The famous Israeli philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, author of the international bestseller Sapiens, called digital gold a "currency of distrust" that does not correspond to his vision of finance.
When I say that Bitcoin is a currency of distrust, I'm just repeating what Bitcoin fans themselves say. There may be good reasons not to trust the banks and governments that create dollars, yens, and other currencies – but that doesn’t change the fact that the preference for… pic.twitter.com/dntBOWPQhz
— Yuval Noah Harari (@harari_yuval) May 21, 2024"There may be good reasons not to trust banks and governments that create dollars, yen and other currencies — but this does not change the fact that bitcoin's preference is based on distrust of public institutions," he noted.
In his opinion, this is an alarming trend, since money should create "trust between strangers." This is what existing financial instruments like currencies, stocks and bonds are aimed at, which allow people to pool knowledge, resources and cooperate, Harari believes.
"People control the world because they have learned how to do it. [...] I hope that humanity will find a way to build trustworthy public institutions instead of adopting reverse—oriented technologies," he said.
The philosopher emphasized that in the world of modern economy with division of labor, the function of the financial system is to create trust.
"Initially, there was very little trust in institutions such as banks and governments, so money was minted from gold. Since precious metals were scarce, this limited the amount of money and hindered economic cooperation," he added.
The general partner of Castle Island Ventures said in comments that Harari "literally turned everything around."
You have this literally inverted
The point of hard money is to facilitate trade between mutually nontrusting counterparties; that’s why gold and silver were the settlement medium for global trade historically and not IOUs
Bitcoin is just the modern version for a world in…
"The purpose of hard money is to facilitate trade between counterparties who do not trust each other. This is why historically gold and silver have been the means of settlement in global trade, not IOUS. Bitcoin is just a modern version of [precious metals] for a world in which fiat is a tool for controlling and projecting power," he wrote.
The founder of MicroStrategy, Michael Saylor, replied to the philosopher that humanity has already found a way to create trustworthy institutions, which are called "bitcoin technology".
We don’t necessarily distrust. We seek to verify. Only #Bitcoin allows for verification at all levels of the system. When you understand that, the rest will fall in place.
— Samson Mow (@Excellion) May 21, 2024"We don't necessarily distrust. We strive to verify. And only the first cryptocurrency provides this at all levels of the system. When you understand this, everything else will fall into place," Samson Mou, CEO of JAN3, supported such opinions.
Recall that in May, the author of the bestseller "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" and entrepreneur Robert Kiyosaki once again predicted the collapse of the dollar and called for investing in bitcoin, gold and silver.
Prior to that, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon again called cryptocurrency a fraud and a pyramid scheme.