Writing in the Colombia Law School blog on capital markets, Todd Baker challenges the view that cryptocurrencies are financial assets, saying that this risks luring policymakers into a “potentially catastrophic category error” because their markets are not economically related to the financial system and do not serve the productive purposes of the financial system. He regards cryptocurrency players as finance LARPers* and calls their activities “gambling emulating finance”. Frankly, he has a point. In many ways, the cryptocurrency markets have more in common with electronic sports than e-finance.
(Electronic sports, or e-sports, are a big deal, by the way. October’s “League of Legends” world championship in the USA had five million viewers and the Excel World Championship was streamed live on ESPN3. Yes, you read that right. Excel is an e-sport.)
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