It is quite incorrect to say that "Historically, money arose from, and in conjunction with, this power." (the power of taxation by states). He gives no evidence for this claim except to reference a "controversial" book - perhaps controversial because of its wildly inaccurate thesis?
Unless the contention is that humans traded solely by barter before states came along to tax them, mediums of exchange (money) obviously predate the statist invention of fiat money. In fact fiat money is a relatively recent phenomenon, as money was historically backed by precious metals long before states invented unbacked fiat money and central (statist) banking.
Which doesn't in any way invalidate his argument that Bitcoin is a bubble. It's totally irrelevant to the Bitcoin issue. It's just wrong by itself.
Another thing that's just plain wrong is the attempt to refute the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH). The only reason Bitcoin actually does have a value above 0 at the moment is precisely because statist meddling in the market has created a huge demand for an alternative to fiat money - such a huge demand in fact that people are willing to try almost anything, including Bitcoin, or even riskier methods with a high failure rate (such as J. Orlin Grabbe's early anonymous banking system DMT, or unaudited gold-backed e-currencies that may actually be backed by nothing at all, among many other examples).
If we had uncrippled free-market gold-backed electronic currencies (such as e-gold was before it was attacked and destroyed by the feds) there would be zero demand for bitcoin as the existing currencies would have all the benefits of Bitcoin, while also being backed by a commodity with a base value (not 'intrinsic value').
So, it _might_ be a refutation of EMH if Bitcoin were to be successful long-term in an actual free market. As nowhere on this planet do we find anything even remotely resembling an actual free market, his argument against EMH is as much of a straw man as all the other examples that pinkos trot out as examples of "market failure" while pretending that there is a free market somewhere, which there isn't. All such examples are really examples of statist intervention failure, not market failure, as the market we are talking about is highly crippled and not remotely free.
Unless the contention is that humans traded solely by barter before states came along to tax them, mediums of exchange (money) obviously predate the statist invention of fiat money. In fact fiat money is a relatively recent phenomenon, as money was historically backed by precious metals long before states invented unbacked fiat money and central (statist) banking.
Which doesn't in any way invalidate his argument that Bitcoin is a bubble. It's totally irrelevant to the Bitcoin issue. It's just wrong by itself.
Another thing that's just plain wrong is the attempt to refute the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH). The only reason Bitcoin actually does have a value above 0 at the moment is precisely because statist meddling in the market has created a huge demand for an alternative to fiat money - such a huge demand in fact that people are willing to try almost anything, including Bitcoin, or even riskier methods with a high failure rate (such as J. Orlin Grabbe's early anonymous banking system DMT, or unaudited gold-backed e-currencies that may actually be backed by nothing at all, among many other examples).
If we had uncrippled free-market gold-backed electronic currencies (such as e-gold was before it was attacked and destroyed by the feds) there would be zero demand for bitcoin as the existing currencies would have all the benefits of Bitcoin, while also being backed by a commodity with a base value (not 'intrinsic value').
So, it _might_ be a refutation of EMH if Bitcoin were to be successful long-term in an actual free market. As nowhere on this planet do we find anything even remotely resembling an actual free market, his argument against EMH is as much of a straw man as all the other examples that pinkos trot out as examples of "market failure" while pretending that there is a free market somewhere, which there isn't. All such examples are really examples of statist intervention failure, not market failure, as the market we are talking about is highly crippled and not remotely free.