Eulogy made by Steve Miller

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The post ‘Cryptocurrencies – A Product Of Government Malfeasance’ – Twitter| $58,870.89 appeared first on 99Bitcoins.

“It’s a gambling device… there’s been a lot of frauds connected with it. There’s been disappearances, so there’s a lot lost on it. Bitcoin hasn’t produced anything,” Buffett told a group of reporters ahead of Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting at the CHI Health Center in Omaha, Nebraska.

“It doesn’t do anything. It just sits there. It’s like a seashell or something, and that is not an investment to me,” he added.

Buffett even compared the cryptocurrency to a button on his jacket.

“I’ll tear off a button here. What I’ll have here is a little token…I’ll offer it to you for $1000, and I’ll see if I can get the price up to $2000 by the end of the day… But the button has one use and it’s a very limited use,” Buffett said.

Eulogy made by Warren Buffett

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The post “Warren Buffett says bitcoin is a ‘gambling device’” – CNBC | $5,823.80 appeared first on 99Bitcoins.

Honestly, cryptocurrencies are useless. They’re only used by speculators looking for quick riches, people who don’t like government-backed currencies, and criminals who want a black-market way to exchange money.

Eulogy made by Bruce Schneier

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The post ‘There’s No Good Reason To Trust Blockchain Technology’ – Wired | $3,393.67 appeared first on 99Bitcoins.

Israel’s economics “tsar” Avi Simhon has denounced Bitcoin (BTC) as intrinsically inefficient, predicting that the cryptocurrency will therefore disappear.

A Cointelegraph correspondent reported that Simhon — the head of the National Economic Council and senior economic policy advisor to the country’s prime minister — made his remarks at Israel Bitcoin Summit at Tel Aviv University on Jan. 8.

Simhon argued that to issue Bitcoin at a national or global scale would cost “trillions of dollars of actual cost in energy,” as opposed to the existing state of affairs in which printing fiat money costs very little. This, he stated, is what prevents the invention from serving as a currency.

“I am still quite confident that money as we know it will change,” he said — yet made it clear that this shift to digital currencies would not be due to the decentralized, anonymous peer-to-peer model of Bitcoin, but rather to a central-bank backed digital currency (CBDC).

Eulogy made by Avi Simhon

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The post ‘BTC ‘Intrinsically Inefficient, Will Disappear” – COINTELEGRAPH | $4,032.01 appeared first on 99Bitcoins.

To really work as money, bitcoin needs to be widely used. There need to be lots of actors providing a wide array of goods and services who are all willing to take bitcoin as payment.

But why would anyone use it? Contrary to the libertarian romanticism that inspired bitcoin’s creation, most Western fiat currencies work really well as money. There’s no need for most businesses to saddle themselves with bitcoin’s extra headaches. It doesn’t offer the speed or convenience of standard mainstream payments systems like credit cards or PayPal. And bitcoin’s volatility and the extreme run-up in its price have made transaction fees highly volatile and expensive.

To find a devoted economy, bitcoin needs to stabilize in value. To stabilize in value, bitcoin needs a devoted economy. It’s a bit of a catch-22.

Eulogy made by Jeff Spross

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The post The end of bitcoin | The Week $11,582.56 | BitcoinObituaries.com appeared first on 99Bitcoins.

What’s more interesting to me is the fatal flaw of passwords. You have to protect your Bitcoin wallet passwords at all costs. Bitcoins are like bearer bonds. If you steal them, they’re yours. The rightful owner can’t get them back. And if you lose your password, you can’t retrieve them. There are already people freaking out because they mined Bitcoins years ago, when they were worth pennies, and now they can’t remember how to get their Bitcoins back. Not only that, but everyone who passes away without leaving their password behind means those Bitcoins are also gone forever. Poof.

What wasn’t accounted for in the algorithm (or any of the crazy hype about blockchain) is human fallibility. We can’t remember our passwords. We also refuse to plan appropriately for our deaths. We are going to keep losing Bitcoin, and it is going to go to the grave with us, until there is no Bitcoin left. This ratchets in only one direction.

The max cap of Bitcoin, and the entropy of human recollection, mean that Bitcoin’s days are numbered, not just as a bubble, but as a thing with any kind of existence, real or imaginary.

If you write your passwords down, they can be stolen with no recourse. If you don’t, they’ll be lost for good one day.

Eulogy made by Hugh Howey

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The post “The End of Bitcoin” – The Wayfinder | $11,582.56 appeared first on 99Bitcoins.

…But essentially, its creation is fundamentally flawed, with an artificially imposed cap, the supply of Bitcoins is permanently fixed at 21 million which itself is a design devoid of economic sense. An economy needs as much money as transactions and activities occur within it. So if a lot of people want to start paying over the Bitcoin network, the value of Bitcoins will need to rise or at best stay at high levels to accommodate such demand.

Unfortunately, until goods start to get valued in Bitcoin directly rather than in other currencies then it will never be able to become a currency. And even if its adoption was needed Bitcoin’s path to mainstream usage faces many legal, regulatory, and cultural hurdles.

The Btcoin boom epitomizes a fundamental phenomenon we’ve been experiencing in the last couple of years. Our lack of adaptability to new technological inventions. Cultural angst is not allowing us to benefit entirely from all the technological innovation coming along every day…Bitcoin enthusiasts and investors are aware of this phenomenon and they use it against the vast majority of us. That’s why cryptocurrencies are so complicated to understand for some and the primary reason why such technology is maybe too advanced for our time.

Eulogy made by Orge Castellano

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The post “Why Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail” – Medium | $14,053.44 appeared first on 99Bitcoins.

Their are many long term issues of bitcoin that are unfixable by the community and could crash the economy or make the currency otherwise useless. Many of these issues can apply to the majority of cryptocurrencys as a whole. Here are three of the major issues with Bitcoin:

BITCOIN WILL INEVITABLY BECOME CENTRALIZED-
The main and ultimate issue with Bitcoin is the exponentially increasing size of the Bitcoin ledger which holds data surrounding all existing Bitcoin addresses and past and present transactions. With Bitcoins increased adoption more wallet addresses are stored on the ledger and more transactions are going on.

This kind of data can no longer be stored on conventional computers. Because most nodes (computers which store the ledger) will no longer be able to handle the size of the ledger, they will disappear. This means that the Bitcoin ledger will eventually be only be held by a few individuals who have the power to change the ledger at their whim.

THE LACK OF A FUNCTIONAL ECONOMY-
This problem is most addressable by the community because it involves the betterment of the Bitcoin economy. At the moment, the value of the Bitcoin is coming from individuals mining it and converting it into different currencies. This, however, is not where the value should be coming from. The value should come from adoption into a real economy. And, lets be honest here, no employer is ever gonna pay their employees in Bitcoin.

THE RISE OF QUANTUM COMPUTING-
Most people have heard of the so called “quantum revolution” which involves the use of computers capable of harnessing the power of cubits (bits which are both 1 and 0 at the same time). The computers can make lightning fast calculations which most bit based computers can only dream of. This means an end to traditional styles of encryption, something Bitcoin relies on extensively. Luckily, quantum computers are a long ways from commercial use. When they do become commercially available, all wallets will be susceptible to hacking and the whole network will suffer a horrific fate.

Eulogy made by Imcolo

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Behind every bubble is a good idea bursting to get out, and bitcoin kind of looks like a good idea, at least if you squint a bit. A digital currency without borders that governments can’t control and that allows secret online transactions? I’m in. Bitcoin itself? Not so much.

The post “Bitcoin’s Wild Ride Shows The Truth: It Is Probably Worth Zero” – Wall Street Journal | $3,569.56 appeared first on 99Bitcoins.

2008 – The deception begins, “The steady addition of a constant amount of new coins is analogous to gold miners expending resources to add gold to circulation.” Satoshi Nakamoto 2008.

Fact – Bitcoin mining has no similarities to gold or mining gold, but plenty of similarities to the deceptive glitter of fool’s gold (iron pyrite, chemical formula (FeS2)).

The deception continues, introducing the term “Gold 2.0” to reinforce the deception of similarity to gold. The “valuation” of Gold 2.0 switches from sunk cost to a price discovery basis.

The deception continues, with the “real-world value” of Bitcoin being deduced from entirely speculative trading on Bitcoin exchanges subject to price manipulation, together with the introduction of futures markets.

Next step, SEC approval of Bitcoin ETFs, followed by triple leveraged ETFs, and the Bitcoin scheme is poised to wreak financial havoc and contagion leading to GFC 2.0.

Eulogy made by Robert Honeywill

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The post “Bitcoin: Analogous To Gold… Fool’s Gold” – Seeking Alpha | $17,010.53 appeared first on 99Bitcoins.

Bitcoin rose because 70% of the miners were in China. It was NOT simply because energy was cheap. Bitcoin became the LEADING means of money laundering and movement of cash out of China, circumventing their rule of law and currency controls.

BitCoin was a means to get money out of China when you could not wire money out under currency controls. In Australia, they have adopted the slogan that “CASH IS FOR CRIMINALS.” They will do the same to cryptocurrencies. All they need to do is declare a law that it is illegal for a business to accept cryptocurrency under the excuse that it is money laundering. You just killed the entire industry.

Eulogy made by Martin Armstrong

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The post “Can Cryptocurrencies Survive?” – Armstrong Economics | $8,126.59 appeared first on 99Bitcoins.

BITCOIN’S price volatility is a pedigree of the rampant trader speculation which has fuelled the rise of the cryptocurrency, according to a top member of the Governing Board of the Austrian National Bank, Kurt Pribil.

The banking chief explained his “unambiguous position”, underlining that the way he sees it, cryptocurrencies have no inherent value behind them.

Mr Pribil said: “Bitcoin etc. are by no means currencies, because there is definitely no real value. These so-called cryptocurrencies are pure speculative objects.”

Eulogy made by Kurt Pribil

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Investors should only consider cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin if they are prepared to lose everything, BlackRock Investment Institute said in its weekly report Monday.

“We see cryptocurrencies potentially becoming more widely used in the future as the markets mature. Yet for now we believe they should only be considered by those who can stomach potentially complete losses,” Richard Turnill, BlackRock’s global chief investment strategist, said in the note.

Turnill noted cryptocurrencies’ high volatility, fragmented markets and lack of regulation. “We don’t see them becoming part of mainstream investment portfolios soon,” he said, adding that their volatility makes U.S. stock market turbulence during the financial crisis “almost look placid.”

Eulogy made by Richard Turnill

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While bitcoin is real and very alive today, there is reason to believe its success would be its own demise. Our analysis suggests that either bitcoin remains volatile and investors eventually walk away — or bitcoin stabilizes and becomes widely popular, only to die a slow, painful death by a thousand regulatory cuts across a hundred political jurisdictions.

Eulogy made by Benjamin A.T. Graham and Allison Kingsley

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“At a more fundamental level, we should wonder why Bitcoin exists at all. There is no reason. We can already trade almost anything that is legal over the internet and pay for it in various ways. It’s fast, convenient, inexpensive and quite safe.”

The post “Why Bitcoin will go the way of the tulips” – Financial Review | $7,058.75 appeared first on 99Bitcoins.

The story that Bitcoin victims are being sold is that, because we cannot trust government-issued currencies.

This is complete nonsense. Yes, the price of Bitcoin may yet double or even quadruple — because its price is based on pure speculation, and these stories are feeding such speculation. But Bitcoin’s market price is almost certain at some point to crash and burn, just as the dot-coms did, and for the same reason: because it is all hype. And there will be no one to turn to when it does, because no government or bank is backing it up; and the people who are hyping Bitcoin will have cashed out and be long gone.

Bitcoin was invented by an unknown person or group to be a digital currency…Such a system makes it difficult for governments to know the identities of people exchanging money, so it has become a haven for money laundering, drug dealing, and corruption. Beyond its usability for crime, Bitcoin has major design flaws.

With Bitcoin supply constrained and increasingly falling short of demand, instead of functioning as a currency, Bitcoin is a speculative empty asset.

First, anyone who has access to a Bitcoin password (or private key) has the authority to spend the Bitcoins it unlocks; loss of the password means loss of all of the associated Bitcoins, with no recourse. Second, linear growth in the chain of blocks that make up Bitcoin is resulting in exponential growth in the computation necessary to process and verify transactions: transactions that used to take 10 minutes now take hours. Third, with Bitcoin transactions fees hovering above $25, a $5 payment now costs $30. This obviously is not a workable digital currency.

Eulogy made by Vivek Wadhwa

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The post “Why Bitcoin is the largest Ponzi scheme in human history” – Linkedin | $14,617.28 appeared first on 99Bitcoins.

Is bitcoin set to become “gold 2.0?”

Answer: Absolutely not — and here’s why.

Currencies can serve at least two functions: a medium of exchange or a store of value. People will take dollars as payment for their labor, because they know they can use those dollars to buy groceries or pay the rent or go to movies. (Medium of exchange.) But people also know they could just stockpile those dollars and save for the future. (Store of value.)

Gold is weird in that it solely serves the second function.

Bitcoin, by contrast, was supposed to serve both functions. It would be easy to forget amid today’s speculative frenzy but bitcoin was originally supposed to be a currency for people who didn’t want a payment system administered by a central bank or overseen by a government. Calling bitcoin “gold 2.0” is an implicit admission that this original vision failed.

So what makes bitcoin innately valuable? Nothing. Even its autonomy and the ease of its digital transactions are replicable and found not only in other cryptocurrencies, but in many normal online payment systems as well.

Eulogy made by Jeff Spross

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The post “Why bitcoin is fool’s gold” – The Week | $16,731.30 appeared first on 99Bitcoins.

Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute at UC Berkeley. Weaver teaches a course on blockchains and seems to think the technology is, at best, misguided and, at worst, a fraud.

There are private blockchains, which is a 20-year-old technology that somehow causes idiots to throw money at it, and then you have public blockchains, which is supposed to be a decentralized record-keeping structure but, in reality, is both centralized and horribly inefficient. The use of private blockchains is pretty varied because there’s nothing new and it’s an old idea. The use of public blockchains is basically limited to cryptocurrencies.

None of the cryptocurrencies are truly decentralized. They’re actually centrally controlled by the miners, who can basically rewrite history at will… These systems require an obscene amount of energy to function. And the blockchains are not decentralized and they’re not efficient, so that undercuts the two main points in their favor. But the cryptocurrencies don’t work either, because they don’t actually work as currencies.

The rationale for these things is that there’s no central authority, which means no one can block or undo a transaction. And so far at least, it’s true that transactions aren’t blocked. But why do you need such a system? Because you’re doing a transaction that a central authority would otherwise block, like paying off a hitman or buying drugs…If that’s what you need money for, the cryptocurrencies are the only game in town. But if you don’t need to buy drugs or hitmen, the cryptocurrencies are vastly less efficient…if you want to buy something you don’t want people to know about, you can just use a pre-paid credit card. There’s still no need for Bitcoin.

Eulogy made by Nicholas Weaver

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The post “Why Bitcoin is bullshit, explained by an expert” – Vox | $6,790.53 appeared first on 99Bitcoins.

Bitcoin and the growing number of copycat blockchain-based fidgets are guilty of false advertising when called “cryptocurrencies”. They’re more like “cryptostamps”.

Bitcoin and its many sprogs have none of institutional backing of actual currencies or even the physical presence and alternative uses of gold. They represent a pure mania – the price rising in the belief that other people will continue to bet on the price continuing to rise.

The belief or hope that there will always be a greater fool wanting to buy is supposed to be underwritten by bitcoin’s “limited edition” status – a limited number can be produced. Which makes bitcoin buyers more like stamp collectors – or perhaps rare coin collectors.

Eulogy made by Michael Pascoe

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…However, the CME Group is about to shake things up.

While a number of folks see nothing but positives surrounding the CME Group’s announcement that it’ll begin offering bitcoin futures, and there is validity to the idea that it’ll draw in tons of new money from institutional investors who’ve previously been stuck on the sidelines, it could also bring about a bitcoin crash. You see, for the first time ever, institutional investors will be able to bet against bitcoin, creating the first true market in the world’s most popular virtual currency since its inception.

It’s pretty much no secret that a number of institutional investors believe bitcoin is overvalued at the moment, with some still struggling to figure out where it’ll find its niche. That looks to be a recipe for futures trading to push bitcoin substantially lower in the weeks to come.

One of the bigger worries with developing blockchain and introducing new virtual currencies is that there’s a very low barrier to entry. Essentially anyone with time, some money, and the knowledge to develop blockchain technology can bring a new virtual currency and blockchain to market. We’ve witnessed hundreds of new virtual currencies debut since the year began, which is a direct threat to bitcoin’s current dominance.

Along those same lines, who’s to say that bitcoin will remain the top dog as a crypto-payment facilitator, or that its blockchain will generate interest with businesses? For those who may not recall, bitcoin upgraded its blockchain four months ago, boosting its capacity while lowering transaction fees and settlement times. This was done to attract big businesses, but there’s nothing to guarantee that bitcoin’s blockchain will be the preferred choice when there are so many other choices.

Eulogy made by Sean Williams

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The post “When This Happens, Bitcoin Could Be Doomed” – The Motley Fool | $10,357.76 appeared first on 99Bitcoins.