Bitcoin Obituaries

On the one hand, it is a truly revolutionary technology, but, on the other, it is a truly useless one so far. Which is to say it is a virtual currency nobody buys thing with… What is the problem then? Well, the same thing that makes the miners want to get bitcoins also makes nobody..

Is bitcoin set to become “gold 2.0?” Answer: Absolutely not — and here’s why. Currencies can serve at least two functions: a medium of exchange or a store of value. People will take dollars as payment for their labor, because they know they can use those dollars to buy groceries or pay the rent or..

Bruce Flatt, chief executive officer of Brookfield Asset Management Inc., says bitcoin has no intrinsic value and doesn’t interest Canada’s largest alternative asset manager. Brookfield’s definition of “intrinsic value” is based on an asset’s cash flow or the ability to convert the asset into a cash-flow stream, Flatt said. “There are some assets in the..

While the recent surge in bitcoin price is good news for many bitcoin investors, it should be seen as a death sentence for the functional value of bitcoin. As the price continues to reach new record levels, it becomes obvious that bitcoin is useless for anything else than speculation. Compared to government issued currencies, bitcoins..

While bitcoin is real and very alive today, there is reason to believe its success would be its own demise. Our analysis suggests that either bitcoin remains volatile and investors eventually walk away — or bitcoin stabilizes and becomes widely popular, only to die a slow, painful death by a thousand regulatory cuts across a..

At its root, bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme — it will stay afloat only as long as enough people buy the fiction that bitcoin represents real value. All other cyber currencies are Ponzi schemes, too, except, arguably, initial coin offerings (ICOs) funding actual business start-ups. While the forthcoming bitcoin bust will not end well for..

Investors are drunk on the Kool-Aid that is bitcoin, according to veteran market forecaster Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital. “Ultimately, I think bitcoin has really no value,” said Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital. “In the market, it has plenty of value. As long as there’s buying, there’s value. But when the buying..

“Bitcoin is more like a limited edition toy than an investment,” says Zac Bissonette, the author of The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute. “It has no value except for the sheer hope that it will one day become valuable”. The economist, who has a background in investment consultancy,..

One wonders where the money is coming from? Bitcoin’s genesis, at least in part, driven by the great financial crisis (GFC) and the failed old world financial system, its hyper inflation may be fuelled by a decade of quantitative easing, low interest rates and investment return, current market confidence (the banks are recapitalised and the..

Pichet, a professor at the Kedge Business School in France, makes a familiar argument that bitcoin is a bubble waiting to burst, just like the tulip mania in the 1600s and the internet bubble of 2000. Éric Pichet in the French newspaper La Tribune (French) predicts that bitcoin will die of grand theft, a hack..

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told CNBC on Wednesday that bitcoin reminds him of currency issued during America’s Colonial past that ultimately proved worthless. “Humans buy all sorts of things that aren’t worth anything,” Greenspan said. “People gamble in casinos when the odds are against them. It has never stopped anybody.” Eulogy made by Alan Greenspan Source

On Monday the chairman of France’s market regulator denounced Bitcoin as a “dangerous illusion” and a tool for criminals. “It’s a way to purchase illicit goods, it’s a way to launder illicit income, it’s a way to develop and pay for cybercrimes and it’s a pure empty commodity,” Robert Ophele, chairman of the Autorite des Marches..