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Bitcoin Has Died, For The 89th Time
Did you hear? Bitcoin is dead. It’s over. Or wait, is it just dying? Is it having a crisis? There is trouble in paradise. The ideals have been lost. In a Medium post, former Bitcoin developer Mike Hern declared that the Bitcoin experiment had run its course. The community had failed.
The technology couldn’t develop anymore because power had been consolidated into a handful of people with an interest in preserving the dwindling status quo. And so after five years, Hern gave up his involvement with the cryptocurrency, and moved on to a startup.
So is Bitcoin dead? It is not dead. Objectively, the Bitcoin markets are still alive and well, and the Blockchain, the digital platform on which the currency relies, is still operational. As Elizabeth Stark points out on Twitter, people love to declare that Bitcoin is dead. According to this running tally, Bitcoin has been declared dead 88 times. (Hern’s post would be the 89th instance of someone falsely claiming the currency was dead.) People have been declaring Bitcoin dead since 2010, and it’s been declared dead twice already in 2016.
RIP Bitcoin.
[Medium]
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Maid GuestThere was an opportunity and those with power now "own" it. What did Hern expect when there was nothing in place to regulate it except the goodwill of those involved?0
Zombie Jesus @zombiejesusThis article is unnecessarily dismissive. Mike Hearn (you misspelled his name) is a respected software engineer with a fair bit of experience working with Bitcoin. His concerns are laid out in his Medium article (you linked to the wrong source) which outlines some compelling arguments about the technical limitations of Bitcoin and the very limited number of people who effectively control the currency.Anyone with a stake or interest in Bitcoin is well advised to read Hearn's article that I linked above and decide for themselves. This article does no justice at all to the story.0
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