Predictions about bitcoin that may be profitable...
Some of us Austrians are pro-bitcoin but not all are, or were. Here are some Interesting comments by some Austrians on Bitcoin in recent years.
BTW I was wrong about it too. In 2012 I made a bet with Vijay Boyapati that the price would fall since I assumed that the state would see it as a threat and shut it down. I was wrong...
Robert Wenzel, May 2013
The libertarian dream of anonymity seems like a distant memory to this crowd. It will be name and social security number in the not too distant future for anyone trying to open a Bitcoin account to buy or sell bitcoins through an exchange. Thus, Bitcoin, if it is not completely closed by government, will be no more than a faster PayPal type system, with a fluctuating value. There’s pluses and minuses to a fluctuating value. During a strong price inflationary period, because of its fairly stable supply, Bitcoin could act as a virtual gold—but with the one caveat that, because accounts WILL be registered, the government will have a pretty good idea of how many bitcoins you have and be able to demand you turn it over if they so choose—something they can’t as successfully do with real gold that is buried in the backyard. Then there is the possibility that government will attempt to shutdown Bitcoin completely "
Chris LeRoux "Why Bitcoin Can Never Be Money"
" Put simply, cryptocurrencies have an enormous scarcity problem. The constraints on any one cryptocurrency’s supply are an enormous improvement over the lack of any constraint whatsoever on governments when it comes to printing currencies. However, unlike physical assets such as gold and silver that have unique physical attributes endowing them with monetary importance for millennia, the problem is that there is no barrier to entry for cryptocurrencies; as each new competing cryptocurrency finds success, it dilutes or inflates the universe of the others."
Frank Shostak, April 2013:
"Some experts maintain that Bitcoin will displace the existent fiat money and will usher in a new era of free banking, which will finally put to rest the menace of inflation. Unfortunately, this is a pipe dream. Electronic money will not replace fiat paper money. The belief that it can stems from a failure to understand the nature and function of money and how it emerges on the market. [...] Observe that a bitcoin is not a thing; it is a unit of a non-material virtual currency. A bitcoin has no material shape; hence from this perspective the notion that it could somehow replace fiat money is not defendable. Bitcoin can function only as long as individuals know that they can convert it into fiat money, i.e. cash on demand."
Gary North, Nov. 2015
"I hereby make a prediction: Bitcoins will go down in history as the most spectacular private Ponzi scheme in history. It will dwarf anything dreamed of by Bernard Madoff [...] In other words, bitcoins cannot possibly fulfill their supposed purpose: to serve as an unregulated currency unit. Bitcoins are not an alternative currency. They are something you buy in the midst of a mania, and you will sell at some point in order to get back your money. You are thinking of buying Bitcoins, not because Bitcoins will serve as a means of exchange, as originally argued, but because you want to get back lots more money than you paid for them. In other words, Bitcoins are not money; dollars are money. There has been no challenge from Bitcoins to the reign of the dollar."
also
Duncan Whitmore, Crypto-scepticism
The Future of Money Is Gold
By Alasdair Macleod "Cryptos can only act as stores of value so long as fiat exists.
some may also find of interest this post by Peter Surda, The Mises Institute is clueless about Bitcoin www.economicsofbitcoin.com/2013/04/the-mises-institute-is-clueless-about.html e.g. "Gertchev: "In conclusion, virtual monies, of which bitcoins seem to be the most perfected specimen up to date, do not allow acting individuals to manage the uncertainty of the future as well as material monies do. They could serve to intermediate exchanges among those who invest in the technology that creates them, stores them, and transfers them. Nevertheless, they could never achieve that degree of universality and flexibility that material monies carry with them by nature. Thus, on the free market, commodity monies, and presumably gold and silver, still have a great comparative advantage.""
Even my old buddy Joe Salerno weighed in:
"“The Great Cryptocurrency Crash of 2018” – MISES | $6,330.60" "It looks like we have an asset bust for the record books in the making. The cryptocurrency crash now under way today surpassed the dot-com bust that occurred at the beginning of the millennium…
Whether or not cryptocurrncies recover–and I doubt they will–it is clear that their volatility make them unfit to serve as a general medium of exchange. However this lesson will likely be lost on the promoters of cryptocurrency
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See also Jeff Tucker,
Write A Bitcoin Obituary Now, Before It's Too Late (Nov. 2018)
Update: Jeremy Allaire - in 2016, at $744: "it's highly unlikely we'll be using bitcoin in 5 or 10 years" hahahha