⸺ Obituary · April 4, 2019 ⸺
“The Best Thing To Do With Crypto? Burn It With Fire”
— BREAKERMAG, Nicholas Weaver
“First of all, the cryptocurrencies don’t actually work as currency. That’s the big deal. They’re hard to buy because they are deliberately incompatible with the rest of the financial system. They’re incredibly hard to hold on to because, well, something goes wrong it’s “Sorry for your loss.” That’s a function of the irreversible design. And finally, they’re actually really hard to spend. Most merchants who accept cryptocurrency aren’t actually accepting cryptocurrency, they’re using a service that turns it into dollars.”
Price at death
$4,918
Today
$73,507
Resurrection
×14.9
On 2019-04-04, Nicholas Weaver (Professor, UC Berkeley) declared Bitcoin dead via BREAKERMAG. Bitcoin was trading at ~$4,918 at the time. The call joins the growing canon of premature obituaries.
The declaration was catalogued on April 4, 2019, when one Bitcoin traded for approximately $4,918. Since then, Bitcoin has appreciated by 14.9× relative to the price on the day BREAKERMAG pronounced it finished.