The reason Bitcoin refuses to “die”, is because it represents a genuine technological breakthrough in payments. The reason it hasn’t been exposed as a “ponzi scheme”, is because it isn’t one.
Earlier today, I came across a very powerful quote on Twitter by Erik Voorhees:
I’ve met many critics of Bitcoin who have never used it. I’ve met few critics of Bitcoin who have.
— Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) March 11, 2014
From my own personal experience, I have found the above sentiment to be completely true.
The more people actually look into Bitcoin, rather than simply dismiss it with superficial judgments, the more people recognize its incredible potential. A recent case in point seems to be Spencer Rascoff, CEO of online real estate database Zillow.
As Coindesk points out, last November Rascoff said on Bloomberg TV:
“I am sceptical of bitcoin. I just think there’s too much shadiness associated with the currency that’s not maintained by some sort of government or central bank. And I think it will blow up at some point, with some big scandal where someone loses 50, a 100 million dollars, and I don’t think it is going to be here in five years.”
Well, $475 million in customer funds have been lost via the Mt. Gox debacle and, despite some wild prices swings, there ultimately has been zero price impact. To borrow a phrase from Nassim Taleb, Bitcoin is the definition of anti-fragile.
It seems that time (and a conversation with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong) has changed his tune. Yesterday, the Zillow CEO Tweeted:
Thx to @brian_armstrong for the @coinbase tutorial. I’m reconsidering my skepticism on Bitcoin. cc @SaraEisen
— Spencer Rascoff (@spencerrascoff) March 10, 2014
Meanwhile, just last week the co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, tweeted the following:
Playing with BTC today: I just bought 0.1 bitcoin with @Coinbase! https://t.co/rU2JBWB2AB
— Jimmy Wales (@jimmy_wales) March 6, 2014
Wales subsequently posted a BTC address and the unsolicited donations started flooding in. I guess this was the Bitcoin community’s way of demonstrating its power (just as it did with the $28k recently donated to Dorian Nakamoto). By the end of today, the donations had climbed to over $11k. He tweeted:
Time for me to go to bed after a long and interesting day: 17.88428302 BTC ≈ 11,235.26 USD.
— Jimmy Wales (@jimmy_wales) March 11, 2014
While increased mainstream adoption by influential individuals is important, merchant adoption is equally key, and good news on this front has continued with today’s announcement by Big Fish that it will use Coinbase to accept payments in BTC.
So what’s Big Fish?
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