Topic: Forbes Magazine calls Bitcoin a "Great Scam" - page 5. (Read 911 times)

That is too funny, he reduces bitcoin to rubble in just a few paragraphs:

“At the outset, let me clarify that Bitcoin itself is not a scam, but how Bitcoin is being sold is a scam. More about that below.

To start out, it is important to understand what Bitcoin really is. It would be easy to bore you with a discussion of the technology, about peer-to-peer servers and sophisticated algorithms, but that is not what you need to know.

What you need to know about Bitcoin is that distilled to its technological essence, each Bitcoin is simply a number. That's it: A number. It is simply a series of digits, with each number being assigned to each Bitcoin.

To illustrate, I'll randomly pull a $1 bill from my wallet, which bears No. L88793293J. Assuming some minimal level of competency by the U.S. Treasury, no other bill bears that number.

The face value of a $1 bill is, of course, just $1 dollar. But two people could privately agree that No. L88793293J is actually worth $5,000.

To illustrate Fred wants to buy Joe's golf clubs, but Fred doesn't want his wife to know -- at least just yet -- that he spent $5,000 for golf clubs. So, Fred and Joe agree that No. L88793293J is worth $5,000 and Fred gives No. L88793293J to Joe. Fred then tells his wife that he bought the clubs for the $1 bill. At some later time, when Fred's wife doesn't care so much, Fred pays $5,000 to Joe for No. L88793293J, and gets the $1 bill back.

The only difference between Bitcoin No. ABC123 and $1 Bill No. L88793293J is that at the end of the day, the $1 bill physically exists and has a face value that is worth something, i.e., Fred could take the $1 bill and buy something off the $1 menu at McDonalds.

By contrast, Bitcoin has no intrinsic value -- it is just a number. The number may have an agreed value between two parties, but the number itself has no value. Consider a bank account number, such as Wells Fargo Account No. 456789. The depositor and Wells Fargo essentially agree that the account designated by No. 456789 has the value of what the depositor puts into it, less what the depositor takes out. But the number itself, No. 456789 has no value. The same situation occurs with credit card transactions, whereby the credit card processing company assigns are unique value to each transaction, but the number itself has no value.”

I don’t know why you are all so upset. There is not one lie in the article.

Scam or not it's increased my net worth by more than all of my income sources combined, so I'm happy.

Some rich people Aware this news like fire in market to reduce down the rate of bitcoin and then they invest large amount in bitcoin and made huge profit.This repeats everytime. we know bitcoin is not fake We use bitcoin regularly they why we are in worried ? lets Retweet on twiiter That bitcoin is not scam and We support bitcoins

I stopped reading in the first page. "Bitcoin is just a number"   I could say the same thing for fiat, It's just a paper backed by nothing. I suggest no one read this article, you will be wasting your time.

they are just people jealous, they make statements that drop the bitcoin ..
we will not be affected by such a cheap issue, they just do not know the bitcoin yet, someday they will regret what it says about the bit...

Most of the people do not know how to use bitcoin that is why they call it a scam. At some point, bitcoin is not a scam or a hoax. You should just need to know and to learn what is bitcoin and how to use it.

I wasted only 5 second on it.

Clicking to see if the title was really the same.
I checked the first paragraph and when I saw ...
I immediately closed it.

The Forbes magazine has no opinion of itself.
Unlike other newspapers it only relies on co-authors or contributors for most of its magazine articles.
And lately they choose the ones that attract attention ...clickbait.

And to make thing worse, forget about Forbes.
There are a lot of people on this forum who run blogs and spam the board with it that write down FUD articles for the same purpose. Hits and fame. And this while they are bitcoin holders.

Just ignore them and watch a failarmy video instead of reading the "press".

is it not the BTC media propaganda (like Coindesk, Cointelegraph and so on) , backed  of wealthy people who have a lot at stake in the current BTC market?  It's the same shit.

It makes sense since Forbes has the back of wealthy people who have a lot at stake in the current financial system. Of course they don't want Bitcoin to replace the old system since they would lose tremendously

Meh, just another boring and ridiculous piece of article, wrote by a self claimed educated person who know nothing about Bitcoin. I won't be surprised, if he talks bad about Bitcoin... Better stop wasting time reading this type of b******t and move on to other more useful articles  

There have been so many articles regarding bitcoin spreading negativities and FUD which results to more people getting interested and curious about bitcoin. It does not matter whether the news about bitcoin is positive or negative, I think it's due to these publicity stunts why bitcoin is gaining popularity across the world. Those who invests in bitcoin must know both sides of the coin.

Its really not a great arguement, he basically says it has no value because it has no value.
The dollar on the other hand has value because we all agree that it has value. Well that's the same for Bitcoin.

Share prices and commodities are the same, markets decide the price. You may find the market decided price to be too high or too low, but it is what it is, it isn't a scam!

Bitcoin might be overvalued, or undervalued, it isn't a scam though. It is a weird bubble too, if it is a bubble. It went crazy for a while a month ago, but now hasn't crashed. The next move will be interesting

what industries adopt bitcoin? I only see big companies who dumped BTC, like Steam.

don't make confusion between a data base (blockchain) technology and Bitcoin.

Forbes magazine itself carries scandalous themes. First of all, we must remember that the whole news background could always be bought. When the Crypto currency is falling, the news corresponds to these events and just the opposite. So do not believe all the news.

The Winklevoss twins don't agree with the author, so who is right?
Who should we believe?

I think the writer of the article has a one-sided look at bitcoin. While many industries are adopting blockchain technology and typically bitcoin, the leading economics magazine claims that bitcoin is a scam. I do not think that a scam like bitcoin can last for so many years, I feel that the newspaper is quite funny when it comes to that.

Same old story all over.
If they find bitcoin a scam for these reasons,
then they should have a closer look at stock markets.

The technology is so new, that made scare the people. The time will make the BTC, and put it in the right place.

He's hardly misquoting what the article said. The title of the very article is "The Great Bitcoin Scam" regardless, but it's obviously just an alarmist attention grabbing headline done just for clicks/views. His entire argument seems to be resting on that "Bitcoin has no intrinsic value -- it is just a number" and that anybody else can create a bitcoin so therefore it's a scam. Whilst it's certainly true that anyone can create a coin as many people (or scammers) do, I think it's far more likely that one of those sorts of coins will turn out to be a scam more than bitcoin will. Also, even if an alt coin does take over bitcoin in terms of market cap or dominance that still wouldn't make bitcoin a scam.

Some quotes from the article:


Yeah... no shit.


Well that doesn't make bitcoin a scam (if in fact people are doing this) nor does bitcoin being just a number.


Bitcoin always falls. Then it goes up again. Rinse and repeat. This is no different than buying stocks or shares of a particular company but we're not calling Netflix or Facebook a scam. Maybe the novelty will wear off for some and the price will fall but there is no guarantee either way. I think bitcoin is here to stay for at least the next few years so the only question you should be asking yourself is do you believe in it and are you willing to invest it it. If so, just remember to only put in what you can afford to lose and enjoy the ride.


Oh, so now he's thinks it isn't going to go away and has value as a unit of exchange. Not sure what the point of this article is. As others have said, maybe he just didn't buy in early and now rues the missed opportunity.

Nothing new to the news about bitcoin being a scam thing. Many says bitcoin is a scam but many are still interested investing on bitcoin.

Maybe there are some people that being scammed by scammers using bitcoin, like in investing or doubling up bitcoin in an easy way.