Washington Post: 'R.I.P. Bitcoin. It’s time to move on'

[n2004al]

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!


"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.

It is not the first and for sure it will be not the last. It is sad to see the background and the data of the writer when read what write and what language use for the followers of the bitcoin with a tweet. This kind of people (protecting and put them themselves at the top of the world using big terms like "distinguished" or "Harvard") think and believe for true that have right to tell to everyone what is right and what is wrong or what to do and what to not do. And if someone dare to not follow this Big One think again that has the right to insult him or to disdain it. This language (which only intellectual cannot be classified) become from someone who show clearly that from bitcoin know only the name and this only after the "speach" of Mike Hearn. Make sorrow...

[manki]

A lot of money behind this kind of "news", I'm pretty sure about it. 

[oblomov]

The crowing I have heard about Hearn's article and the subsequent obituaries for BTC have been entirely from two groups of people:

1. Hard Statists (i.e., "moderates", "centrists", or self-identifying leftists) who disapprove of the concept of a stateless currency.
    They think:  If citizens' assets aren't subject to whims of the ruling class, then what's point of letting the people have money to begin with?
    They are OK with extremes of inequality, as long as they get to decide who gets more mazuma than others.
    They can be identified by their derision of bitcoin as a refuge for anarchocapitalist dreamers, tax cheats, and criminals.

2. Soft Statists who may oppose a particular regulation in practice (it hurts business), but not regulation and state control in theory.
    The soft statists usually have a stake in the banking or financial services industry.
    The regulatory apparatus is important to them because it makes possible bailouts/too big to fail, and economic moats that reduce competitive and innovation threats
    This group can be identified by their dismissal of bitcoin as impractical, not backed by the "full faith and credit" of a government, a techie otaku that doesn't make room or money for the
    "right people" such as Jamie Dimon (Harvard Business School, Goldman Sachs, JPMorganChase).

[Paracelsus]

They must talk something different except war..and terrorism..
Bitcoin is just there like The Usual Suspect!

[teddy5145]

A lot of money behind this kind of "news", I'm pretty sure about it. 

And we need to be smart enough to know which one is the news and which one is the "news"
News these days can't be neutral

[DrLove2048]

Human nature is just naturally pessimistic. You will get more views writing about the 'failure' of bitcoin than its small successes.

[wafersticks09]

Its 2016 now folks, after all what happen and going to happen i don't understand why there is still people/person exist who always say bitcoin is dying/died. If they dont believe in bitcoin then get out of btc world as simple as that and not creating drama.

[BitMaxz]

I dont believe that bitcoin will be die because bitcoin is our currency that uses to pay for service or to buy stuffs online.
And also bitcoin is old enough and its hard as steel that the bitcoin will disappear in this year.
I think some altcoin investors want to kill bitcoin because if bitcoin will die the onther coins will rise fast... is just my thoughts

[BayAreaCoins]

"Bitcoin was born with serious flaws.  It was unregulated and provided anonymity"

Sounds decent to me    

[Kakmakr]

I have friends working in the News media industry and they all say the same thing. The editor are told what stories they must push in the media. He or she then instructs the journalists and the photographers to go out and gather the data and compile the story. The editor then decide what goes into the news paper and what not.

Most of the time, these people work on strict deadlines to get the story out, before other competitors and they have to cut corners < poor research / poor editing etc. > This means a lot of, let's call it <Junk> articles gets published and if mistakes and errors happens, they usually just keep quite.

This is possibly a <Junk> article or placed there to push a agenda coming from the shareholders. 

[Oscoda]

Well they got some points. But to call it dead because 1 developers disagrees shows exactly how the media are reporting subjectively about bitcoin.
it's like bitcoin is the enemy.

[mayax]

I have friends working in the News media industry and they all say the same thing. The editor are told what stories they must push in the media. He or she then instructs the journalists and the photographers to go out and gather the data and compile the story. The editor then decide what goes into the news paper and what not.

Most of the time, these people work on strict deadlines to get the story out, before other competitors and they have to cut corners < poor research / poor editing etc. > This means a lot of, let's call it <Junk> articles gets published and if mistakes and errors happens, they usually just keep quite.

This is possibly a <Junk> article or placed there to push a agenda coming from the shareholders. 

same thing with Coindesk.com and other BTC media. They have many interests....

[partysaurus]

Human nature is just naturally pessimistic. You will get more views writing about the 'failure' of bitcoin than its small successes.

This. alot of people want bitcoin to fail not only big banks , people that did not get involved with btc to begin with and now spend their time bashing it hopeing it fail. just asking around my friend circle i can see most people have a negative view of btc. they have never even tryed bitcoins have never bought a bitcoin and they still want it to fail, easier to bash something than trying to understand it. pretty much sum up the country i live in lol.

[Palinanv]

What a hilarious comment. I don't know of Bitcoin ever dying. It is still thriving pretty well. The price keeps increasing and decreasing but it can still be used as a currency without the increase and decrease.

[lumeire]

What a hilarious comment. I don't know of Bitcoin ever dying. It is still thriving pretty well. The price keeps increasing and decreasing but it can still be used as a currency without the increase and decrease.

I see this is an article published in the midst of the blocksize debate. Well, what do we see now, bitcoin is already on the way back to it's value way before the debate issue. While it still isn't fully resolved, I'm pretty sure soon it's gonna be in everyone's backs to move on.

[pereira4]

Hehe, meanwhile Bitcoin is doing nothing but go higher and the software does nothing but getting better with 0.12 around the corner. I wonder how much of an idiot all those guys that follwed Mike Hearn's disgusting FUD are feeling right now, serves them well. Once again, they were all wrong and will be remembered as morons.

[Nomad88]

Hehe, meanwhile Bitcoin is doing nothing but go higher and the software does nothing but getting better with 0.12 around the corner. I wonder how much of an idiot all those guys that follwed Mike Hearn's disgusting FUD are feeling right now, serves them well. Once again, they were all wrong and will be remembered as morons.

Exactly! Best way of finding out how serious a newspaper working is reading about something which you already know and involved a lot. Simply full of b...sh*t. It tells me to question more everything i read on Washington Post.

[twister]

Well they must kill it at least once every month, so that's for January, I think it has died once this month too.

Next obituary scheduled for March.

[Cuidler]

Well they must kill it at least once every month, so that's for January, I think it has died once this month too.

Next obituary scheduled for March.

They giving free advertisement to Bitcoin as well so I appreciate even such articles - only when media stop mentioning Bitcoin, this is when I get worried whats happening with Bitcoin...

[BellaBitBit]

Well they must kill it at least once every month, so that's for January, I think it has died once this month too.

Next obituary scheduled for March.

They giving free advertisement to Bitcoin as well so I appreciate even such articles - only when media stop mentioning Bitcoin, this is when I get worried whats happening with Bitcoin...

Excactly!  Even bad press is good press.  Washington post can revisit this if they like.