One I remember, in particular from the 2016-18 era when altcoins had their first major boom, is "obsolete". There was a time where several journalists wrote that Bitcoin was too slow, too expensive (regarding fees) and too conservative, and that in a few years (or even a few months) it would be "flipped" by Ethereum or another altcoin.
Did some research and zeroed in on Jack Ma praising the blockchain while speculating that BTC itself could be a bubble.
These two belong together and I had neither. "Obsolete" gets its own entry, and so does "blockchain, not Bitcoin," with Jack Ma in 2018 and the NYT piece as the receipts. They're also the easiest kind to check, since a prediction that something will be overtaken within a few years comes with its own deadline. d5000, if the Sascha Lobo article ever turns up I'd like it, a well-informed tech writer picking Hashgraph in 2017 is a better example than another columnist who never looked.
He made fun of Bitcoin in May of 2018 on CNBC's Squawk Box calling it "pure 'greater fool theory' type of investment." He even added that he'd short it if there was an easy way to.
That's the dated source the greater fool entry was missing. Somebody on the Reddit thread raised the label yesterday but with no name attached. Gates, CNBC, 7 May 2018, two days after Buffett's rat poison line at the same Berkshire weekend. If you can find the Medalla interview I'll add him too, a central bank governor saying it is worth more than another investor saying it.
Also I think Mike Hearn's thing requires a separate field not be part of other "bitcoin is dead" nonsense. Because this one was significant. He was one of the core developers of bitcoin and he sold all his bitcoins (in 2016 I think) and went viral by saying "bitcoin is a failed experiment".
Agreed, and he's moving. January 14, 2016, at about $430. He won't sit with the columnists. The chapter has a second half for claims tied to a specific event, "it can't come back from this," and Hearn goes there under the block size fight, because he wasn't wrong that there was a real problem. He was wrong that it couldn't be resolved. We covered how it was in the
block size war chapter.
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.
Good one, and it goes in the same section as Hearn. It's also the right shape for the list because the danger was real, one pool did touch a majority, and what fixed it was miners leaving. I'll check the Guardian and Bloomberg pieces against the dates you gave before they go in.
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. [...] But the variant of this "criticism" I consider definitely wrong was the campaign by Greenpeace "Clean up Bitcoin" ("Change the code, not the climate")
It's on the list as "boiling the oceans," with the Newsweek headline from December 2017 that had mining using all the world's energy by 2020. But d5000's split is the right way to write the entry and I'm going to use it. The general criticism is partly true and our
energy chapter says so. The Greenpeace campaign is the version that was wrong, because it asked for a change that would have removed the thing the energy is buying.
Trump in 2021 called Bitcoin like this "It just seems like a scam".
He goes in with Dimon under people who reversed, with the two dates and the two quotes and no commentary. Whether any of them changed their minds or just their interests isn't something the chapter can know.
How about Peter Schiff's
Schiff gets the same treatment as Buffett, a run of dated quotes rather than one line, because he's been at it longer than anyone. What I'm short of is the early ones. If anybody has a Schiff call from 2013 or 2014 with a link, that's what I need.
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.
Yes, and that's a fair correction to how I wrote the first post. "Never usable for a coffee" was a reasonable thing to say in 2015. Every entry will carry its date and say what kind of claim it was, so something that was true when it was said doesn't get scored the same as a prediction that missed.
There was a time that someone told me that bitcoin is not for poor people, because the price is too much
That one is small but it's probably the most common of all of them, and nobody famous said it so it never makes these lists. It'll get a line, pointing at the
units chapter.
You can find many things from these following resources and perhaps will find something you have missed so far.
Thank you, I'll go through all of them, the Thai honey thread especially. uchegod-21, the tax evasion one is covered by a Roubini quote from 2018 that aoluain supplied, the "next Swiss bank account" line.
Same offer as before to everyone quoted here: credit by handle in the chapter unless you'd rather not.
This has turned into a very informative thread, thank you all and keep it coming!!!
