Bitcoin stands out as a resilient digital currency — even when the naysayers scorn on. Several influential bloggers have considered Bitcoin as a failure and a joke, but it has consistently proved its worth. In fact, a recent report from the Bank of America says that Bitcoin is the star investment of the last decade.
Bitcoin’s price has grown tremendously in just a few years — from a few pennies to thousands of dollars. Also, the number of Bitcoin users has enormously grown — from 20 people in 2009 to 5.8 million users in 2019 — despite detractors declaring it dead over 350 times.
From its inception, the king of cryptocurrency has been constantly criticized. Several pessimists are always issuing warnings to Bitcoin supporters, but these latter never listen to critics. Anyway, let’s take a walk through 10 of Bitcoin’s laughable obituaries.
Because, by design, there will never be more than 21 million Bitcoins in existence. And thanks to hoarding and attrition, we can be sure that it will eventually serve as nothing more than as a collector’s item. . . . I would like to call upon the Bitcoin community to stop referring to it as a digital currency. This is misleading and harmful.
FROM TAV’S BLOG.
Trav disregarded Bitcoin as a digital currency in a post he wrote in 2011. However, we all know that Bitcoin is the ideal digital currency because it allows two users to transfer value between themselves online, without the involvement of physical paper cash. Also, the Bitcoin Code provides bitcoins with the qualities possessed by traditional currencies – it is fungible, impossible to counterfeit, accessible, and so on.
Bitcoin hoarding is hurting the system, but it’s really hard to amass forever — bitcoin prices are volatile, so there is a constant demand for the coins. Besides, there are now several ways to spend your bitcoins online.
2. Bitcoin Will Crash To $10 By Mid-2014 — Business Insider|2013.
Bitcoin is not a legitimate currency but simply a risky virtual commodity bet. . . . Bitcoin lacks the essential attributes that are needed to support a widely recognized transactional currency. Read more about บาคาร่าเล่นยังไง. If Bitcoin was allowed to proliferate as a currency it would produce greater economic uncertainty, reduced trade and lower individual standard of living.
A finance professor foresaw a Bitcoin crash in 2014. However, Bitcoin has stood the test of time and proved him wrong. It has never been respectful of people’s opinions anyway, and went on to peak at approximately $20,000 in late 2017.
According to that professor, Bitcoin lacks the essential attributes needed to support a widely recognized transactional currency. I think the only attribute that Bitcoin lacks is stability, and this because of its market capitalization – $100B compared to fiat currencies in trillions. Nevertheless, Bitcoin is a deflationary currency that increases in value and the most important innovation of our time.
3. Why Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme – Gary North|2014.
Bitcoins will go down in history as the most spectacular private Ponzi scheme in history. . . . The coins will never be the money of the future. . . . Bitcoins are too volatile in price ever to serve as a currency. . . . bitcoins are not money; dollars are money.
I think it is fair enough to say that Bitcoin possesses some traits that can be found in Ponzi schemes, but some aspects distinguish it from them.
Bitcoin does not promise any returns — in its white paper, Satoshi Nakamoto doesn’t even talk about a fixed or periodic return guarantee. So, to generate returns on your bitcoins you need to buy lots of them at a low price and sell them when the prices skyrocket. The Bitcoin price is driven freely by supply and demand.
Bitcoin also has no recruitment rewards — there are no incentives for introducing someone to the Bitcoin ecosystem. The bitcoin economy is growing because Bitcoin has undeniable utility.
4. Bitcoin is (Nearly) All Dead — Joe Carter|2014
Right now, Bitcoin is only mostly dead. As an investment, it was the worst of 2014. . . . The problem, though, is that Bitcoin will likely not survive to get to that level of innovation. Will Bitcoin enthusiasts support it after they realize it has ceased to be useful as a currency and is a terrible investment?
If Bitcoin were a human, we would say it is a warrior. Joe Carter thought Bitcoin couldn’t be used for international transfers. In his article, he wrote: “Bitcoin will likely not survive to get to that level of innovation” — he was wrong. Currently, Bitcoin is used widely for online transfers simply because it’s cheap, and, on top of that, transactions are really fast compared to centralized banking systems.
Joe wrote that article when the Bitcoin price was around $325; at the time of writing this, Bitcoin is trading at $9,400. So, Joe, Bitcoin disagrees with you.
5. The Great Paradox of Bitcoin: If It Ever Succeeds, It’s Doomed — Mother Jones|2014
But Bitcoin is doomed as a payments network. . . . But if I had to put money on it? I’d say Bitcoin is doomed in the medium-term future.
Bitcoin is a howling success, all thanks to its decentralized and deflationary model. Actually, it is said to be a suitable replacement for gold – that’s why we call it “digital gold”.
It’s the most popular cryptocurrency of all time, and crypto-evangelists expect the market cap of BTC to reach around 5-10 trillion in the next five years.
6. Could Bitcoin Prices Hit $100? This is Why Bitcoin is Doomed — Profit Confidential|2015.
No merchant will risk accepting Bitcoin if it can’t be transferred back into their own currency. Even if they could pay their grocery bill, rent, and utilities using Bitcoin, there’s still the small matter of taxes. Ultimately, central banks need the authority to ease the pain of business cycles. That’s why Bitcoin is no more than a Libertarian pipe dream.
Bitcoin is far from a libertarian pipe dream — it is a reality. In fact, Bitcoin has gained attention from both ordinary people and government entities, and it is here to stay, because its utility is indisputable.
As I speak now, there are over 100,000 merchants in the world who accept Bitcoin as a means of payment for goods and services, and over 5,000 Bitcoin ATMs in the world.
So, the future of Bitcoin is still bright and there are better days ahead.
7. Bitcoin Will Not Survive — Jamie Dimon|2015
“This is my personal opinion, there will be no real, non-controlled currency in the world. There is no government that’s going to put up with it for long … there will be no currency that gets around government controls.”
Jamie Dimon is the CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase (a multinational investment bank). In 2015, Jamie said people are wasting their time with digital currencies such as Bitcoin. Several business leaders have come out to critic bitcoins, but Bitcoin is not going anywhere; it is unlikely that it will technically fail since it has proven itself for a decade now.
And, amazingly, last year J.P. Morgan became the first major bank to launch its own proprietary cryptocurrency — the JPM Coin — for cross-border payments, despite Jamie being a long-term vocal critic of Bitcoin.
8. Former bitcoin companies are erasing their embarrassing ‘bit’s — The Guardian|2015
So spare a thought for the companies scrabbling to jump off the bitcoin ship before it sinks. The currency’s value has been static for months (except for a brief boom and bust in early November when it was caught up in a Chinese ponzi scheme), but perhaps more damningly still, the hype has all but disappeared.
The author of the post states: “As cryptocurrency loses favor, it looks like some companies may be rewriting history to explain away their names” – every time a new technology appears, the media tries to scrutinize it. However, sometimes it provides the wrong information.
The public has always been fixated on Bitcoin because it’s the pioneer of the crypto world, so obviously it is a relentless anomaly that refuses to go away.
9. Bitcoin Is an Implausible Currency — Bloomberg|2017
It’s not competitive as a payment system, so maybe its value is as money. But it makes terrible money.
I think it doesn’t matter if Bitcoin is money or not, what matters is its utility. Bitcoin has several undeniable use cases that it offers to the public and these can’t be compared to fiat currencies.
Bitcoin is actually more mainstream than what people think. It processes over 350,000 transactions in a day.
10. Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme — Yahoo Finance | 2019.
I know exactly what’s there, it’s a ‘Pyramid’ scheme. You only make money based on people who enter after you… It has no real utility in the world. They’ve been trying to create a utility for it for 10 years now, so it’s a solution in search of a problem and it still hasn’t found a problem to solve.
It’s unfair to name Bitcoin as a pyramid scheme because there are no recruitment rewards for introducing a new person to the bitcoin economy. The system has some novelty concepts, such as decentralization and borderless payments that keep attracting new users to the system.
With Bitcoin, rewards are only distributed to bitcoin miners because they provide security and confirm transactions on the blockchain. So, Bitcoin is more like a commodity or a stock share.
You can read more bitcoin obituaries at 99Bitcoins.
