Looks like the mainstream establishment media has gone into full-spin anti-bitcoin mode! Would love to hear your comments on this article published just 2 hours ago!
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"Not long ago, venture capitalists were talking about how Bitcoin was going to transform the global currency system and render governments powerless to police monetary transactions. Now the cryptocurrency is fighting for survival. The reality came to light on Jan. 14, when its influential developer, Mike Hearn, declared Bitcoin a failure and disclosed that he had sold all of his Bitcoins. The price of Bitcoin fell 10 percent in a single day on the news, a sad result for those who are losing money on it.
Bitcoin did have great potential, but it is damaged beyond repair. A replacement is badly needed.
Most currency and transaction systems today are opaque, inefficient, and expensive. Take the North American Stock Exchange, the NASDAQ, as an example. It is amongst the most technologically advanced in the world. Yet if I buy or sell a share of Facebook on the NASDAQ, I have to wait several days for the trade to finalize and clear. This is unacceptable; it should take milliseconds.
In Venezuela, citizens wishing to buy anything of value on supermarket shelves wait all day in lines to do so, because hyperinflation causes the paper currencies in their pockets to lose significant value every day. When migrant workers there send money back to their families in places such as Mexico, India, and Africa, they are gouged by money-transfer companies—paying as much as 5–12 percent in fees. And even in the United States, payment processors and credit-card companies collect merchant fees of 1–2.5 percent of the value of every transaction. This is a burden on the economy.
Bitcoin was born with serious flaws. It was unregulated and provided anonymity, so it rapidly became a haven for drug dealers and anarchists. Its price fluctuated wildly, allowing for crazy speculation. And, with the majority of Bitcoin being owned by the small group that started promoting it, it has been compared to a Ponzi scheme. Exchanges built on top of it also had severe security vulnerabilities. And then there were the venture capitalists who got carried away. Several of them purchased considerable coinage and then began to hype it as a powerful disruption that could underpin all manner of financial innovation, from mobile banking to borderless, instant money transfers. They also poured millions of dollars into Bitcoin start-ups hoping to reap even greater fortunes.
But Bitcoin was not ready for primetime. Hearn’s criticism has laid bare the nightmarish reality—a list of negatives that is both long and frightening."
Full Story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/01/19/r-i-p-bitcoin-its-time-to-move-on/~~
I think we need to start taking this media coverage seriously and start demanding that core clean up its act.While employed at Credit Suisse First Boston, the banking firm invested over $150 million dollars on a project Vivek Wadhwa was working on.
