Bitcoin Obituaries

Yes. It’s not anonymous, it’s not free, it’s not instant, and it’s not convenient. It’s extremely difficult to make money on it, mining is useless, and it’s literally impossible that it will ever go into widespread use. Unless you have an ideological stake in the concept of Bitcoin (or want to buy drugs and/or child porn), there is literally no reason to get involved in it.

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.