Tulips, Bubbles, Obituaries: Peering Through the FUD About Crypto

Let's take a look at some of the instances that have led to mainstream media outlets signalling the death of Bitcoin and examine where the industry is at midway through 2018.A brief history of Bitcoin deaths.

It's not difficult to find articles slamming Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies - just look at 99bitcoins.com, which has a compendium of Bitcoin obituaries that has now surpassed the 300 mark.

The earliest headline heralding the end of Bitcoin, according to the website, is an article entitled 'Why Bitcoin can't be a currency' published in a blog entitled The Underground Economist in 2010.

"While Bitcoin has managed to bootstrap itself on a limited scale, it lacks any mechanism for dealing with fluctuations in demand. Increasing demand for Bitcoin will cause prices in terms of Bitcoin to drop, while decreasing demand will cause them to rise."

In 2017, there were a total of 118 Bitcoin obituaries articles.

These obituaries are any articles that predict the demise of Bitcoin, based on assumptions or quotes from a wide range of commentators.

The Guardian published an editorial in November 2017 that labelled Bitcoin's price as a bubble, and pointed to the costs of mining, slammed the endorsements by celebrities and made strong statements about Bitcoin's primary use as means to buy drugs and pay ransoms online.

The MIT Technology Review published an article in April which explored three different ways that the cryptocurrency could ultimately be brought to its knees - namely a government takeover, Facebook takeover or the creation of millions of tokens that eventually make Bitcoin irrelevant.

Around the same time, a Forbes headline reading 'Is Bitcoin Heading to Zero' explored a number of reasons why Bitcoin had seen such a dramatic drop in value.

More recently, famed investor Warren Buffett went as far as calling Bitcoin 'rat poison' in an interview with CNBC:. "In terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say with almost certainty that they will come to a bad ending.If I could buy a five-year put on every one of the cryptocurrencies, I'd be glad to do it but I would never short a dime's worth."