Economist Brands Bitcoin a “Scam” On Mainstream Media
While Bitcoin is now over 11 years old, the cryptocurrency is seemingly still subject to accusations by many mainstream economists and investors that it is a “scam.” This was proven recently when an economist bashed the leading digital asset on Yahoo Finance.
If you’ve been following Bitcoin’s news cycle at all over the past few years, you’ve likely seen headlines along the lines of “Prominent Investor Brands Bitcoin a Scam.” While this may seem hyperbolized, variations have this headline have been seen many a time.
For instance, JP Morgan chief executive Jamie Dimon in 2017 called Bitcoin a “fraud” that “won’t end well,” before adding that he would fire any employees dealing with the cryptocurrency in the future. He has since retracted his comments, claiming that he wants nothing to do with the digital asset. Interestingly, the company now has its own digital asset based on Ethereum’s blockchain and its respective cryptocurrency.
The “Bitcoin Is A Scam” Narrative Still Exists, Apparently
It seems that this trend is continuing in 2020. According to a recent report from Yahoo Finance, LendingTree Chief Economist Tendayi Kapfidze told the outlet in an interview that he thinks Bitcoin is a “pyramid scheme,” citing his sentiment that you can “only make money [with BTC] based on people who enter after you.”
He added that Bitcoin “has no real utility in the world. They’ve been trying to create a utility for it for ten years now. It’s a solution in search of a problem and it still hasn’t found a problem to solve.”
Corporations Are Embracing Bitcoin
While Bitcoin may still be fielding accusations of being a “scam” by economists and investors are like, corporations — and absolute behemoths of corporations at that — have started to give the cryptocurrency their stamp of approval, seemingly quashing all the accusations of BTC being a “pyramid scheme” or something similar of the sort.
Just look to Microsoft, which earlier this year unveiled a decentralized identity solution that uses the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains. This project seems to be more of a pilot than anything, though it is exciting to see a literal trillion-dollar company using the actual Bitcoin blockchain, not just a private fork, for a bona fide venture.
In a similar manner, Fidelity Investments — one of the world’s largest financial service companies with over $2 trillion under management — has begun to offer Bitcoin custody and trading services to its institutional clients. As it has a fiduciary responsibility to protect the assets of its clients, Fidelity has likely cleared Bitcoin as a bona fide asset.
That’s not to mention that some of the world’s most prominent technologists have lauded Bitcoin.
Per previous reports from Blockonomi, Elon Musk — co-founder of PayPal, chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, founder of the Boring Company, among other titles — earlier this year told ARK Invest that he thinks Bitcoin has an underlying structure that is “quite brilliant,” adding that he thinks maybe Ethereum and “maybe some of the others” might have technological merit.
The renowned technologist concluded by stating that he thinks “without a doubt” that crypto is a “far better way to transfer value than pieces of paper.”
Musk’s love for Bitcoin has been echoed by individuals like Jack Dorsey, chief executive of Twitter and Square, Silicon Valley household name Reid Hoffman, and even Bill Gates on one occasion.
If some of the world’s largest corporations and technologists are embracing Bitcoin, would it be fair to call it a scam or Ponzi scheme? Maybe, maybe not.
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OhNoCryptocurrency via https://www.ohnocrypto.com/ @Nick Chong, @Khareem Sudlow
