Category Archives: Bitcoin

If Bitcoin were a currency, it'd be the worst-performing one in the world, worse even than the Russian ruble.

But Bitcoin isn't a currency. It's a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another. At least that's all it is right now. One day it could be more. Venture capitalists, for their part, are quick to point out that it's really a protocol, like the early internet, and its underlying technology could still be revolutionary. What are they supposed to say, though, whenthey've bet hundreds of millions of dollars on it?

But that's not much of a consolation to anyonewho bought anywhere near Bitcoin's $1,100 top. Or near $1,000, or $900, or $800, or, well even yesterday's prices. That's because Bitcoinhasn't just fallen 76 percent the past year. It's fallen 36 percent the past two days, as you can see below, with a 24 percent decline the past 24 hours. It's too bad Bitcoin doesn't have a central bank to help stabilize its value.

Source: Coindesk

What in the name of Satoshi Nakamoto is going on? Well, two things. First, Bitcoin's big bubble has been slowly deflating for over a year now. It has no inherent value, after all, because, despite companies trying to get free PR by saying they'll accept it, almost nobody uses it to buy anything other than drugs. Second, though, is a problem that's all too familiar to anyone who tried flipping condos in Miami ten years ago. Bitcoin miners, you see, borrowed moneyand real money, as in dollarsthat they could only pay back if Bitcoin prices kept rising, or at least didn't fall this much.

Bitcoin, remember, is a digital "currency" that lets you send money online without needing a bankto confirm it. That's because it substitutes a decentralized network of middlemen for a single middleman. And instead of paying them fees, it pays them with new Bitcoins. Think about it this way. The problem with sending money online is that you don't know if I'm trying to scam you by sending the same money to someone else, too. So the solution has been to have a bank sit in between us: I send the money to the bank, it verifies that I haven't sent it to anyone else, and then sends it to you, all for a 2 percent cut, of course.

Bitcoin, though, has a network of miners sit between us instead. These miners try to win new Bitcoins by solving difficult math problems that get even more difficult the more miners there areand, in the process, they create a public ledger of every single Bitcoin transaction. This means we don't need a bank to know that I've sent money to you and only you, but it comes at the cost of making it irreversible. (And that makes Bitcoin an even more appealing target for hackers who know that you have no recourse if they steal your money).

The key here is that the math problems the miners have to solve get harder the more of them there are. If there's a big influx of miners, say, because of a big bubble that pushes prices into quadruple digits, then there's even more pressure on everybody to upgrade to the latest supercomputers to stay competitive. The thing about the latest supercomputers, though, is that they're expensive to buy and expensive to run. (That's why some miners have set up shop in Iceland, where they can use geothermal energy to powertheir computers, and Arctic air to cool them). So miners had to borrow lots of money to try to keep up in the Bitcoin arms race.

Butall that borrowing hasn't paid off now that Bitcoin prices are free falling. In fact, it's part of the reason that they're doing so. Bitcoin prices are so low, you see, that miners are spending more money running their supercomputers than they're making from new coins. So why are they still going? Well, they have dollar debts that they need to pay back, and where else are they going to get the money? They're stuck, in other words, in a catch-22: they can't afford to keep mining, but they can't afford to stop mining, either. (This, coincidentally, is the same dilemma that oil drillers who borrowed a lot during the boom face now during the bust). This has already forced one big mining group into default. And it's forced the rest to sell the only assets they haveBitcoinsto pay back their dollar debts. That, of course, only pushes the price of Bitcoin down even further, which makes even more miners sell their Bitcoins to pay back they owe as mining becomes more unprofitable. And so on, and so on.

Bitcoin, in other words, is suffering a deleveraging shock like the one that hit our economy in 2008, but without a Federal Reserve to cushion the blow. That means this doom loop of debt and Bitcoin deflation could take prices down a lot further still. The only solace is that, in the long run, the system should self-correct, as miners drop out and mining gets easier.

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Bitcoin revealed: a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth ...

Bitcoin is proving a big disappointment. The would-be currency is down 33 per cent against the U.S. dollar so far in 2015, and 71 per cent in the past year. Theres almost certainly more bad news to come.

The electronic token has lots of enduring problems. As a store of value that is not subject to government intervention, it lacks the support of authorities and is always in danger of being banned.

The market was illiquid to begin with and is becoming even more so, increasing the risk of abuse. Bitcoins generate no income, so they count as collectibles more like an artwork than a few shares of Google. In these matters, beauty and value depend on the fickle eyes of the beholder and potential buyer.

Anonymity and free transactions offer some allure. But the former leads to an association with illegal activity. The latter is an illusion, since someone has to pay for the computers used to process and store bitcoin information. Bitcoin miners provide the service in exchange for new bitcoins.

Right now, the biggest problem is psychology. In a more ebullient and inflationary world, the novelty and limited supply of bitcoins might appeal. These days, disinflation and discontent are the dominant themes.

Bitcoins touched $171.41 (U.S.) on Jan. 14 and on Jan. 16 traded at $216. At these levels, the economics of bitcoin mining look terrible. The full cost of production is closer to $600 a token, based on a recent study by Australian researcher Hass McCook. If miners retreat, users may end up paying directly for the service.

Defenders of bitcoin have not given up hope. Their emphasis has shifted though, from the currency to the underlying blockchain processing software. That may be a good investment. It may even be revolutionary. But it will not bring up the price of bitcoin. The currency is suffering an erosion of confidence from which it could be hard to recover.

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Bitcoin is proving a big disappointment

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Bitcoin Miner R-Box 32 - Mailbag Show
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The Chain Gang - Decoding Bitcoin with Rich Apodaca
Rich Apodaca, founder of http://Bitzuma.com breaks down the technical side of Bitcoin that so many often fail to grasp. Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/the_chain_gang.

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