Bitcoin Dead? 

10 times Bitcoin was declared dead… and survived

Over the years, many so-called experts have declared Bitcoin dead in the mainstream media. According to the latest numbers of 99Bitcoins, Bitcoin has died 347 times already if we have to believe all the reports in the last 9 years. Yet BTC is still alive and kicking. These are 10 times Bitcoin was declared dead… and obviously survived.

2010: ‘Why Bitcoin can’t be a currency’ (The Underground Economist)

The first death certificate for Bitcoin was written in 2010, in the early days of BTC, on the blog ‘The Underground Economist’. The blogger wrote an article with the title ‘Why Bitcoin can’t be a currency’, explaining that ‘the only thing that’s even kept Bitcoin alive this long is its novelty. Either it will remain a novelty forever or it will transition from novelty status to dead faster than you can blink.’

According to the blogger, Bitcoin would fail because it could not deal with demand. ‘It lacks any mechanism for dealing with fluctuations in demand. Increasing demand for Bitcoin will cause prices in terms of Bitcoin to drop, while decreasing demand will cause them to rise.’ To which the Bitcoin community responded on Bitcointalk: ‘OMG I’m selling all my gold as it does not respond to demand!’

Ironically, the blog is now dead.

2011: ‘So, That’s the End of Bitcoin Then’ (Forbes)

In 2011, Forbes was one of the first mainstream media declaring Bitcoin dead. Forbes wrote an article that ‘this looks like it’s the end of Bitcoin’ after the price dropped from $17 to ‘pennies in a matter of minutes’ on Mt. Gox, after which the later hacked exchange released a statement blaming the crash on a ‘compromised user account’. The problem: someone tried to sell more Bitcoin than the market could absorb.

Following the event, Forbes wrote that ‘No, this doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the Bitcoin experiment, but it’s a pretty good indication of it. For there are certain things that we want from a currency. A medium of exchange, a store of value, we’d also like to it be liquid and security is important as well.’

‘True, Bitcoin does still offer anonymity: but then so do copper sheets to cowrie shells via butter, salt, gold, silver and even pieces of paper with Dead Presidents on them. It’s difficult to see what the currency has going for it.’

2012: ‘EXPIRED: Bitcoin’ (Wired)

In 2012, Wired took a swing at Bitcoin in its ‘EXPIRED’ section, stating that ‘At the height of its popularity, Bitcoin was trumpeted as a viable alternative currency for the internet age, a monetary system engineered to prevent theft, gaming, and criminalization. Then came the malware, the black market, the legal ambiguities and The Man. Today, you can’t even use it to buy Facebook stock.’

2013: ‘Bitcoin Is A Joke’ (Business Insider)

Business Insider was the next to attack Bitcoin (‘Bitcoin Is A Joke’) after BTC reached a new all-time high by the end of 2013. Bubble talk was back on the table after Bitcoin surged from $100 to $260 in a matter of weeks.

BI wrote: ‘Bitcoin? Nada. There’s nothing keeping it being a thing. If people lose faith in it, it’s over. Bitcoin is fiat currency in the most literal sense of the word.’

The author of the article Joe Weisenthal did say: ‘I want to be clear that saying something is a bubble is not saying it will go down. It could go to $500 or $1000 or $10,000. That’s the nature of manias.’

‘But make no mistake, Bitcoin is not the currency of the future. It has no intrinsic value. (…) The dotcom bubble crashed a bunch of times on its way up. Then one day it ended. The same will happen with this.’

2014: ‘Bitcoin revealed’: a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another’ (Washington Post)

In 2014, it was the Washington Post’s turn to slander Bitcoin, calling it a Ponzi scheme that did not distribute the wealth in the world in a more honest way, but actually transferred the wealth ‘from one libertarian to another’. ‘If Bitcoin were a currency, it’d be the worst-performing one in the world, worse even than the Russian ruble. But Bitcoin isn’t a currency. It’s a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another. . . . But in the long run, we’re all dead, and Bitcoin might be too.’

2015: ‘Bitcoin is a waste of time’ (Jamie Dimon)

Years before launching JPM Coin, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon starting speaking out in a negative way about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency – something that didn’t change ever since. In 2015, Dimon stated at the Fortune Global Forum that Bitcoin is ‘a waste of time’ and that 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.’

2016: ‘Is Bitcoin doomed?’ (Newsweek)

In a Newsweek article in 2016, quantum computer expert Andersen Cheng stated that ‘Bitcoin will expire the very day the first quantum computer appears.’ Professor Martin Tomlinson added to that: “It would take just a minute or two. So by learning all the private keys using a quantum computer, you’d have access to all the bitcoin that’s available.”

“It will be doomed”, Tomlinson said. “Any disruption needs the consensus of the Bitcoin community and that can’t even be realized when it comes to the transaction limit problem. That’s a relatively simple problem compared to redoing the entire digital signature method. It’s probably impossible, so Bitcoin has had it.’

2017: ‘Well, farewell, Bitcoin, we hardly knew ye’ (Bloomberg)

In 2017, at the height of the Bitcoin bull run, Bloomberg published an opinion piece by Megan McArdle, who stated that ‘Bitcoin is an implausible currency’. It’s not competitive as a payment system, so maybe its value is as money. But it makes terrible money’, McArdle stated on Bloomberg.

In the article McArdle is comparing Bitcoin to gold. ‘A USB drive is easier to steal, or lose, than a truck full of gold bullion. Moreover, gold does have actual uses: It is pretty to look at, and it also has some industrial applications, which means its value will never fall to zero, as bitcoin’s might. And bitcoin is a good bit more volatile than gold, which means that you could suddenly discover that your carefully smuggled savings are worth very little when you need them. Even if “when you need them” is “next week.”’

‘Is Bitcoin money, or a payment system? Mounds, or Almond Joy? Great taste, or less filling? If Bitcoin is good at both those jobs, then it’s probably got a bright future. If it’s good at neither of them … well, farewell, Bitcoin, we hardly knew ye.’

2018: ‘I come to bury Bitcoin, not to praise it’ (Paul Donovan/CNBC)

In 2018, UBS chief economist Paul Donovan came to the CNBC studios ‘to bury Bitcoin’… Yeah he actually thought he could. “I come to bury Bitcoin, not to praise it. These things were never going to be currencies. They’re not going to be currencies at any point in the future,” he said on CNBC’s “Fast Money.” “They’re fatally flawed.”

“The main problem with these things, the absolute fundamental flaw, is that they’re never going to be a store of value,” he said. “Every economist knows the store of value is about balancing supply and demand, and with cryptocurrencies, you cannot control the supply in response to the drop in demand.”

Keep digging that grave, Paul.

2019: ‘Bitcoin is a delusion’ (Warren Buffett)

Of course, Warren Buffet had to be included in this list. Buffett has never been a fan of Bitcoin and never will. In 2019, in an interview with CNBC (…again?) Buffet said that ‘Bitcoin has no unique value at all. It is a delusion, basically. It attracts charlatans. If you do something phony by going out and selling yo-yos or something, there’s no money in it — but when you get into Wall Street, there’s huge money.”

Almost 350 times Bitcoin has been declared dead, and every time Bitcoin survived, no matter what happened, or what was being said. Now if you ask yourself in this crypto winter if Bitcoin is dead, think about all the people who thought and said this before. Bitcoin is still alive, stronger than ever, and here to stay.