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âThe horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty â a fad.â So scolded a bank president in 1903, warning Henry Fordâs lawyer not to invest in the motor company. 80 years later, inventor Marty Cooper predicted: âCellular phones will absolutely not replace local wire systems.â And, 30 years after that, a string of âexpertsâ emerged to dismiss the latest tech â Bitcoin.
See also:Â Heâs Back! Jamie Dimonâs JP Morgan Chase Ponders Bitcoin Futures Move
The Dumbest Bitcoin Predictions Ever Made
Every disruptive piece of technology attracts its haters and sceptics. Some people just donât get it, some donât want to, and others dismiss it out of self-interest. Just this week, former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Al Greenspan declared: âBitcoin is not a rational currency.â This is coming from the same man who, in 2011, said: âThe United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money.â
Sometimes, there simply arenât enough reaction faces. As bitcoin nears the end of a record-breaking year, it seems an appropriate time to revisit the tidings of bitcoin naysayers who were forced to eat their words. Take out the popcorn and get comfortable as we dive into the direst bitcoin pronouncements ever uttered.
2011
âSo, Thatâs the End of Bitcoin Thenâ â Forbes. The publication continues:
[Bitcoins are] not liquid, nor a store of value, as the price collapse shows and if theyâre none of those things then theyâll not be a great medium of exchange either as who would want to accept them?âŠItâs difficult to see what the currency has going for it.
2013
âThe Bitcoin Is Dying. Whatever.â â Gizmodo Australia. It reads:
So Bitcoin, weâll remember the good times, like the time that one guy who got heat stroke while mining Bitcoins. Or the time there was the great heist caper that shut down trading site Mt Gox for an entire day. The lulz were abundant. But frankly, itâs time for you to go. Farewell.
Wired: â[Bitcoinâs] volatility and built-in irreversibility will doom it to the ash-heap of history.â
Business Insider: âBitcoin is a joke.â
âBeware of This Insidious New Currency Scamâ â Salon
âBitcoin is a really bad idea. Promoting digital currency is like promoting digital food; it will leave you empty and youâll wonder why you ever thought it was a good idea.â â Zdnet.com
2014
2014 was peak stupidity for writing off bitcoin, as the following soundbites show.
Jason Hoffman, Ericsson vice president: Bitcoinâs blockchain is a good strategy to emulate if âyou throw away the actual currency part of it.â
âBitcoin is neither a relatable store of value nor a helpful unit of account.â â Reuters
John Crudele, New York Post columnist:
Bitcoins are a fake currency that is nothing more than a confidence scheme. Their only value is that there are a few layers of gullible people who are willing to accept them as some form of payment. Eventually this confidence game will end. Go out and buy Beanie Babies instead. At least you can take them to bed at night.
Â
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they beg for bitcoin.
Valley News:
Anyone who thinks that Bitcoin will triumph has to believe that it will succeed where earlier generations of private currencies failed â that Bitcoin will, improbably, manage to overthrow more than a centuryâs worth of accumulated state power, jealously guarded and ruthlessly enforced. Thatâs a preposterous fantasy â and a dangerous one, if youâre an investor.
âIf Bitcoin was allowed to proliferate as a currency it would produce greater economic uncertainty, reduced trade and lower individual standard of living.â â Business Insider.
Ex-Federal Reserve Bank examiner, Mark T. Williams: Bitcoin âwill trade for under $10â by June 2014.
Commodities trader Dennis Gartman: Bitcoin is ânothing more than a scam of the first order.â (Three years later and heâs still writing off bitcoin.)
Blogger John Gruber: âIn lieu of Bitcoin, Iâve stuck to flushing $100 bills down a toilet. Iâm deep in the red, but at least I understand exactly whatâs going on.â
Washington Post: âBitcoin isnât a currency. Itâs a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another.â
âChief Investment Strategistâ
Warren Buffett:
âYouâll be much better off owning productive assets over the next 50 years than you will be holdingâŠbitcoins. Itâs not a currency. I wouldnât be surprised if it wasnât around in the next 10-20 years.â
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NYU economist and professor Nouriel Roubini:
To anyone seeking an excuse for more popcorn, all of Roubiniâs tweets regarding bitcoin are delicious.
2015
âBitcoins are going to be another dot com bubble burst and they will crash to $1 per bitcoin by the end of 2016.â â r/Markmywords
âBitcoin has peaked and is very unlikely to escalate significantly in value againâŠItâs basically an elaborate Ponzi scheme.â â Forbes
Jamie Dimon:
There will be no real, non-controlled currency in the world. There is no government thatâs going to put up with it for longâŠthere will be no currency that gets around government controls.
âThe blockchain does not solve a single problem that anyone, anywhere has â unless you are a criminal and need an anonymous currency to pay or be paid.â â PYMNTS.com
Plata.com:
Bitcoin is a non-thing. It will never be able to have an independent, sovereign value on its own, because it is a non-thingâŠthe Bitcoin is, in fact if not in intention, a fraud; it is an attempt to muscle-in on the enormous scam of universal fiat money, which is a curse upon mankind. And as a scam, it will go to the dustbin of history.
The Guardian: âSpare a thought for the companies scrabbling to jump off the bitcoin ship before it sinks. The currencyâs value has been static for months (except for a brief boom and bust in early November when it was caught up in a Chinese ponzi scheme), but perhaps more damningly still, the hype has all but disappeared.â
2016
Taavet Hinrikus, CEO of 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.
âR.I.P. Bitcoin. Itâs time to move on.â â Washington Post
âBitcoin was supposed to change the world. What happened?â â Vox
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2017
âBitcoin is a fraud. Itâs worse than tulip bulbs.â â Jamie Dimon
Two months later: Jamie Dimonâs JP Morgan Chase & Co is âlooking at business opportunities in the planned bitcoin-futures marketâ.
Whatever 2018 brings for bitcoin, itâs sure to be filled with more luminaries writing off the unstoppable digital currency. See you in 12 monthsâ time for more popcorn, schadenfreude, and sensible chuckles.
Do you think haters will learn to hold their tongues in 2018, or is bitcoin in line for more apocalyptic pronouncements? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock.
Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency that enables near-instant, low-cost payments to anyone, anywhere in the world. Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority: transaction management and money issuance are carried out collectively by the network. Read all about it at wiki.Bitcoin.com.
The post 30 People Who Were Really Wrong About Bitcoin appeared first on Bitcoin News.
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