2011:
Bitcoin is fast, decentralized, anonymous cryptocurrency that puts power in the hands of the people. It's hard, sound money, uncensorable, and free for everyone.
:)
2019:
[ skip to the bottom if you can't handle the truth ]
Bitcoin is not Decentralized.
Bitcoin is not Anonymous.
Bitcoin is not "Hard Money"
Binance hack => Talks of Rollback by talking to the top mining pools.
Okay, I know this is old news and we seem to forget stories that happened beyond a week or even 3 days ago, but remember that they were considering influencing the miners to drain the hacker's funds.
Imagine if there was a considerable effort made and this actually occurred: The hack was reversed or the funds were just given to the miners.
Was Bitcoin not HARD MONEY? Is this a place where you can cry "Daddy he bit me" and suddenly change reality to fit your favor? And my money depends on it?
Bitcoin is not Liquid
Sure buying things with Bitpay is quick and easy, however I was in a situation where I needed cash immediately and decided to pull from my Bitcoin Cash reserves. I ended up waiting over 2 hours to get it sent to Coinbase alone, and then had to send it to Paypal, and then send it from Paypal to my bank account, to then go and turn it into cash. If I were held at gunpoint, Bitcoin would ensure my absolute death.
It's 2019 and Bitcoin still has high fees and takes forever to transact. Grandaddy's getting old, kids.
Bitcoin is not Free.
Credit/Debit card fees, Coinbase fees, Transaction fees in excess of $4 to send $10 for my Bitpay card. Exchange fees.
Once upon a time you could meet with somebody from LocalBitcoin and just give them cash for BTC or the other way around. Well if you're in America you very well had the risk of being arrested by an agent for that. If you were really into the fight for freedom they probably would have stuck a long dick called "illegal money transmitting business" and money laundering down your throat. Source 2
And Steemit, don't look at me like that, I remember when you chatted about how uncensorable you were, and then you banned some people.
Americans thought the crypto revolution would be liberating too until Binance geo-blocked their IPs. We also can't buy crypto gold from Digix.
Bitcoin is outdated.
Not even just again XRP, but with projects like Hyperledger, Hedera Hashgraph, and just using consensus models without stacking my literal money onto it. I'm not going to wait for some drama to cause another fork in the Bitcoin project, I'll just use what's instant, low cost and trustworthy.
I personally enjoy sending Litecoin from Coinbase to my Exodus wallet. I press Ok there and within seconds I hear the "cha-ching" sound. Literally if it takes over 20 seconds I start getting worried -- was the address wrong and my money I literally depend on just gone like that?
But yeah, it's not flashy anymore. It's like when newer, better social networks exist out there but people insist on flocking by the billions towards the government surveillance platforms. Entire better technologies exist for storing and transferring real assets across distributed networks. They're just not the Bitcoin.
Anything digital can be hacked.
The year is 2022. A virus takes over every computer connected to the web -- Arm, Intel, AMD, doesn't matter the chip. A bug is installed which exposes every private key linked to an address with funds in it on the blockchain level. At the same time, every phone connected has its private keys jacked, wallet passwords yanked.
Well fuck, now you have nothing.
P.s. Remember when Steemit got hacked? Ethereum classic gets 51% attacked? Bitcoin Cash too?
The great crypto revolution features Many, MANY dead projects with users simply trying to make money through scams and convincing bots.
They said that well, we need more regulation! Now your address is publicly identified and all of your transactions are traceable given some time and effort. You can't obtain Bitcoin without either your bank knowing or by submitting your government ID. It's been almost two years since the 2017 hype when fees started to skyrocket, networks became congested. The move up to $8000 brought back basically the same high ass fees, on an outdated and bloated technology, where your transactions can be either reverted or just simply invalidated by the biggest miner groups.
Oh and whatever Altcoin you wish to hold has been looking pretty much like this:
And drops when Bitcoin goes up relative to it, and drops even more when Bitcoin goes down.
(This is the coin that Bix Weir recommended, along with SALT. They've done nothing but fall into a black hole. I'm actually laughing about the SALTiness they must've felt.)
(In fact I have a whole list of coins that somehow embodied the attributes of their abbreviations.)
Drama, non-stop drama.
Some guy takes some guy to court. Some whale drops a million BTC onto the market. This place gets hacked, these laws get changed, these coins get banned.
But whatever. Despite this 100% 180 on everything Bitcoin made sense for, I seem to put out these articles before a massive move up out of the blue.
The world we live in folks: Tether doesn't have full USD backing, no one cares. Bitcoin Cash gets 51%'d, no one cares. All fundamentals get erased, but the damn thing still won't die.
Oh yeah, and:
Bitcoin -- placing power in the hands of the automators.
Who has most of the money in Steemit? Who stacks most of the profits in trading? Where's most of the power in any of these Dapps? Yes, other than the owners, it's those that create robots to take advantage of the system while they sleep. This is why I make Steemit bots and hearken for everyone to get on APIs of all the newest projects.
Bonus: Someone present an actual legitimate idea for a "Decentralized Autonomous Organization" that isn't just another government or a bunch of confused people paying to vote on a leaderless project?
I dunno. Nobody reads this. All I know is that if you're like someone I know, you probably want to rip some profits for a while so you could move into the forest and be gone from this crazy white man's world.