Everything Bitcoin was called that turned out wrong: whats missing from our list

[davis196]

You should've added something about Bitcoin mining polluting the environment. I don't remember any particular insult towards Bitcoin, but I'm sure that the environmentalists have criticized and hated Bitcoin more than once for the "environmental damage" caused by Bitcoin mining.
Another popular criticism was Bitcoin mining "wasting electricity". That electricity could've been used for something productive, instead of mining coins.

[Haunebu]

Did some research and zeroed in on Jack Ma praising the blockchain while speculating that BTC itself could be a bubble.

https://www.financialexpress.com/market/jack-ma-embraces-blockchain-for-ant-financial-but-warns-of-bitcoin-bubble-1219324/

There's also Trump and Musk talking smack about BTC at different timeperiods, but I felt that Jack Ma's bubble statement was more interesting in comparison.

[Catenaccio]

There's also Trump and Musk talking smack about BTC at different timeperiods, but I felt that Jack Ma's bubble statement was more interesting in comparison.

Trump in 2021 called Bitcoin like this "It just seems like a scam". 2 years later when he needed supporters and voters for his Presidential propaganda and President Election in the USA in late 2023, he turned to support and be pro-Bitcoin.

Believe him or not, you can think about possibly conflict of interest but I don't believe all his sayings while with Bitcoin, I believe he already saw huge potential to get richer with Bitcoin. At national administration scale, supporting Bitcoin or not, it's another thing and only Trump can not do everything even if he actually want to do that.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/video/6257768965001

[d5000]

You should've added something about Bitcoin mining polluting the environment.

I know my opinion is a bit unpopular here, but I think in this kind of criticism there is a bit of truth, because Bitcoin mining could be powered with an even higher percentage of renewables / nuclear. Today, 60% renewables + nuclear is not a particularly high proportion. If Bitcoin was mined only in a country like Brazil it would have a much more "climate friendly" footprint.

But the variant of this "criticism" I consider definitely wrong was the campaign by Greenpeace "Clean up Bitcoin" ("Change the code, not the climate"), where they called for an introduction of PoS instead of PoW. Somebody should have explained them that PoS is a more traditional system where some trust is required in the nodes you download the blockchain from ("weak subjectivity") and thus the system has different vulnerabilities and is systematically more centralized and less censorship resistant ...

[SeriouslyGiveaway]

I know my opinion is a bit unpopular here, but I think in this kind of criticism there is a bit of truth, because Bitcoin mining could be powered with an even higher percentage of renewables / nuclear. Today, 60% renewables + nuclear is not a particularly high proportion. If Bitcoin was mined only in a country like Brazil it would have a much more "climate friendly" footprint.

Countries have very different energy resources and with different support or anti Bitcoin policies, Bitcoin mining will be able to operate legally, and possible to use more or less climatic friendly energy resources. Bhutan has their national and governmental investment into Bitcoin mining with energy from hydropower, and they have reasons to do that with abundant hydropower in their nation.

Other nations might have less "climatic friendly" energy resources and their governments might be more anti-Bitcoin, and these things are barriers for Bitcoin mining as well as which energy resources to be used.

But the variant of this "criticism" I consider definitely wrong was the campaign by Greenpeace "Clean up Bitcoin" ("Change the code, not the climate"), where they called for an introduction of PoS instead of PoW. Somebody should have explained them that PoS is a more traditional system where some trust is required in the nodes you download the blockchain from ("weak subjectivity") and thus the system has different vulnerabilities and is systematically more centralized and less censorship resistant ...

PoS will make things centralized, and I dislike this proposal. I believe people who are in Bitcoin community a long time enough will know PoW is an important contributor of Bitcoin decentralization, and they also dislike PoS proposal.

End the fud: PoW vs PoS?

[matrixx]

What I'm asking for:
1. Claims we missed, especially from 2010 to 2014.
3. The ones that were partly right. Exchanges do collapse, privacy is worse than the marketing, mining did centralize for a stretch.

One big one from 2014 that come to mind is the GHash.io 51% mining takeover panic.

Back in June 2014 when GHash.io crossed 51% of the network hashrate, tech media ran headlines declaring that Proof of Work was broken and Bitcoin's decentralization was officially dead. Alex Hern at The Guardian published "Bitcoin currency could have been destroyed by '51%' attack" on June 16, 2014, and Leonid Bershidsky at Bloomberg followed up on July 17 with "Trust Will Kill Bitcoin", arguing that Bitcoin still relied on human trust just like fiat.

What makes this claim fit your list so well is that the danger was partly real. A single pool actually did touch the 51% threshold for a brief window. But instead of an attack or a total collapse, game theory held up—individual miners realized that killing confidence would crater the value of their own coins, so they voluntarily pointed hash away from GHash and the pool ended up capping itself. Definitely one of the best examples of a structural critique that looked fatal on paper but worked itself out through economic incentives.

[5W-KILO]

I can remember in 2021, my family members calling Bitcoin a "burble waiting to get burst" and after that the whole crypto space started to pump massively in January and February of 2021 and later the bear market came then they started to rejoice.

They thought it was the final for Bitcoin and 2022 bear market proved that right for a while, they have no idea how crypto market works, and then Trump came into the scene, started talking about Bitcoin and they kept shut.

It was at that moment they knew they have messed up, there is a saying that if you can't beat them you will have to join them, they don't understand this method, they choose to wait and see you fail.

[L E G E N D A R Y]

If you look closely, you’ll realize that the reason why some labels probably became misleading was simply because technology changed after the claim was made. For example, “never usable for a coffee” depends heavily on which part of Bitcoin’s infrastructure the person is actually talking about and when. So that means the date is equally very important, because a statement can actually sound reasonable at one stage, but suddenly becomes outdated and irrelevant after a few years as the ecosystem develops.