Jordan Tuwiner

In this blog post, you’ll learn exactly what bitcoin is, and why I personally am pretty sure it’s doomed to fail. . . . I’m willing to go on record for saying that bitcoin will crash. I’m pretty sure about it. It’s human nature. But here’s what I don’t know – I don’t know when it will crash. Many a people tried to predict when bubbles will end, and most failed miserably. It could take months, even years. In the meanwhile, some people will become rich, and they will call me a fool. But inevitably, it will all end in tears for many. Make sure you’re not one of them.

All of which is to say that doing anything legally with bitcoins — and especially converting them into fiat currencies — is going to get harder and more expensive as governments involve themselves. So hard and so expensive, I’d argue, that any advantages the crypto-currency may have over normal means of exchange, like credit cards, will soon disappear.

The problem, as I see it, is that bitcoin only value is it’s medium of exchange, without any real effort. It is ripe for fraud and manipulation, but what fiat monetary system isn’t. The automatic systems of growth to a finite number of units along with the division into smaller increments are intended to eliminate the problems of past monetary failures but cannot control human nature. As the medium of exchange and perceived value increases, hording will occur.

Bitcoin’s path to the grave has always been fairly clear to me. . . . You can’t seize a Bitcoin like you can seize a dollar, since it’s simply an alphanumeric string. But people need to be able to get their money in and out of the Bitcoin economy in order for it to be a useful alternative. With Mt. Gox and other Bitcoin go-betweens having such a hard time staying afloat, it probably won’t be long before even some Bitcoin diehards consider packing it in.

Everyone agrees that Bitcoin is an amazing proof of concept from a technical standpoint, and has succeeded in raising much awareness for the current flaws of the monetary system. But does Bitcoin really address these flaws? More and more prominent economists and net activists say no.

Ultimately, it’s greed – not a genuine interest in a fundamentally stronger alternative to the status quo – that’s driving Bitcoin prices. So forget Bitcoin being a contender as an alternative currency. At best, it’s a speculative investment.

The very reasons why Bitcoin has taken off today will be major reasons why its value is likely to collapse tomorrow. . . . [dramatic price instability] will cause the ultimate failure of the Bitcoin experiment. . . . Bitcoin will fail because a small number of hoarders control most of the supply.

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.

Beyond the most hardcore users, skepticism has only increased. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote that the currency’s tendency to fluctuate has encouraged hoarding. Stefan Brands, a former ecash consultant and digital currency pioneer, calls bitcoin “clever” and is loath to bash it but believes it’s fundamentally structured like “a pyramid scheme” that rewards early adopters.

So Bitcoin, we’ll remember the good times, like the time that one guy who got heat stroke while mining Bitcoins. Or the time there was the great heist caper that shut down trading site Mt Gox for an entire day. The lulz were abundant. But frankly, it’s time for you to go. Farewell.