<center>Cryptocurrency Prices and Retrocausality</center>
<center>By Tim Machinee</center>
There is a concept hinted at in my last blog post "God is a Time Traveler". That concept is retrocausality. The effect can sometimes occur before the cause. This is often labeled as a hypothetical process but for this post let's entertain the idea that retrocausality is a real thing. If it helps the reader can think of retrocausality as a preternatural self-fulfilling prophecy.
According to Wikipedia (not an academic reference but it's text is available under the Creative Commons License) a self-fulfilling prophecy is. "... a positive or negative prophecy, strongly held belief, or deluson—declared as truth when it is actually false—may sufficiently influence people so that their reactions ultimately fulfill the once-false prophecy. "
There are many who believe that a major economic crisis is ahead of us. For example, astrologers point to signs that the global economy will begin to crash in 2017. Religious authors such as Rabbi Jonathan Cahn point to past economic cycles that happen to coincide with past Shmita periods.
Most people who have an interest in cryptocurrency would probably agree that 2016 has been a particularly harsh year. The collapse of Cryptsy and the Ethereum DAO project to name a few busts. Coins such as Namecoin and STEEM have rapidly depreciated in value. Entire communities around coins such as Teslacoin and HamRadioCoin have seemingly disappeared.
However, Bitcoin has appreciated in value during 2016. Why is that? One possibility is a retrocausality version of game theory's Abilene paradox. In spite of the philosophies behind certain coins some of the coin supporters believe that others believe an economic crisis is coming. Rather than support their preferred coin the members of a coin's community each independently migrate toward safe harbor. Since each member supports decentralized economics they are not inclined to move to a fiat currency. The one cryptocurrency pegged to any other coin in virtually every trading exchange is Bitcoin. Each member sells off their preferred coin anticipating an economic crisis for satoshis (the basic unit of a Bitcoin) driving down their preferred coin's trading price but planning to buy back after the expected crash.
Perhaps cryptocurrency prices can be affected by events in the future other than economic crashes. Within the next 24 hours of this writing a new U.S. president will be voted into office. As of this writing on the c-cex.com exchange PRES and TrumpCoin are both worth more in satoshis (selling at 142 and 3211, respectively) than HILL (selling at only two satoshis each). Perhaps the shape of things to come.