obituary

2022 Bitcoin Obituaries List Outpaces First 3 Years, Schiff Says Its ‘Highly Likely Bitcoin Will Crash Below $10K’

09/05/2022 by Idelto Editor

While bitcoin’s price has dropped to levels not seen since January 2022, a number of detractors think bitcoin is on its death bed. Data stemming from the Bitcoin Obituaries list shows the leading crypto has died seven times in 2022, outpacing the first three years of obituaries by year written by bitcoin haters. The last obituary written about bitcoin, opined by the financial journalist, John Plender, claims the leading crypto asset follows the “greater fools” scenario.

Bitcoin Obituaries List in 2022 Surpasses First 3 Years of So-Called Deaths by Year

During the course of Bitcoin’s 13 years, the leading crypto asset has been deemed ‘dead’ or ‘extremely close to death’ by many journalists, economists, analysts, and financial experts. In fact, these types of opinions happen so much, that the team at 99bitcoins.com curated a list called the “Bitcoin Obituaries.” The data from the website shows bitcoin (BTC) has died 447 times since the list was started in 2010. That particular opinion that said bitcoin was dead was written on December 15, 2010 in a post called: “Why bitcoin can’t be a currency.”

As the years continued, bitcoin obituaries were published more often, and during the bull run of 2017, there was 124 bitcoin obituaries added to the web portal. The following year in 2018, bitcoin died 93 times, and in 2019, only 41 deaths were recorded. 2020 saw a smaller number of bitcoin obituaries, as the year only saw 14 listed on the website. In 2021, bitcoin obituaries picked up the pace again, and the leading crypto asset saw 47 obituaries written about its so-called demise.

In 2022, there’s only been seven bitcoin obituaries recorded, but the year is not over and it has outpaced 2010, 2011, and 2012 by the number of yearly obituaries so far. Bitcoin’s price has experienced a downturn in recent weeks, and it’s quite possible even more bitcoin obituaries will be added this year. The last obituary listed on 99bitcoins.com was written by the British financial journalist and columnist for the Financial Times (FT), John Plender. The post listed as: “Bitcoin Will Run Out of Greater Fools,” quotes Plender’s statements from his April editorial. While Plender does not believe in bitcoin, the FT columnist does think blockchain is a powerful technology.

“There can be no denying the astonishing power of blockchain technology, which is here to last,” Plender writes in his FT editorial. “Yet bitcoin is intangible, risky and incomprehensible to most human beings. While it is increasingly gaining acceptance among professional investors, its performance this year makes it hard to believe it can topple gold from its position as the ultimate bolt hole for frightened money.” The financial journalist adds:

As for the important cultural dimension of the argument, bitcoin, frankincense and myrrh lacks a certain ring. The supply of greater fools will in due course run out.

Gold Bug Peter Schiff Says Sub-$10K Bitcoin Prices Are ‘Highly Likely,’ Schiff’s Recent Poll Shows 54% of 37,000 People Say They Will Still HODL

While bitcoin is not dead, the cryptocurrency still has many detractors like the Iranian-American economist Nouriel Roubini, and the economist and gold bug Peter Schiff. The gold bug Schiff believes bitcoin and other crypto assets will keep falling in value. Schiff recently held a poll on Twitter after he said: “If bitcoin breaks decisively below $30K it seems highly likely that it will crash below $10K.” Schiff then added that this means any BTC holder has an important decision to make. “What will you do?” Schiff asked. “You had better decide now so you don’t panic and make a rash spur-of-the-moment decision.”

Schiff then left a poll in his Twitter thread that gives people some choices on what they would do. Choice one was “it won’t break below $30K,” which received 19.6% of the 37,000 votes. 54.5% said they would “HODL,” and 15.5% said they would sell and buy lower. Roughly 10.4% of the surveyed participants said they would sell bitcoin and would not rebuy. In Schiff’s eyes bitcoin will always be dead, and he wholeheartedly believes the precious metal gold will continue to soar.

“The 6% weekend drop in bitcoin was in fact a leading indicator of weakness in other risk assets as stock market futures are trading down 1%,” Schiff said on Monday. “Once investors figure out that Fed rate hikes will result in recession but not a significant reduction in inflation, gold will soar,” the bitcoin detractor added.

What do you think about the Bitcoin Obituaries list hosted on 99bitcoins.com and John Plender’s opinion? What do you think about Peter Schiff’s opinion about bitcoin and his recent Twitter poll? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Contrary To Popular Claims, Bitcoin Is Alive And Well

26/04/2022 by Idelto Editor

Bitcoin critics like to claim its failure every time there is a major price drawdown, but a true representation of the network proves otherwise.

Embittered nocoiners love to cherry-pick moments when Bitcoin doesn’t live up to arbitrary expectations. The joke’s on them as Bitcoin grows ever stronger.

Mainstream economists, pundits, journalists and others trapped in a fiat mindset never miss the opportunity to dig a grave for Bitcoin. And Bitcoin offers plenty of such opportunities: the popular site 99bitcoins tracks “Bitcoin Obituaries,” a repository of more than 400 proclamations of Bitcoin’s death from mainstream news sites, politicians and investors.

Every time the price of bitcoin falls in the midst of a crisis, it is proclaimed a horrible failure. Last time we saw that was in March 2020, when bitcoin fell from $8,000 to around $4,900 in one day. Of course, it then recovered within a month and went on to reach more than $60,000 over the course of the next 20 months, but unsurprisingly, the critics didn’t proclaim Bitcoin a huge success then.

The most recent fall in bitcoin’s price at the outset of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict was no exception to the rule of nocoiners burying Bitcoin at every occasion. We saw a lot of tweets like the one below, accompanied by articles on mainstream media such as CNBC’s “The Case For Bitcoin As ‘Digital Gold’ Is Falling Apart.”

We can always cherry-pick moments like these, when several hours of price action exactly match our bias. I did the same once the price trends of bitcoin and gold reversed:

This is just to point out that judging any asset with the attention span of a goldfish is ludicrous. Every person who takes themselves seriously should consider things with a broader perspective, taking into account both the past price performance and the future value proposition.

Bitcoin’s Value Proposition Doesn’t Fit In One Chart

We’ve all seen the lifetime price chart: the number goes massively up with some bumps on the road. But referring critics only to the price history doesn’t usually work. They could rightly point out the age-old adage that “past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

Full appreciation of Bitcoin takes not only price, but also value into consideration. Price is just a current intersection of market supply and demand, whereas value is needs that are fulfilled, preferences that are met, goals that are reached — all made possible thanks to a particular valuable good, in this case bitcoin.

So what are the needs that Bitcoin helps fulfill?

Bitcoin has two crucial improvements over the current financial system.

“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” – Milton Friedman

First, Bitcoin prevents perpetual inflation. It used to be normal for several generations to buy a can of soda for the same price of 5 cents. After the politicians severed the remaining ties to gold in 1971, the price growth has been rampant: the U.S. price level has grown seven times over the last 50 years. And that’s just in the United States; the inflation has always been even more intense in other parts of the world. As Milton Friedman pointed out, the cause for the perpetual inflation is monetary policy. There is no end to fiat money printing and no hard limit on its issuance. While fiat monetary policy is decided by a small cabal of central bankers based on their subjective view of the economy, Bitcoin’s monetary policy is set in stone: the issuance algorithm is administered by the world’s largest collective super computer and enforced by thousands of independently run nodes all around the world. That is why we can say that bitcoin’s issuance cap of 21 million is credible.

Second, Bitcoin is resistant to financial censorship and has a high degree of fault tolerance. In the past few weeks, we’ve seen a fair share of fiat failing as a reliable medium of exchange. First in Canada, where peaceful protesters and their supporters had their bank accounts frozen, then in Ukraine and Russia, where ATM withdrawals were limited, digital payments were suspended, and bank runs commenced. Bitcoin, on the other hand, isn’t subject to a particular jurisdiction of geographical infrastructure: when China expelled 50% of the global mining hash rate last year, bitcoin users barely noticed. Moreover, when a particular country bans bitcoin, it still thrives underground, with users trading and transacting in a peer-to-peer fashion. When fiat fails as a medium of exchange, bitcoin becomes the best option available to ordinary people.

As we can see in various countries over the world — West and East alike — your savings, your operating capital, your money to feed the family can become inaccessible overnight, without any prior warning. This can result in life-threatening situations. Sufficient cash reserves can prevent your family from going immediately hungry; a sufficient bitcoin stash can help you start anew if your country ceases to be a livable place.

Patience Pays Off

When you understand Bitcoin’s role in the world of ever-more dysfunctional fiat currencies, the short-term dips and alleged failure to thrive in an acute crisis become laughable. Bitcoin proves valuable for those who know why and how to use it. Some may need its long-term store-of-value properties, others may use it to save their lives when the world around them falls apart. These uses may not be intuitive to the ivory tower commenters with cushy jobs and subsidized pension savings plans, but for others they become more and more obvious.

As always, keep in mind that only bitcoin in your exclusive control is truly yours. Bitcoin kept on an exchange isn’t yours; use the best-in-class open-source hardware wallets to maintain your sovereignty in the adversarial environment of today.

This is a guest post by Josef Tětek. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.

Mircea Popescu, Bitcoin Blogger And Provocateur, Reported Dead At 41

28/06/2021 by Idelto Editor

Mircea Popescu’a aggressive brand of unapologetic, uncompromising Bitcoin evangelism made his influence enduring despite his documented instances of sexism and bigotry.

Editor’s note: This article links to blogs that may contain graphic or offensive content.

Where to begin with Mircea Popescu?

A Romanian by residency, provocateur by occupation and the “world’s greatest erotica writer” by proclamation, Popescu leaves behind a legacy strewn across so many blogs and forums it was difficult even during his life to separate the man from the myth. Let’s start then, with what we think we know.

Popescu, rumored to be one of the largest individual bitcoin holders – he has claimed to hold 1 million coins, though more conservative estimates place his holdings in the tens of thousands — is believed to have died at the age of 41, according to a story first surfacing in a Costa Rican news report this week.

While unconvincing on its own – the article mentions only his name – the news has since been affirmed by three different women with whom he was known to have had long-standing, reportedly consensual master-slave relationships. (More on that later).

But if much of the early Twitter rumblings have focused on the size of his rumored holdings (and questions about whether they will wind up for sale), the remainder of this article will focus on Popescu’s controversial legacy in Bitcoin.

One of the technology’s earliest and most ambitious entrepreneurs, Popescu is known for starting MPEx, a self-styled “Bitcoin securities exchange.” Founded in 2012, the website was once an early breeding ground for early Bitcoin IPOs, a practice that earned him the ire of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, an agency whose power he took no shortage of joy in openly undermining.

From there, Popescu would gain notoriety for being among the first to combat scams in public, emerging as a vocal critic of Ripple (the company that launched XRP) as well as Bitcoin Savings & Trust, which was later revealed to have been a pyramid scheme.

The behaviors, then a novelty, would win him an early following and set the tone for what would become Popescu’s signature – an aggressive brand of unapologetic Bitcoin evangelism that made his influence enduring despite documented instances of sexism, bigotry and anti-semitism.

His blog – Trilema.com – contains all of the above. Indeed, there are those who believe Popescu should have no recognition at all in passing due to his long and demonstrated use of hateful language.

Yet, for others, his influence on the Bitcoin conversation is – and was – undeniable.

An avid antagonist of Bitcoin coders, he would do much to undermine early lead developer Gavin Andresen’s claims to any link or lineage to Satoshi Nakamoto, referring to developers of the day collectively as “The Power Rangers” in blog posts that sought to portray their attempts to enhance the code as ego-driven, misguided and generally infantile.

“The self-styled ‘developers’ are by and large a bunch of retarded children looking for ‘sexy projects’ and who knows, maybe if they geek out more they might become spergrockstars and some fattie somewhere is throwing her bra at them,” he wrote in a passage that showcases his crass and evocative writing style.

Though it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where in his sprawling anthology (it was common for him to post between 70 and 100 blog posts a month), therein he articulated some of the earliest and most impassioned arguments for why the description “Bitcoin user” must be confined solely to those who run nodes (and hold a copy of the blockchain).

“Popescu used the metaphor of peasantry and aristocracy to make this distinction clear. People who don’t run their own nodes are peasants, and this is the reality. He put it in terms that everyone can understand,” said Akin Fernandez, founder of Azteco.

At times, he even successfully combined his unconventional sexual lifestyle with his Bitcoin musings in posts that argued for the freedom and ecstasy that could come from submitting to the software’s rules.

Still, all of this could be buried under blogs that could be degrading to others when they weren’t outright violent and offensive. His most memorable act remains putting a bounty out for the death of Bitcoin developer Pieter Wuille, though the blog post itself can be read as a multi-layered technical argument about transaction validation.

Just as impactful was his argument the software must remain backwards compatible, eschewing hard forks, in which he linked the dense technical concept (loosely) with the assertion Bitcoin must be defined by the end user’s choice of software, not any one developer group.

Was Mircea a flawed character? Undoubtedly so. But in his worldview, only the software mattered, and at a time when Bitcoin was in its infancy (and still at risk of losing its essential qualities) he emerged as one of its most spirited defenders.

“Bitcoin is not here for you to opine about it. Bitcoin is here to profoundly and oft times painfully change your life,” he wrote. “Whether you agree or not, whether you give permission or not, whether you think it ‘acceptable’ or ‘called for’ or whatever else. Nobody asked you.”

A selection of some of his more memorable quotes can be found here, though this is by no means an exhaustive overview of his extensive writings.

The author intends to further explore Popescu’s canon in the coming months, he can be reached here.

Image via TheWhet.net

Bitcoin, Blockchain Entrepreneur Malcolm CasSelle Dies At 50

18/11/2020 by Idelto Editor

Malcolm CaSelle, a pioneering blockchain technology and Bitcoin entrepreneur, has died at age 50, according to a social media post from friend and colleague E. David Ellington.

“My younger brother, business partner, advisor and friend, Malcolm CasSelle, died in Mexico yesterday,” Ellington wrote on November 18, 2020. “Apparently, his friends said he had a stomach ache when he woke. He took some antibiotics. They came back six hours later to check on him and found him dead in his room (at their home).”

CaSelle was the CEO of BIGtoken, a data management platform that leverages blockchain technology to allow consumers to own, verify and sell their own personal data. He served as the CIO of OPSkins, a video game skin-trading platform, and as the president of Worldwide Asset Exchange (WAX), a marketplace for digital goods built on a blockchain. In a career that spanned decades, CaSelle contributed to numerous projects in the media, video game and technology spaces.

“Malcolm was a big ball of energy and a great visionary in the crypto gaming space,” Bill Barhydt, the CEO of Abra, told Bitcoin Magazine. “He will be missed by everyone he touched with his positivity and spirit.”

He was an early-stage investor in several Bitcoin-related companies, according to his biography.

“CasSelle entered the blockchain, bitcoin and other cryptocurrency ecosystem in late 2012,” per the LA Games Conference. “He was a partner in numerous early bitcoin mining projects and invested extensively in companies such as BTC China (BTCC), Blockchain Capital Partner (BCAP), GoCoin and numerous others.”

The post Bitcoin, Blockchain Entrepreneur Malcolm CasSelle Dies At 50 appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Bitcoin Obituaries Lists Another Crypto Eulogy, 2020 BTC Deaths in the Single Digits

09/09/2020 by Idelto Editor

The infamous “Bitcoin Obituaries” has seen another addition to the long list of deaths since bitcoin’s oldest death on December 15, 2010. According to the list of articles with 382 deaths to-date, bitcoin was declared dead again on September 4, 2020.

Ever since Satoshi Nakamoto released the decentralized network, a number of people have doubted bitcoin and over the years some individuals have deemed the project “dead.”

Famous people, journalists, economists, luminaries, and many more have written long-winded essays on why the cryptocurrency is sure to fail. The website 99 Bitcoins maintains a list of “Bitcoin Obituaries” collected over the years and so far there’s been 382 deaths in total.

This past weekend the crypto economy slid in value considerably, as a number of digital currencies lost between 15-35% during the last seven days. Out of the top ten coins in terms of market capitalization, binance coin (BNB) staved off the market rout by only losing 12% and bitcoin (BTC) lost a touch over 16%.

The rest of the top ten crypto assets lost a much larger percentage, as coins like ETH and DOT lost close to 30%. Despite this, another bitcoin obituary was listed on September 4, when BTC dropped to $10,500 per coin.

The death stems from the web portal Newsbtc and it was written by Uri Shalev who titled the article: “Bitcoin is Worthless in Long-term.” Shalev says that even Warren Buffet won’t go near the crypto asset and BTC must be a bubble.

“In contrast, bitcoin or other digital currencies are very likely worthless in the long term, and those are the kind of assets that investing legend Warren Buffet won’t touch,” Shalev writes. “It’s these latter kinds of assets that have a greater chance to be in bubble territory because they don’t generate cash flow to support their valuations.”

Of course, most crypto proponents understand that bitcoin is not dead and the digital asset has seen much bigger losses than a mere seven-day 16% cut. In fact, the “Bitcoin Obituaries” list has gotten lighter over the years, as 2020 has only seen three deaths total with Shalev’s piece included.

2017 saw the greatest number of bitcoin deaths with 124 that year, but it dropped to 93 in 2018. The bitcoin obituary metric then chopped in half in 2019, as last year only saw 41 deaths.

2020 has been a crazy year, in general, with the faltering global economy and Covid-19 outbreak that plagued the world. Despite this tumultuous year, 2020’s death list, at least so far, is much lighter than most years and could compare to 2010, 2011, 2012’s single-digit numbers.

What do you think about bitcoin’s latest ‘death’ and the catalog of bitcoin obituaries over the years? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

The post Bitcoin Obituaries Lists Another Crypto Eulogy, 2020 BTC Deaths in the Single Digits appeared first on Bitcoin News.