2012-09-25 futurezone.at - Bitcoins: sex, drugs and contract killers

[julz]

A rather negative piece from Austria  (in German)

Bitcoins: sex, drugs and contract killers

Michael Leitner
2012-09-25

http://futurezone.at/digitallife/11181-bitcoins-sex-drogen-und-auftragsmoerder.php

...
The alternative currency Bitcoin has been praised by many experts to be a fair and transparent alternative to the current monetary system. But now more and more pitfalls are being revealed that could prevent the currency and its concept from being a far-reaching success.

...
Within a few months the value of a Bitcoin at the largest Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox,  shot from one to almost 30 U.S. dollars. The rally, however, on the 16th of June came to an abrupt end. A hacker was able to steal nearly 500,000 Bitcoins and threw more than 100,000 of them on the market. This broke the price massively, at times it was even at 0.01 USD per Bitcoin.
...
Sex, drugs and weapons - the currency of the darknet
...
According to Kay Hamacher, an IT Expert from the Technical University of Darmstadt, the Bitcoin model is in any case, doomed.
The problem: Because Bitcoins are limited to 21 million units, and these, like real money, can be lost, it will eventually result in a bottleneck. "You can talk about the probabilities, but finally Bitcoin will disappear one day."
...

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[Luno]

amazing, I guess this will attract new customers. The related links at the bottom of the article have also only negative laden headlines.

[Gabi]

I tried to comment, but fail is:

[casascius]

According to Kay Hamacher, an IT Expert from the Technical University of Darmstadt, the Bitcoin model is in any case, doomed.
The problem: Because Bitcoins are limited to 21 million units, and these, like real money, can be lost, it will eventually result in a bottleneck. "You can talk about the probabilities, but finally Bitcoin will disappear one day."
...

Yeah, of course, he's right!  Maybe we should make bitcoins divisible and allow for something like 21x10^14 units instead of just 21 million.  Oh wait it already is.

[lonelyminer (Peter Šurda)]

The sad thing is that there is a quite active Austrian Bitcoin association with knowledgeable people, and noone from futurezone thought about contacting them.

Oh and Dr. Hamacher thinks that the loss of Bitcoins follows a linear distribution (say every year 1 million Bitcoins are lost, and in year 22 there would be no Bitcoins left). I find it highly doubtful that any economic phenomena follow a linear distribution.

[n8rwJeTt8TrrLKPa55eU]

Hitler was born in Austria.

[lonelyminer (Peter Šurda)]

Also Arnold Schwarzenegger

[herzmeister]

Austrians are always a bit behind. 

They're now where the rest of the world was last year, with the generally negative perception of Bitcoin (which became better this year).

[Piper67]

The best things the Austrians ever did was to convince the world that Hitler was German and Beethoven Viennese 

[AndrewBUD]

it has been well over a year since btc was @ $30usd .....?

[Spekulatius]

[lonelyminer (Peter Šurda)]

I attempted to correct some of the inaccuracies, I think it worked a bit.

[wareen]

Austrians are always a bit behind.  

They're now where the rest of the world was last year, with the generally negative perception of Bitcoin (which became better this year).

Well, yes and no - we did have some positive media coverage last year and we even gave a fairly good interview to one of our national radio stations, but quality-journalism is hard to find these days. I guess it's not so different from other countries, where journalists are mostly underpaid and have to fight for attention in a world of increasing sensory overload and such headlines are a direct consequence.

That said, this article is really a very bad example of biased journalism and I wonder why some people write about Bitcoin as if it was a major personal insult.
Unfortunately, with such bad press, future reporters have no shortage of other negative articles and statements to cite from, making their work seem even more legitimate to the casual reader. Having even academic people like Kay Hamacher making such blatantly flawed analyses does not really help the case either

[Akka]

Great, this bullshit is the first I see when I google news bitcoin 

[herzmeister]

Well, yes and no -

at least you aren't, as a millionaire 

[Junko]

Wow, so Bitcoin can be used for the same bad things that regular money can and already has been being used for since the invention of money? Amazing.

[wareen]

I attempted to correct some of the inaccuracies, I think it worked a bit.

I just read it - great job!
The author even answered you directly and seemed to genuinely care about your critique!

I'm glad to see such knowledgeable contributions from the academic world like your thesis - hopefully they will help journalists to represent Bitcoin in a more balanced way in the future.

[lonelyminer (Peter Šurda)]

I just read it - great job!

Thanks, though I think I need some exercise in German, I'm not so fluent anymore, my English is better at the moment.

The author even answered you directly and seemed to genuinely care about your critique!

Ah, so it was the author? I wasn't sure.

I'm glad to see such knowledgeable contributions from the academic world like your thesis - hopefully they will help journalists to represent Bitcoin in a more balanced way in the future.

Well, describing my work as belonging to the academic world is a bit excessive. I'm more like an engineer that likes to point out when others are wrong. Kind of a stubborn hacker-troll .