Bitcoin has many skeptics as a result of its extraordinarily novel design and purpose. They weren’t so certain in 2023, however, that the project would ultimately fail.
Rumors of Bitcoin’s Demise Decline Markedly in 2023
99 Bitcoins, an educational website, has kept a list of “Bitcoin Obituaries” since 2010. This year, the project has only tracked seven articles predicting the currency’s imminent demise.
The first obituary, written when the BTC price was $0.23, said, “Either it will remain a novelty forever, or it will transition from novelty status to dead faster than you can blink.”
By the time Bitcoin price rallied its way to $20,000 in Dec. 2017, the cryptocurrency had gained so many critics as well as supporters that 99 Bitcoins tracked 124 obits that year and 93 during the crypto winter of the following year. There were 27 Bitcoin obits last year. So seven is a low unseen since 2012.
Among this year’s obituary writers were early Facebook investor Chamath Palihapitiya and J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon. Palihapitiya said, “Crypto is dead in America,” All In podcast. Dimon said, “Bitcoin is a hyped-up fraud,” on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Meanwhile, Bitcoin the verge of being approved by U.S. regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission for an ETF product. The development has breathed new life into crypto markets and shows that U.S. courts and regulators do not regard Bitcoin as a fraud.
BTC X/Twitter Reacts
Bitcoin Obituaries pic.twitter.com/Tyt2DNTRw2
— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) December 20, 2023
Casa CTO and co-founder Jameson Lopp made a nice graph of the Bitcoin obituaries bubble, which peaked in 2017. Bitcoin appears poised to long outlive the Bitcoin obituary as an active genre of journalism.
Bitcoin Obituaries pic.twitter.com/Tyt2DNTRw2
— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) December 20, 2023
One Bitcoin trader predicted, “In two to three more cycles (each one is four years), there will be no [Bitcoin] obituaries. At that time, saying #BTC is going to die will be as silly as saying ‘air’ is going to fail.”
