Bitcoin Obituaries

And so the whole bitcoin system eventually becomes a house of cards, and anything – a scandal, a government attack, whatever – could trigger a loss of confidence leading to a run that brings it all down. . . . There will be a stampede for the exit, the price of bitcoin will drop to its intrinsic value – zero – and the system will collapse. The only question is when.

Bitcoin is not [the future]. It is a step along the way and will eventually disintegrate. . . . As a currency [Bitcoin] is almost negligible against anything. It can’t stand toe-to-toe with the Cuban Peso. . . . With Bitcoin the pretend currency, what you see is not what you get.

With only about 13 million Bitcoins in circulation and the final number capped at 21 million, the supply is too limited for them to serve as a viable currency. . . . There will always be a place for Bitcoin and its ilk somewhere in the bowels of the Internet, but the cryptocurrency will never challenge the dollar as a medium of exchange.

We need to consider the distinct possibility that Bitcoin is dying. A star gone supernova. Something will be there for a while, but it will never be what it could have been. . . . The big players didn’t get in, and now they won’t. Nobody wants to bet on a loser, which Bitcoin has been over the past few months, unequivocally.

We’re going to stick our neck out at this stage and call this the end of Bitcoin. . . . We’re sure we may still see a few deep pocketed VCs or “believers” throw more money at defending the dream, but chances are we’ve now gone through the exponential break point. Time and money would probably be better spent trying to pump up Bitcoin V.2.

Unfortunately, bitcoin is doomed to fail, it appears as though Bitcoin is not as secure as once thought. Just a few weeks ago, it was announced that Mt. Gox, once one of the largest global Bitcoin exchanges, went bankrupt.

In general, [Gina] Sanchez sees no reason for investors to trade their dollars for Bitcoin. “Bitcoin as a currency doesn’t make any sense,” she says.

This combination of encryption, mining, and decentralized verification makes Bitcoin potentially powerful and difficult to control, but governments do have tools at their disposal that could make it all but impossible for Bitcoin to become widely adopted. . . . And so Bitcoin may very well die.

Bitcoin is not a currency. . . . There’s nothing that Bitcoin allows anyone to do that they can’t already do in the regular banking system.

Neither Satoshi Nakamoto nor Bitcoin ever stood any chance of operating outside the bounds of conventional society. There will be regulation, there will be consumer protection, there will be rules and taxes, and criminal prosecutions for those who break the law. Bitcoin isn’t cyberpunk fantasy and it isn’t a Thomas Pynchon novel. It’s dull. The thrill is gone. And that’s why people are so mad.

Opinions are still divided, but the evidence that Bitcoin is doomed to failure piles up almost every day. . . . Of course, we Bitcoin doomsayers have been waiting for the bubble to pop for some time now. We also tend to think that every new drop is a sign of it’s impending doom. . . . Anyone still willing to bet a Bitcoin on the future of Bitcoin?

All of which is why I’m convinced that while bitcoin (or something like it) is likely to hang around as a niche commodity for certain kinds of gray- and black-market transactions, Mt. Gox pretty much assures that the average consumer will never use it. Because there is no way for you to ever ensure that your bitcoins are completely safe. . . . The speculators may not realize it yet, but you can stick a fork in bitcoin. It’s done.