Bitcoin Deaths 2016
201623 obituaries
Bitcoin Is A Bubble. It Will Burst On Monday 12 December 2016
“Bitcoin is a bubble that like Tulip, South Sea, Dot.com or Subprime will burst…”
Jiri Kram, Cloud Architect · LinkedIn
Dec 7, 2016 · $764Why This Well-Funded Startup Just Gave Up On Bitcoin
“Circle is bailing on bitcoin altogether. The company announced on Wednesday it is focusing on other things, and that its bitcoin customers can cash out or else transfer their accounts to another company, Coinbase, if they wish to keep buying and selling the cryptocurrency. The move is not entirely surprising as the hype around bitcoin subsided long ago, and the digital currency remains a niche product for speculators or for clandestine online transactions.”
??? · Fortune
Nov 21, 2016 · $737Bitcoin Was Supposed To Change The World. What Happened?
“I think Bitcoin has stalled out,” said Nathaniel Popper, a reporter for the New York Times who wrote a book about Bitcoin in 2014. What went wrong? The Bitcoin community has been hampered by a dysfunctional culture that has grown increasingly hostile toward experimentation. That has made it difficult for the Bitcoin network to keep up with changing market demands.”
Nathaniel Popper, Reporter, The New York Times · Vox
Nov 17, 2016 · $735Circle CEO: Nobody Will Be Using Bitcoin In 5 To 10 Years
“Our view is that we’re still in the really early stages of the technology and its development. It’s highly unlikely that any of us will be using Bitcoin in five or ten years. In the same way that – how many of us use NCSA Mosaic or Netscape Navigator?”
Jeremy Allaire, CEO, Circle · Coin Journal
Nov 3, 2016 · $688Bitcoin's At It Again
“Bitcoin is quickly becoming a thing of the past.”
Christopher Langner, Investment Strategist · Bloomberg
Oct 12, 2016 · $635Is Bitcoin Doomed?
“Bitcoin will expire the very day the first quantum computer appears…. It will be doomed, Tomlinson says. Any disruption needs the consensus of the bitcoin community and that can’t even be realized when it comes to the transaction limit problem. That’s a relatively simple problem compared to redoing the entire digital signature method. It’s probably impossible, so bitcoin has had it.”
Martin Tomlinson, Professor, Plymouth University · Newsweek
Aug 30, 2016 · $576How Bitcoin Was Brought Down By Its Own Potential—And The Banks
“Split by internal divisions while its most useful aspects are harvested by the very financial behemoths it once hoped to destroy, Bitcoin is fast becoming the tech world’s version of Waiting for Godot, wherein a hermetically sealed community squabbles and bickers over arcane points of code and law as their world slowly crumbles around them….Welcome to today’s Bitcoin—a phenomenon so internally focused that its advocates have barely noticed the battle has already been lost.”
Luke Ryan, Tech Writer · Quartz
Aug 25, 2016 · $576The Bitcoin Bros Have Lost
“The cryptoanarchists’ revolution is over. Condolences. The victorious cryptocapitalists’ advice is: Do what your parents did! Get a job, sir, at UBS, Deutshe Bank, Santander or BNY Mellon. Even JPMorgan Chase.”
Jon Shazar, Editor, Deal Breaker · Deal Breaker
Jul 21, 2016 · $665Why Ethereum Succeeded Where Bitcoin Failed
“The deadlock between competing corners of the Bitcoin community when it comes to hard forking, in contrast, spells doom for the currency, according to Tual. “As long as that’s true, Bitcoin will never evolve, and it will die, because what doesn’t evolve dies.”
Stephan Tual, Developer, DAO · Vice.com
Jul 7, 2016 · $640Bitcoin’s Rallying Again—But Isn’t Getting Much Attention Anymore
“But the rest of the world appears to have lost interest. That’s not great for the long-term use of bitcoin and the fans who want to see it become a widely-used medium of exchange. With the currency currently dependent on notoriously-fickle Chinese retail investors, they would surely swap a gain in global popularity over a short-term rally in value.”
Jon Sindreu, Writer, Wall Street Journal · WSJ
May 21, 2016 · $443Bitcoin May Be Failing, But The Technology Behind It Will Live On
“The reasons for Bitcoin’s failure are many, including poor governance, a lack of technological infrastructure and infighting within its community. Besides, as I noted in my previous article, the fact that sovereign governments have the power to tax in their own currencies always made a Bitcoin takeover unlikely.”
Greg Satell, Entrepreneur · Forbes
Apr 19, 2016 · $436‘Bitcoin Is Dead,’ Says Prominent Fintech Exec
“If you ask Taavet Hinrikus, CEO of international-payments app TransferWise, “Bitcoin, I think we can say, is dead. There is no traction, no one is using bitcoin. The bitcoin experiment, I think we can say, is over.”
Taavet Hinrikus, CEO, TransferWise · Yahoo
Mar 26, 2016 · $4171,000 Bitcoin Wallets Won't Replace One Financial Revolution
“At this point in the bitcoin lifecycle, the fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) and naysaying we’ve been hearing is mostly true. The network is abysmally slow. The use cases are half-baked and consumers will receive no implicit benefit from bitcoin over, say, swiping their Visa card. The bitcoin 1.0 experiment is, in short, over.”
John Biggs, CEO, Freemit · CoinDesk
Mar 8, 2016 · $412Performing An Autopsy On The Bitcoin
“The best analogy, although not perfect, for the demise of bitcoin vs. Ethereum and the other unlimited blockchain technologies being developed for commercial application is that of the experience of digital audio tapes (DATs) vs. the compact disk technology of the mid-1980s.”
Roger Arnold, Professor · TheStreet
Mar 7, 2016 · $413Death Sentence For The World’s Most Popular Cryptocurrency
“Bitcoin will soon be dead, claims David Yermack, chairman of the Finance Department at NYU’s Stern School of Business. He blames the democratic process of decision-making in the Bitcoin community for the cryptocurrency’s problems.”
David Yermack, Chairman of Finance department, NYU Stern · Cointelegraph
Mar 6, 2016 · $405Dumb Investment Of The Week: Bitcoin Investment Trust
“Bitcoins are a digital Ponzi scheme, not a digital cryptocurrency. Investors would be wise to steer clear of bitcoins and any other digital currencies.”
Ben Strubel, Wealth Manager · Seeking Alpha
Mar 4, 2016 · $408The Crisis In Bitcoin And The Rise Of Blockchain
“Still, based on recent developments, a bitcoin resurgence looks like a long shot. When the final history of bitcoin is written, the currency itself is likely to be just a colorful footnote in the tale of the emergence of a powerful new blockchain technology.”
Jeff John Roberts, Staff Writer, Fortune · Fortune
Mar 2, 2016 · $422The Dream Of Buying A Coffee With Bitcoin Is Dying, If It’s Not Already Dead
“There was a time when believers in bitcoin, the virtual currency backed by math instead of any government, thought that it might one day replace cash as a relatively anonymous way to pay for everything from groceries to your morning coffee. Now, that dream might be smack dab in the midst of crashing down, a function of the currency’s code playing out. At stake is nothing less than two competing visions for the future of bitcoin itself.”
Peter Todd, Bitcoin Developer · Vice
Feb 21, 2016 · $439Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live The Blockchain
“Do not confuse Ethereum with Bitcoin. Bitcoin was never a viable blockchain platform for commerce. Ethereum is. I’ll not address here why Bitcoin is not viable…”
Roger Arnold, Professor · TheStreet
Feb 20, 2016 · $437The Decline Of Bitcoin Shows You Can't Engineer Past Government
“…the Bitcoin failure does illustrate that human institutions must have politics in addition to technical expertise. Try to engineer around politics, and it will flood back in the most atavistic and unscrupulous forms.”
Ryan Cooper, National Correspondent, The Week · The Week
Feb 19, 2016 · $420R.I.P. Bitcoin. It’s Time To Move On.
“Let’s also bear in mind what it is that makes some venture capitalists Bitcoin zealots: pure greed. That is the reason clearest to me for Bitcoin’s failure. Intended as a level playing field and a more efficient transaction system, the Bitcoin system has deteriorated into a fight between interested parties over a pool of money. In the beginning, Bitcoin was a noble experiment. Now, it is a distraction. It’s time to build more rational, transparent, robust, accountable systems of governance to pave the way to a more prosperous future for everyone.”
Vivek Wadhwa, Professor, Carnegie Mellon · The Washington Post
Feb 14, 2016 · $407The Resolution Of The Bitcoin Experiment
“The fundamentals are broken and whatever happens to the price in the short term, the long term trend should probably be downwards. I will no longer be taking part in Bitcoin development and have sold all my coins.”
Mike Hearn, Engineer · Mike Hearn
Feb 9, 2016 · $373Nick Weaver On Why You Should Sell Your Bitcoin
“Nick walks Ben through what exactly Bitcoin is, answering whether the platform is really a financial opportunity of historic proportions, the massive criminal problem law enforcement officials have suggested, or something else entirely: a waste of everyone’s time and money. He also outlines some of the design flaws he sees in Bitcoin and why those flaws, which many in the Bitcoin community view as important features, will actually lead to the platform’s eventual downfall.”
Nicholas Weaver, Professor, UC Berkeley · The Lawfare Podcast