I'd say Enron. Same good start, same freaking bubble, probably same outcome. Only no Lay or Skilling to point at when it's over.
I studied heavily what had happened at Enron. And I can assure you it's not anythink like that.Enron could not produce a simple balance sheet. Analyst consensus was "you have to take it on faith - it's a black box".
There was a bit more going on than being unable to produce a balance sheet. How 'bout Fastow's money games? How about the rolling blackouts? They probably could produce a balance sheet but it would have been unimaginably long and scare the hell out of everyone!
Fastow's games were in process to trick the market, as I understood it he used SPV (financed by Merill and others) to bury company debt - it was connected with the "unable to produce balance sheet" - if they did it - the truth would come out.
Rolling blackouts - yeah that was unfortuante and poor California was hit hard, though if Enron did only this they would never go under (it was very profitable at times).
Their broadband products were connected with big mounth proclamations while they had nothing.
A bit like proclaiming "you can buy something with bitcoin" You can get high off of SR, or gamble your life away with SD but that's about it.
Oh wait... you can daytrade the hell out of it! Let's plaster the stock value all over town like Enron did. And crash like them..
The list of services is available. I understand it could be longer but the Silkroad itself would be enough.
"mark to market accounting"
Yeah I know.. Future value and such.
Don't forget: bitcoin is valued for its possibilities, not for the things it actually does.
Yes, I agree with this one - this is similar with Enron or any other company - look at Amazon they have for years its P/E in range of hundreds.
Bitcoin is exact opposite - It's opensourced and distributed.
Bitcoin protocol is opensource, its value it a black box.
In comarison with stocks I see Bitcoin as quite safe investment. I know a technological company which from 500M went to about 25M in about a year (that's 20x less or 5% of the original value). The cause was obvious - too optimistic future views, "complicated" accounting etc..
If this can happen to a company listed on NASDAQ in 2012 (loooong after Enron), I think Bitcoin will do just fine
Bitcoin looks like Enron to me at this moment. Wanna know why? Ask why, asshole!
Yes this one is funny