Basically, I looked at this long enough to decide I have no opinion on it; thankfully, we are seldom required to have an opinion on anything!

The investment merits are an almost wholly different discussion, though. That's where the bubble arguments make the most sense.

ying said...

So do we expect a write up about bitcoin soon?

Anonymous said...

Anyone knows of a paper or something talking about crypto valuation? This is a new field with new thinking that need to emerge. A token/crypto cannot be valued with traditional methods. We need new PHD... working on this.
For those who dont know, you cannot decentralise an app without having a token ! The token/coin is the information transmitter.
More and more of these will emerge and be used in everyday life. Hopefully universities... will start looking into this field soon.

Anonymous said...

I live in an Eastern European country once proud of its 25 years young democracy, and now experiencing a free fall into a dictatorship. My only reason to buy bitcoin was preservation of the last bit of my net worth in case I find myself one day fleeing abroad with just a suitcase. Latest valuations add unexpected colors to this picture, but at more realistic prices there is no better friend of a potential refugee than a property stored in a memorized private key. It's an obvious value!

PS. I understood Bitcoin thanks to one of the posts in this blog. Thank you, John!

Tipsy McStagger said...

Anonymous commenter on December 25 is looking like quite the Nostradamus. He (attitude screams he) probably should have given himself a Christmas gift of an empty BTC wallet.

https://www.cryptocurrencychart.com/chart/BTC/valueUsd/linear/2016-12-27/2018-02-07

Robert Simmons said...

This was an extremely well-timed post. All-time BTC high 19,870.62 on Dec 17, 2017, finished day of post at 13,833.49, currently 6,742.86. Really close to nailing the top. Still wish I had bought a little when first heard about them, though....

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