I had the honor of giving the commencement address to this year’s graduating economics majors at the University of Rochester, under circumstances that were trying in several ways.
First, I learned at 10:10 PM on Friday that I was giving this talk on Saturday morning. (It’s a long story. All the communication failures leading up to this were entirely my own fault.) I got to bed rather late that night.
Second, it was so ungodly hot that I chose to shed my cap and gown.
Third, there were, I think, only about 80 students present, spread evenly around a 967 seat auditorium (family and other guests were not allowed). Laughter and applause were therefore pretty sparse (though I suppose they might have been sparse for other reasons) and even what little could be heard was mostly not picked up by the microphones.
Other than that, I thought it was a good day. Those who have seen my 2017 commencement talk will recognize roughly the first quarter and the last tenth of this one, which I recycled. The intervening 65% or so is new.
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So I was clicking through the stations on Sirius XM and came upon a rebroadcast of an old 
The death of Bernie Madoff reminds me that I never understood why he was so vilified. He ran a Ponzi scheme. All of his investors knew it was a Ponzi scheme. They chose to get in, and gambled that they could time their exits just right. Some succeeded, some failed. So Madoff was the moral equivalent of a bookmaker (and not the kind of bookmaker who employs violence to enforce collections). He catered to a preference that some might call a vice. Where’s the problem?
Note: This is strictly a post about Bitcoin as a payment system. If you have something to say about Bitcoin as a store of value, a bubble or a long-term investment, you are off topic. 
Over four years ago, I 
