Even though Bitcoin (BTC) is becoming more popular and accepted in the mainstream, the skeptics have anticipated its demise many times since its inception nearly fifteen years ago, including on multiple occasions in 2023, despite its price recording a steady and bullish increase this year.
Indeed, noteworthy Bitcoin critics, all with thousands of followers, have pronounced the flagship decentralized finance (DeFi) asset ‘dead’ seven times in 2023, adding up to the total tally of 474 times so far, according to the data from the cryptocurrency market information platform 99bitcoins on December 25.
Bitcoin death declarations in 2023
Specifically, the author of the most recent eulogy is Chamath Palihapitiya, the founder and CEO of venture capital firm Social Capital and a former senior executive at Facebook (NASDAQ: META), who claimed the maiden cryptocurrency was dead on April 22, when it was trading at $27,818. Interestingly, there have been no death declarations since.
Earlier, in mid-March, Robin Brooks, the chief economist at the Institute of International Finance (IIF) and former forex currency strategist at Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), referred to Bitcoin as a bubble with no value and vulnerable to the United States Federal Reserve’s policies, as it was changing hands at the price of $24,746.
Going back to February, Harvey Jones from the British outlet Daily Express depicted Bitcoin as “a joke wrapped in a fraud (…) and sold as a get-rich-quick investment opportunity,” while Cincinnati Enquirer’s Rober Park said it was “the greatest Ponzi scheme of all time” in late January.
Moreover, they are not alone. Other Bitcoin naysayers in 2023 have included JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon, geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan, the host of CNBC’s Mad Money Jim Cramer, and former attorney at the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) John Reed Stark.
That said, the price of the crypto sector’s largest asset by market capitalization at press time stood at $43,226, recording a decline of 0.96% on the day but nonetheless an increase of 5.12% over the week, a 14.26% advance across the previous month, and growing as much as 159.01% on its yearly chart.
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