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PoliticsThe Exact Date for Bitcoin’s Final Crash to $0.00
I pity the fool who didn’t listen.
Ever since May 2013, I’ve been warning against investing in the wannabe currency, Bitcoin. I called it nothing more than an “insidious currency scam.”
Lo and behold, one of the most prominent Bitcoin exchanges, Mt. Gox, disappeared this week.
Like a thief in the night, it moved offices, shuttered its Twitter account and closed down its website – without any explanation.
And just like that, every sucker who owned any Bitcoins on the exchange lost everything.
Like Erik Voorhees, the man behind Bitcoin-sharing website, Coinapult.com. He had over 550 Bitcoins on Mt. Gox, worth almost $300,000. As he conceded, “I will never get any of that back.”
No. You won’t.
If you’re also among the unlucky ones, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Heck, don’t say the Bitcoin insiders didn’t warn you, either.
Back in April 2013 – in an incredibly tragic twist of irony – Mark Karpeles, Chief Executive of the now-defunct Mt. Gox, said, “If you buy Bitcoins, you should [keep] in mind that the value could be zero the day after.”
Well, thanks to you, Mr. Karpeles, that day has officially arrived.
As a result, ex-Federal Reserve Bank examiner, Mark T. Williams, says that the “high-profile collapse could trigger a Lehman Brothers-type chain reaction throughout the Bitcoin market.”
I couldn’t agree more…
Stolen Goods
To be fair, trouble has been brewing at Mt. Gox, which once handled 80% of all Bitcoin trading, ever since it halted customer withdrawals on February 7. But that was supposed to be a temporary move, whereas this one appears permanent.
I say that because, in the aftermath of the sudden closure this week, documents surfaced revealing that Mt. Gox held just 2,000 Bitcoins, while customer deposits totaled almost 625,000 Bitcoins.
The reason for the discrepancy? Theft!
As a result of a technological vulnerability, hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins, worth more than $300 million, were stolen. The size of the heist represents about 6% of all the Bitcoins in circulation.
Making matters worse, the theft went “unnoticed for several years.” That means Mt. Gox has been operating as a sham this whole time.
It also means there’s no chance that the masses will ever put any trust in Bitcoins. How can they after a development like this?
Damage Control
In the immediate aftermath of the news, the remaining Bitcoin exchanges and prominent early-stage investors went into full-on crisis management mode, issuing bold statements to “reassure investors of both Bitcoin’s viability and their own security protocols,” as Reuters described.
They couldn’t possibly be biased, now could they?
My personal favorite defense comes from Voorhees: “Let me suggest that the lesson is not that Bitcoin is broken. Bitcoin is fine. We are building a new financial order, and those of us building it, investing in it, and growing it, will pay the price of bringing it to the world… Devastation will befall us repeatedly.”
Ummm, where do I sign up to be a part of that? No thanks!
Regulators, Mount Up!
All the reassurances in the world aren’t comforting anyone.
Case in point: The downward trend in average Bitcoin prices, excluding the Mt. Gox exchange, continues to this day.
Ultimately, the failure of Mt. Gox proves that self-regulation doesn’t work. Even diehard Bitcoin believers realize this.
Last month, Jeremy Liew, a leading Bitcoin investor at Lightspeed Venture Partners, vigorously opposed regulation. Now he thinks it’s an absolute must for mainstream adoption.
And yet, freedom from regulation is the whole point of the Bitcoin experiment, right? That’s how all the early adopters pitched it, at least. But we can go ahead and flush that pipedream down the toilet.
When There’s One Cockroach…
Like good opportunists, the two largest remaining exchanges, BTC-e and Bitstamp, are trying to fill the void left by Mt. Gox. But, as the saying goes, when there’s one cockroach, there are many more.
Or as Williams asserts, “The problems at Mt. Gox are not isolated; they are systemic to the Bitcoin industry.”
Indeed. What happened at Mt. Gox could happen anywhere else. Hackers are that good. And with Bitcoin prices still above $500, more than enough incentive exists.
On a more practical level, in the wake of the Mt. Gox failure, are you really ready to wire money to Bulgaria or Slovenia or Cyprus and trust it will be handled securely? And are you willing to wait several days for Bitcoin trades to settle? Because that’s what investing in Bitcoins requires.
And are you really ready to put your trust in a cryptocurrency with a Vice Chairman on its foundation who was recently accused of money laundering?
Bottom line: Bitcoin’s days are numbered. Literally. Williams predicts that Bitcoin “will trade for under $10″ by June 30, 2014. A bold prediction, no doubt. But the point is clear – Bitcoin doesn’t stand a chance at ever gaining widespread adoption. Or as Dennis Gartman says bluntly, Bitcoin is “nothing more than a scam of the first order.”
My advice? The same as Gartman’s: “Utter and complete avoidance of all things Bitcoin related.”
If you’re absolutely dead set on throwing away some money, consider technology blogger extraordinaire John Gruber’s approach: “In lieu of Bitcoin, I’ve stuck to flushing $100 bills down a toilet. I’m deep in the red, but at least I understand exactly what’s going on.”
Ahead of the tape,
Louis Basenese
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I don’t see any difference between what you are trying to describe here and what is happening in cash of a bust in a regulated market, even less harmful that a bust, the EUR/CHF story for instance. So the main issue could’t not be the fact that it is not regulated. When the dollar will fall, maybe you will understand that a real (not a wannabee, that is, to coin you) currency emerges from and only from the market. Not from a printing press. It emerges from the market because there is demand for it.
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RJ Fehn Reply:
August 12th, 2014 at 8:10 am
8/12/2014: 1 Bitcoin = $568.00 USD = FAIL for you!
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TCL Reply:
January 6th, 2015 at 6:12 pm
Lol…i was.thinking exactly the same as i read this report lol!!
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Looks like some of your harshest critics from your 05/13/13 article are eating crow. This doesn’t necessarily mean they’re wrong, or that another more stable cryptocurrency won’t rise from the ashes. BitCoin and others like it will exsist as long as there are black markets (think Silk Road), money launderers, and other shady transactions. When this is mixed with well-intentioned determination to undermine oppressive/unstable regimes with fiat currency, cryptocurrency will learn from its past mistakes and either evolve, or die. Simple as that.
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Actually… The less people getting into mining Bitcoins means that perhaps that difficulty will go down which means I can mine more bitcoins! Also there will be less Alt-coins in existence because they will have less value. So yes.. please keep posting news so Bitcoin can go down to like $200 before we hit the ‘Matrix Reloaded’ button; I mean seriously; The mafia stealing billions of dollars didn’t crash the dollar; And btw, Bitcoin was doing fine before November/ December when the whole world knew about it.
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If you say its going to rain every day, you will be right once in a while. What you are not mentioning is that Bitcoin is up over 300% the past few months, even when you consider the recent Gox panic. It has been revealed that Karpeles acted alone in his stupidity or blatant fraud. You wouldn’t call email dead, if Yahoo Mail went down, right? Bitcoin is an Internet protocol that greatly benefits from the network effects of the Internet and global demand for some sort of digital cash obviously exists.
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The failure of the biggest Bitcoin Exchange and it only went down around 15%. If you understand Bitcoin and it’s finite maximum limit of available coins this only makes them more valuable. I’m in a Bitcoin mining ETF on Havelock Investments that’s paying an annualized dividend of over 600% right now. For a few grand I’ll take my chances for huge gains. My prediction is that Bitcoin ain’t goin’ anywhere but up and more mainstream as time goes on.
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TCL Reply:
January 6th, 2015 at 6:22 pm
Totally agree…there’s big increases and crashes with anything that evolves and stabilizes…a cryptocurreny is going to take time. I think bitcoin is amazing and i use it for plenty of things that are nowhere near ‘shady’. More merchants are taking it up in shops…its popping up everywhere. Long term the only way is up with a few crashes along the way. Worth it either way to spend now on services or think long term investment, hold on to coins cause one day they will pay
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Use common sense folks, Crypto currencies are at the control of those with inside knowledge/control of the source code and also those with the most technological power at their disposal.
In both those cases the persons i am describing are not YOU.
Governments or Corporations can and do weild computer capabilities that make a home BitCoin fan look plain silly in comparison. So why would you trust that you will have any control in the end over this vaporware money your buying.
Buy Silver, Gold or other long term valuable substances and have physical possesion of something of value instead of crypto monopoly money.
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The graph showing Bitcoin’s downward trend is based on dollar value (presumably US) vs time. All should bear in mind that the US dollar has likewise declined in real value (buying power) over time based on another form of theft by our government which prints greenbacks and calls it “quantitative easing”. Most foreign governments are no better. The Bitcoin failure was technological and the system, in retrospect, was highly vulnerable to hacking. These problems will be solved in the future and a world currency may be created based on commodities with intrinsic value, such as oil, metals, etc. that are not as easily stolen.
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The U.S. banking industry is no better than Mt. Gox. Go read the federal reserves publications on fractioanl reserve banking. The entire Mt. Gox model that failed is the primary model of national banking in the U.S. If everyone went to pull dollars out of banks like they did with btc only 2% of the population with deposits would manage to ever get their money out before their bank failed.
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It´s happening right now. 55% fall just today.
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I just want to say the people who wrote this or think it is a terrible investment are naive. It is not a long term invest with some kind of low but safe growth rate. Of course bitcoins are a “risky” investment. Even if the coin does crash you would be foolish to sell at the time so what is the worry? As long as there is a black market and some kind of need for an almost untraceable currency it will always have some value. It is a buy low sell high kind of investment and do it quickly. The amount of up and down in the price is only to a savy investors advantage. I have made a small fortune using common sense when buying and selling. I am just a regular person with almost no money to invest originally but smart investing over the course has changed all that.
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And as we roll through JULY 2014, we see bitcoin holding steady at $633 per coin. I think the prediction was a little too bold. Just a little.
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I see a biased fool trying to disrupt a community and potential investors. Just for the record, you can always host one of more of your OWN wallets and exchange for goods/services carefully– it’s like keeping your Credit Card numbers and PIN to yourself.
Real money fluctuates and real money is stolen all day everyday… so why is it significant that a successful and since-recovered currency falls ONE TIME? It’s not significant. This article was biased from the start.
Hop on the Bitcoin bandwagon before it’s too late. It’s a digital gold rush and you’re already missing out.
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Another e-currency could appear and offer everything bitcoin has to offer without the drawbacks. That’s the real danger I see for bitcoin now. Bitcoin could be the Napster or the Betamax of E-money. The biggest flaw in Bitcoin right now is that it is not user friendly. Addresses are painful to use, the software is ugly (looks like a win95), the need for backup of wallet.dat makes it dangerous to use, there’s no way to send a message with your payment (which is something you want in most case), there’s no way to send a payment to someone you know without asking for a bitcoin address first.
All of those problems can be solved “easily”, with online banks and an e-banking protocol on top of Bitcoin. But it remains to be done and, as long as it is not done, someone else could take the lead.The POS fully mined coins that are anonymous are the biggest rivals to bitcoin.
After taking a quick look at one of these exchanges I see there is even a bitcoin plus (ticker=XBC) out there now that can do transactions in a fraction of what the original bitcoin does and it gives interest on whatever amount of coins you hold like deposit interest in a bank account.Not sure if this is some evolved form of bitcoin or a completely different coin but there are many other types of these digital currencies on so called crypto exchanges being traded as we speak.
Looks even better than penny shares by some of the gains posted.
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Marcel Reply:
October 5th, 2014 at 8:47 am
Actually, looking at that particular coin it states that there are only about 56,000 going to be available with 10% interest on balance. So if I get this right, that means the coin should actually be worth 500 Bitcoins each?
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