2014

Bitcoin does not yet have enough users to continue its survival. . . . it will go the way of laser discs and eight-track tapes.

After a year of volatile price swings, the data is finally available and obvious enough that the concept of the Bitcoin as a currency is finally starting to fade. . . . the fatal flaw of the Bitcoin is that it is intentionally deflationary.

The part where you run in to trouble is getting governments to accept tax revenue as Bitcoin, because it undermines the national currency, making monetary policy irrelevant. And why would a country do that exactly? Why would they surrender the ability to heal their economy? Sorry to all the believers, but it’s a Libertarian pipe dream that makes absolutely no sense.

Bitcoin is the wrong answer to a good question: what can be done to make the monetary system less crazy? . . . Bitcoin is not over yet. But the pseudo-currency is close enough to collapse to merit an early retrospective. . . . Bitcoin is neither a relatable store of value nor a helpful unit of account.

Sorry, but Bitcoin isn’t the future. If anything, it’s a throwback to an earlier era. . . . Anyone who thinks that Bitcoin will triumph has to believe that it will succeed where earlier generations of private currencies failed — that Bitcoin will, improbably, manage to overthrow more than century’s worth of accumulated state power, jealously guarded and ruthlessly enforced. That’s a preposterous fantasy — and a dangerous one, if you’re an investor.