Next week we're publishing the list of everything Bitcoin has been "called" that turned out wrong (Ponzi, tulips, only for drugs, boils the oceans). What are we missing?

We run LearnBitcoin.com, a free, no-ads, no-affiliate site. Next Thursday's chapter is a cousin of the Bitcoin obituaries list, but instead of counting the times it was declared dead, it collects the labels. Every thing Bitcoin was confidently called, who said it, when, and what happened next. One entry per claim, each with a dated source.

Here is what we have so far. Tell us what we missed.

"It's dead." The obituaries list at 99bitcoins has been running since 2010 and stands at 477. The four worth actually reading (Forbes 2011, Wired 2011, Krugman 2013, Mike Hearn 2016) are here: https://www.learnbitcoin.com/glossary/bitcoin-obituaries

"It's a Ponzi scheme." A Ponzi needs an operator who pays old investors with money from new ones and promises a return. Bitcoin has no operator, promises nothing, and keeps its books in public. The actual Ponzis in this industry (Bitcoin Savings and Trust, Bitconnect, PlusToken, Quadriga) all took bitcoin as the deposit, which is a different thing: https://www.learnbitcoin.com/glossary/ponzi-scheme

"It's tulip mania." Jamie Dimon, September 2017: a fraud, worse than tulip bulbs. Tulips crashed once in 1637 and stayed down. Bitcoin has lost three quarters or more of its value four separate times and set a new high after each one. His bank now lets clients buy it. The 1637 episode was also a lot smaller than the legend: https://www.learnbitcoin.com/glossary/tulip-mania

"It's only for buying drugs." Silk Road was seized in October 2013. The public ledger then convicted two of the federal agents on the case and, nine years later, the guy who'd stolen 50,000 BTC from the site in 2012: https://www.learnbitcoin.com/glossary/silk-road

"It has no intrinsic value." Greenspan, December 2013. True, and true of the dollar since 1971 and of gold's price too. Economics dropped the concept in the 1870s: https://www.learnbitcoin.com/glossary/intrinsic-value

"It's for money laundering." Chainalysis sells to law enforcement and has every reason to find crime. Their count for 2024 was about 0.14 percent of on-chain volume. The rest of the story, including where Bitcoin's privacy actually is weak, is here: https://www.learnbitcoin.com/rabbit-hole/bitcoin-privacy

"It's for terrorists." Hamas's military wing announced in April 2023 that it was no longer taking bitcoin donations, because donors kept getting caught.

"The blockchain is full of illegal images." The 2018 headlines. A research paper had found text and links stuffed into a few hundred transactions out of hundreds of millions.

"It will boil the oceans." Newsweek, December 2017: on track to consume all of the world's energy by 2020. It is 2026. Our energy chapter has the actual numbers: https://www.learnbitcoin.com/rabbit-hole/energy

"Governments will just ban it." China has banned it something like sixteen times.

"Rat poison squared." Warren Buffett, May 2018. Three years later Berkshire put half a billion dollars into Nubank, a Brazilian bank that sells bitcoin to its customers.

"Bitcoin is evil." Paul Krugman, New York Times, December 2013.

"Quantum computers will break it." Not wrong forever, but wrong on every date given so far. We keep a live count of how many coins are actually exposed: https://www.learnbitcoin.com/rabbit-hole/quantum-and-bitcoin

"You'll never buy a coffee with it." Lightning exists. https://www.learnbitcoin.com/rabbit-hole/lightning-routing

What we want from you:

1. Claims we missed. Especially the old ones. "It's only for nerds," "the government will seize it all," "the 21 million cap will get changed," "it's too slow to ever matter," whatever you were told at Thanksgiving in 2014.
2. Who said it and when, with a link if you have one. A claim with a name and a date is worth ten without.
3. The ones that were partly right. Exchanges really do collapse. Privacy really is worse than most people think. Mining really did concentrate for a while. Those go in too, with the part that was right stated plainly. We are not writing a victory lap.

If you give us a source we'll credit you by handle in the chapter, unless you'd rather we didn't. The chapter goes up next Thursday and we'll drop the link in this thread.

All 18 chapters so far: https://www.learnbitcoin.com/rabbit-holes