[2017-12-13] ‘I Was Wrong About Bitcoin’ – NY TIMES Journalist Regrets 2014 OBIT

[ivanpoldark]

“I was wrong about Bitcoin,” the New York Times writes Tuesday as mainstream U-turns on Bitcoin versus Blockchain begin.

‘HOW DID I GET BITCOIN SO SPECTACULARLY WRONG?’

As the leading cryptocurrency continues to hover around all-time highs of $17,000, a sense of regret is increasingly visible in the world’s media after years of calling the imminent ‘death’ of Bitcoin.

“What happened? Why did so many people — myself included — get Bitcoin so spectacularly wrong?” journalist Kevin Roose, who bought and sold Bitcoin for $140 several years ago writes.

The merits of Bitcoin rather than Blockchain or the promise of so-called “distributed ledger technology” have come to the fore in recent months in particular.

While many commentators continue to warn of a price bubble, even the Times now concedes Bitcoin is unlikely to ‘die,’ “even in the event of a crash.”

The tone marks the emergence of what has until now been a rare angle outside cryptocurrency itself: that Bitcoin is in itself a valuable entity, and not a volatile implementation of Blockchain.

Read more: http://bitcoinist.com/wrong-bitcoin-ny-times-regrets/

[Carlton Banks]

Especially for people that don't understand why we use money (like this NYT journalist), raw confidence is the most important part of what makes a given type of money valuable.

e.g. People in Greece or Cyprus don't value Euros in a bank account so highly, because they lost confidence that the banks will actually let them use their own money.

e.g. People in Venezuela or Zimbabwe don't value the Bolivar or the Zim Dollar, because they lost confidence that those paper tokens would be worth working for today to buy things tomorrow.


As soon as people stop using their emotions (i.e. confidence) or appeals to authority to reason with about what's good to use as money, they start choosing something that works as money for them, not for banks or government treasuries.

The power that central banks and governments hold over people when all people use their system is about to go. I hope they don't get too pissed about it, because in the end, they can't win. This will be a genuine revolution in bringing power back to regular people, you know, that elusive quality that voting and governments always promise and never deliver.

[Xynerise]

When will Jamie DEMON accept that he was wrong?

[Guardian.P]

I think that the very fact that NY TIMES admitted its mistake worthy of respect. Few people remembered for so many years this news. There are those who until this time continue to call bitcoin fraud