Topic: One of the most Biased articles ive ever read. (Financial Times) (Read 1323 times)

Randomly stumbled upon this video about Bitcoin by the BBC, and it would be someone from the financial times to have the 1 bad word to say about bitcoin lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ky3mDUoh74

Thanks man that was not visible without paying a subscription! Thanks a lot.

Op was right: one of the most biased article about BTC full of nonsense

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1877c388-8797-11e5-90de-f44762bf9896.html

Bitcoin’s place in the long history of pyramid schemes
Dan McCrum

SALT LAKE CITY, UT - APRIL 26: A pile of Bitcoin slugs sit in a box ready to be minted by Software engineer Mike Caldwell in his shop on April 26, 2013 in Sandy, Utah. Bitcoin is an experimental digital currency used over the Internet that is gaining in popularity worldwide. (Photo by George Frey/Getty Images)©Getty
General Gregor MacGregor returned to Britain in 1821 an exotic war hero, dubbed a Cazique, or prince, of Poyais by the Latin American kingdom’s royal family. His stories of the democratic and fertile land prompted investors to snap up land certificates and £200,000 in Poyaisian sovereign bonds.

Unfortunately, Poyais did not exist. MacGregor had fashioned a tale to fit the obsessions of the age, democracy and settlement, along with a vogue for exotic investments such as Latin American bonds. Acquitted in an early example of failure to prosecute complex fraud, he then ran into competition from lesser scam artists imitating his hoax.

The latest incarnation of MacGregor, in a tradition that runs from Dutch tulip bulbs through the stamp scheme of Charles Ponzi, is MMM, a “social financial network” run by Sergey Mavrodi, a convicted fraudster and former Russian parliamentarian, powered by YouTube and the cryptocurrency bitcoin.

New members must purchase bitcoins to join MMM, and then receive a bonus for online testimonials describing their improbable profits. The fad helped to power an explosion in the bitcoin exchange rate, from less than $200 in September to more than $500 per bitcoin last week.

Yet the question prompted by the recent movement in bitcoin is whether it marks a resurgence for the cryptocurrency, or merely highlights its turn in the endless parade of get rich quick schemes, which prompted Walter Bagehot, former editor of the Economist, to write “one thing is certain, that at a particular time a great deal of stupid people have a great deal of stupid money”.

The cryptocurrency was invented by an anonymous mathematician in 2008, and championed in the years that followed for its technology. At a time when many were unsettled by the actions of central banks after the financial crisis, bitcoin offered an alternative way to manage a currency, through mathematical rules rather than a metaphorical printing press.

It also fit the vogue for technological innovation. Bitcoins are created by computers solving mathematical problems, with the total number that can be calculated into existence over time limited. An open ledger allows the community to track the distribution of coins. At a time when small start-ups were earning multibillion-dollar valuations for their power to disrupt industries, anyone with a good idea and a neat bit of software could make a fortune.

As bitcoin attracted more attention, its price rose, attracting more money and attention. Early adopters got rich quick, or bemoaned how they would have done had their bitcoin hoard not gone in the bin aboard a discarded hard drive.

Bitcoins could be used to buy goods and services in the real world, although not usually without a third party intermediating. The attention and limited supply meant that by December 2013 bitcoins traded for more than $1,200 each.

However, in 2014 the cryptocurrency lost three quarters of its value after running into an old world problem, the failure of an overextended broker. Mt Gox, a prominent bitcoin exchange, collapsed.

Then the seizure of the Silk Road, a popular website for trading bitcoins for drugs and other frowned on goods and services, prompted a crash in the price to almost $100.

Such big swings in price undermine the case for bitcoin’s use as a currency. “It’s value is so volatile it’s not likely to serve as a medium of exchange”, says Eugene Fama, the Nobel Prize winning economist.

He pointed to examples such as Zimbabwe. “When a currency has a variable value, the people just switch to a different currency, or to barter.”

Bitcoin also lacks another feature of currencies: the balance sheet of a central bank standing behind it. They might be intangible, but a balance sheet has two sides to it, lists of assets and liabilities.

The bitcoin ledger, by comparison, is just a glorified list of liabilities, keeping track of where the bitcoins are located.

Furthermore, while the number of bitcoins is limited, the number of times the cryptocurrency can be replicated is not. There are a host of imitators, including Doge coin, started as a joke in 2013 at the height of alt-coin fever. Before Mr Mavrodi switched to bitcoins, MMM was operating with Mavros as the unit of exchange.

The inherent flaw of pyramid schemes is that they must always suck in new converts to avoid collapse, and the exponential growth in users is impossible to sustain. Bitcoin shares some of these features. It requires constant evangelism because its value derives from its use.

The limited supply of bitcoins then becomes a fatal constraint. The more people use it, the greater the price must rise, dissuading its use as a currency.

Bobby Lee, head of BTCC, the largest bitcoin exchange in China, argues its use for everyday transactions makes it a currency, and is frank about its price, saying: “The reason bitcoin has value today is scarcity, that is all.”

He also agrees bitcoin has the character of a pyramid scheme, but compares it with bubbles in housing markets, which might also appear pyramidical.

He adds: “It all comes down to what we think of a pyramid scheme. Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?”

Some of these people writing this shit, is most probably on crack or paid to say, what they are writing. We have seen our fair share of FUD coming from these type of sites.

Most of those writers have done very little research and they just spew out a bunch of nonsense and give it a "click bait" title to attract attention to the site to reel in some

more subscriptions. Just ignore it... in time they will see the light. 

Just use my link which leads you to another thread about that article. I put the all the context in there.
Have fun reading that shit.
Definitely just pure FUD!

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.12939713

Im not sure if im allowed to copy and paste the article here but i found a way to read it without subscribing, you can view a cached version by searching the link but copying it into google.

https://www.google.co.uk/#q=http:%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F1877c388-8797-11e5-90de-f44762bf9896.html%23axzz3r7J89upV

Can't read the article.  Can you paste it here? I don't want to pay my money to those who are issuing biased (in a bad way) articles about Bitcoin. )

When i originally posted the article, it didn't ask for a subscription to FT to read it, this is new.

Maybe i should remove the original link?

Your article given through your link is unreachable because to read it must pay. And I have not in mind to do this. So I am commenting only the part given by you in your main post. There are to much other things (an even more important that these given in your quoted post) that bitcoin don't have compared with the other classic and normal actual currencies. And to many "specialist" of the currencies claim those. Like, have nothing behind bitcoin, no one offer warranties for it (like the other national currencies which have their Central Banks which care about those) etc, etc.

Where is the problem with such kind of "specialists"? Everything told by them is some kind of scholastic lesson learn by them in the Universities they have studied. Have them right? That depends from the point of view. According to them and their studies for sure yes. According to me no.

Here the problem is to change the meaning of the currency. Every concept or word is enriched in time representing the new realities comes from the development of society, economy or technology. As it can be seen the actual concept and meaning of the term or product named "currency" need enrichment.

Bitcoin is for sure currency. For the simple reason that everyone can buy everything which is in sale with it. Even in giants like Microsoft or Dell. This is enough to be named currency. A new kind of currency never seen before. But it is a currency. The qualities of this currency must be reflected in the meaning which have actually the concept of currency. Maybe defining as a deviated currency compared with the normal ones. Or in another way. This can be discussed. But cannot be told never and cannot be put in discussion the being currency of it. It will be a stupidity such last discussion.

FT is now either wholly or majority owned by Nikkei Stock Exchange IIRC, there was a big deal to that effect recently. Don't blame anyone in that contingent (finance and ancillaries) for feeling threatened by both Bitcoin and blockchain technology in general; they should be.

++

This is fucking hilarious.  Have you seen the balance sheets of central banks?  This is precisely why I use bitcoin.  I don't like those balance sheets 'backing' my assets.  The central bank balance sheet is fucked with very red ink.  

This FT guy is clearly on drugs.

Thanks to you I spent over 20 minutes looking for george on that site. 

Let's give the chance to others as well
http://www.wheresgeorge.com/b:mvzjWW2I8b

And, by the way, where's George?

My bad that should of been obvious to me.

I just tried to copy & paste it here but seems as though theyre asking me to pay to read it as well now lol, what a joke.

Guess you can get a jist of the article here: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/financial-times-writer-calls-bitcoin-pyramid-scheme/ but would have really been better to read the article itself to really soak in the BS that was seeping from it.

Can't read the article! Need to subscribe.. Anyone copy / paste ?  (If that's allowed..)

Im not in agreement with the article, in fact the exact opposite.

Whereas fiat currency, on the other hand (no pun intended) ...

I'd rather say it's a great, positive list of assets. The value of those assets is far from fixed, that's a fact, but there isn't a single liability in the blockchain, nor in BTC. No credit, no debit, only assets.

The journalist has also chosen a wrong word when he used "located". I guess the guy's not very familiar with BTC. There's no balance sheet in BTC, but this is precisely what makes it great.

What just happened to op.(Err I mean the writer of the article.)