The Skeptics

A Tribute to Bold Assertions

“We propose a global and morally mandatory heuristic that anyone involved in an action which can possibly generate harm for others, even probabilistically, should be required to be exposed to some damage, regardless of context.”
N.N. Taleb & C. Sandis, “The Skin in the Game Heuristic for Protection Against Tail Events”

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Last updated:

2011年4月22日 • $1.40

Niels van der Linden

Amateur economist, VforVoluntary.com

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$4,752.00
BTC balance
112.51350881
Current value
$7,222,238.52
Percent change
151,883.13%

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2011年5月8日 • $3.85

Avery Pennarun

Software engineer

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$4,736.00
BTC balance
105.74888671
Current value
$6,788,017.64
Percent change
143,228.08%
See, a bitcoin rant is almost too over-the-top for me. Asking why I think bitcoin won't work is like asking why the sky isn't red. I mean, wait, you think it is red? You actually took that seriously? Oh boy. Where do I even start?

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2011年6月20日 • $17.51

Tim Worstall

Journalist

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$4,693.00
BTC balance
101.05394871
Current value
$6,486,649.72
Percent change
138,119.68%
It’s difficult to see what the currency has going for it.

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2011年6月20日 • $17.51

Peter Schiff

CEO, Euro Pacific Capital, Inc.

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$4,693.00
BTC balance
101.05394871
Current value
$6,486,649.72
Percent change
138,119.68%
What [bitcoins] lack is their own fundamental intrinsic value. You can’t do anything with a bitcoin, other than trade it for something you want. So, intrinsically, the bitcoin itself has no value. It only has value as a medium of exchange so long as people are willing to accept it.

2011年8月9日 • $9.80

Adrian Covert

Journalist

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$4,643.00
BTC balance
97.34437274
Current value
$6,248,532.16
Percent change
134,479.63%
The lulz were abundant. But frankly, it’s time for you to go. Farewell.

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2011年9月7日 • $7.16

Paul Krugman

Nobel Prize-winning Economist

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$4,614.00
BTC balance
94.28104960
Current value
$6,051,897.55
Percent change
131,063.80%
So to the extent that the [Bitcoin] experiment tells us anything about monetary regimes, it reinforces the case against anything like a new gold standard – because it shows just how vulnerable such a standard would be to money-hoarding, deflation, and depression.

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2012年12月24日 • $13.43

Michael Calore

Journalist

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$4,140.00
BTC balance
9.52708223
Current value
$611,543.10
Percent change
14,671.57%
Then came the malware, the black market, the legal ambiguities and The Man. Today, you can't even use it to buy Facebook stock

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2013年3月5日 • $40.67

Patrik Korda

Amateur trader

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$4,069.00
BTC balance
5.69769325
Current value
$365,734.75
Percent change
8,888.32%
Thus, we have an answer before us: bitcoins are fiduciary media, or more specifically token money. From a monetary standpoint, as devised and formulated by Ludwig von Mises, they are on a par with the stuff you find at Chuck E. Cheese's.

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2013年4月3日 • $131.38

Heidi Moore

Finance and Economics Editor, The Guardian US

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$4,040.00
BTC balance
5.20137916
Current value
$333,876.36
Percent change
8,164.27%
Of course, in a rational world, none of that will be written, except perhaps as satire. Bitcoin's crash is less of a currency crisis than an opportune moment for internet wisecracks.

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2013年4月9日 • $230.68

Kurt Eichenwald

Contributing editor, Vanity Fair

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$4,034.00
BTC balance
5.16074244
Current value
$331,267.89
Percent change
8,111.90%
So, anyone out there buying Bitcoins at ridiculously inflated prices, please recognize the risk you are taking. You will likely lose everything.

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2013年4月11日 • $82.90

Justin Wolfers

Economist, Brookings Institution

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$4,032.00
BTC balance
5.15020374
Current value
$330,591.41
Percent change
8,099.19%

2013年5月10日 • $117.69

Robert McMillan

Journalist

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$4,003.00
BTC balance
4.88933731
Current value
$313,846.41
Percent change
7,740.28%
But in the end, the answer was obvious. The world’s most popular digital currency really is nothing more than an abstraction. So we’re destroying the private key used by our Bitcon wallet.

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2013年5月14日 • $107.87

Ian Bremmer

Founder and President, Eurasia Group

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,999.00
BTC balance
4.85496059
Current value
$311,639.76
Percent change
7,692.94%
"I would be very surprised if Bitcoin is still around in 10 years," said Bremmer, the founder and CEO of Eurasia Group, the world's largest risk consulting firm. He thinks that bigger players will enter the field and improve upon Bitcoin's weaknesses.

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2013年10月16日 • $138.33

David S. Evans

Chairman of the Global Economics Group

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,844.00
BTC balance
3.38985008
Current value
$217,594.37
Percent change
5,560.62%
I think there are two realistic directions the bitcoin ecosystem could go in. First, it could just implode and disappear if governments decide that virtual currencies cause too much harm and are too hard to regulate. Long-term investments in bitcoin would then go up in smoke. Second, it could continue as a virtual currency that is only used on the dark web with exchanges that are run by people willing to break the laws. The value of bitcoin would decline to whatever the illegal sector could support; regular investors wouldn’t be able to get their value from bitcoin unless they cashed it in with someone who wanted to do bad things.

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2013年11月3日 • $210.28

Emin Gün Sirer

Professor, Cornell University

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,826.00
BTC balance
3.29038326
Current value
$211,209.60
Percent change
5,420.38%

2013年11月6日 • $263.21

Joseph Weisenthal

Executive Editor, Business Insider

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,823.00
BTC balance
3.27715240
Current value
$210,360.31
Percent change
5,402.49%
Bitcoin? Nada. There's nothing keeping it being a thing. If people lose faith in it, it's over. Bitcoin is fiat currency in the most literal sense of the word.

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2013年11月8日 • $333.75

Kevin Rose

Co-founder, Digg

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,821.00
BTC balance
3.26990635
Current value
$209,895.18
Percent change
5,393.20%

2013年11月21日 • $720.76

Matthew O'Brien

Journalist

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,808.00
BTC balance
3.23833199
Current value
$207,868.43
Percent change
5,358.73%
In other words, Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme libertarians use to make money off each other—because gold wasn't enough of one for them.

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2013年11月29日 • $1,128.73

Gary North

Economist

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,800.00
BTC balance
3.22891369
Current value
$207,263.87
Percent change
5,354.31%
Bitcoins will never achieve this. It is a mania going up. It will be a mania coming down. It will not increase the division of labor, because people will recognize it as having been a Ponzi scheme, and they will not again buy it. They will not use it in exchange. Companies will not sell goods and services based on Bitcoins. Bitcoins have to have stable purchasing power if they are to serve as money, and they will never, ever achieve stable purchasing power.

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2013年12月2日 • $1,040.81

Matthew Yglesias

Executive Editor, Vox

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,797.00
BTC balance
3.22609749
Current value
$207,083.09
Percent change
5,353.86%
My primary interest in Bitcoin is that I think it's a great platform for making jokes.

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2013年12月5日 • $1,027.41

Mark T. Williams

Finance Professor, Boston University

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,794.00
BTC balance
3.22330648
Current value
$206,903.94
Percent change
5,353.45%
Once sellers outnumber buyers, prices will eventually drop below $10, erasing all gains. This price collapse will occur by the first half of 2014.

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2013年12月18日 • $526.12

Edward Hadas

Economics Editor, Reuters

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,781.00
BTC balance
3.20758923
Current value
$205,895.05
Percent change
5,345.52%
The electronic pseudocurrency has had a good run. Ideologues, speculators and scammers enjoyed the fun while it lasted. But now that the authorities are taking notice, the price has much further to fall.

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2013年12月18日 • $526.12

Alex Payne

Developer and Angel Investor

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,781.00
BTC balance
3.20758923
Current value
$205,895.05
Percent change
5,345.52%
Bitcoin represents more of the same short-sighted hypercapitalism that got us into this mess, minus the accountability.

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2013年12月18日 • $526.12

Charlie Stross

Author

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,781.00
BTC balance
3.20758923
Current value
$205,895.05
Percent change
5,345.52%
TL:DR; the current banking industry and late-period capitalism may suck, but replacing it with Bitcoin would be like swapping out a hangnail for Fournier's gangrene.

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2013年12月28日 • $715.85

Brad DeLong

Professor of Economics, U.C. Berkeley

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,771.00
BTC balance
3.19201439
Current value
$204,895.30
Percent change
5,333.45%
You can either work doing something useful, or you can set up a botnet to mine BitCoins, or you can fork the code behind BitCoin and set up your own slightly-tweaked virtual cryptographic money network. Setting up a new, alternative network is really cheap. Thus unless BitCoin going can somehow successfully differentiate itself from the latecomers who are about to emerge, the money supply of BitCoin-like things is infinite because the cost of production of them is infinitesimal.

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2014年1月15日 • $841.09

Lisa Kramer

"Serious Economist"

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,753.00
BTC balance
3.16967511
Current value
$203,461.34
Percent change
5,321.30%
As a Serious Economist, I had been happily ignoring the recent bitcoin frenzy, safe in the smug knowledge shared by all Serious Economists that the surge in bitcoin value is a bubble that will soon pop.

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2014年1月23日 • $810.92

Jamie Dimon

President & CEO, JPMorgan Chase

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,745.00
BTC balance
3.15993021
Current value
$202,835.82
Percent change
5,316.18%
"It’s a terrible store of value," Mr. Dimon said in an interview with CNBC. "It could be replicated over and over."

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2014年1月29日 • $793.38

Paul Singer

CEO, Elliott Management Corporation

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,739.00
BTC balance
3.15233382
Current value
$202,348.21
Percent change
5,311.83%
There is no more reason to believe that bitcoin will stand the test of time than that governments will protect the value of government-created money, although bitcoin is newer and we always look at babies with hope.

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2014年3月1日 • $567.53

Robert J. Shiller

Nobel Prize-winning Economist

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,708.00
BTC balance
3.10546788
Current value
$199,339.88
Percent change
5,275.94%
The Bitcoin phenomenon seems to fit the basic definition of a speculative bubble — that is, a special kind of fad, a mania for holding an asset in expectation of its appreciation.

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2014年3月9日 • $640.58

Mark Cuban

TV Actor, Shark Tank

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,700.00
BTC balance
3.09277349
Current value
$198,525.03
Percent change
5,265.54%
I think as an encryption technology, [Bitcoin’s] great. I think as a transport mechanism, accounting of a transport mechanism, that it's unique and has a great opportunity in the future. I think it has no shot as a long term digital currency. [Would you buy any?] Yeah, I mean I'd look at it, but more as fun, you know? It's almost like buying and selling baseball cards, but there's definitely risk involved if you're looking at it to be a long term currency.

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2014年3月9日 • $640.58

Nouriel Roubini

Professor of Economics, New York University

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,700.00
BTC balance
3.09277349
Current value
$198,525.03
Percent change
5,265.54%

2014年3月14日 • $628.31

Warren Buffett

Chairman & CEO, Berkshire Hathaway

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,695.00
BTC balance
3.08491263
Current value
$198,020.44
Percent change
5,259.15%
"Stay away from it," he said, according to a transcript. "It’s a mirage basically."

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2015年10月14日 • $253.14

Anthony Watson & Halsey Minor

CEO and Founder & Chairman, Uphold (formerly Bitreserve), respectively

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,116.00
BTC balance
1.27539763
Current value
$81,867.73
Percent change
2,527.33%
Watson sounds even more negative on bitcoin. “I’ll be surprised if bitcoin is here in five years,” he has told Fortune. “The value of bitcoin isn’t the currency, but the technology. I think once the world becomes more accustomed and attuned to the platform of bitcoin, the noise will go away, and the currency will go away too.
[…]
Minor, too, predicts that bitcoin as a currency “will get destroyed.” He likens the coin’s current market cap—about $3.7 billion—to “an accounting mistake or rounding error that Bank of America makes.”

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2016年1月14日 • $429.82

Mike Hearn

Lead Platform Engineer, R3CV

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,024.00
BTC balance
1.02179389
Current value
$65,588.92
Percent change
2,068.95%
But despite knowing that Bitcoin could fail all along, the now inescapable conclusion that it has failed still saddens me greatly. The fundamentals are broken and whatever happens to the price in the short term, the long term trend should probably be downwards. I will no longer be taking part in Bitcoin development and have sold all my coins.

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2016年1月19日 • $378.16

Vivek Wadhwa

Contributor, The Washington Post; Tryhard

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$3,019.00
BTC balance
1.00895899
Current value
$64,765.05
Percent change
2,045.25%
Bitcoin did have great potential, but it is damaged beyond repair. A replacement is badly needed.

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2016年11月17日 • $735.32

Jeremy Allaire

CEO, Circle

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$2,716.00
BTC balance
0.42467226
Current value
$27,259.70
Percent change
903.67%
“Our view is that we’re still in the really early stages of the technology and its development,” said Allaire. “It’s highly unlikely that any of us will be using Bitcoin in five or ten years. In the same way that — how many of us use NCSA Mosaic or Netscape Navigator?”

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2016年11月21日 • $736.51

Timothy B. Lee

Senior correspondent, technology and economics, Lead writer for "New Money", Vox Media

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$2,712.00
BTC balance
0.41927783
Current value
$26,913.43
Percent change
892.38%
What went wrong? The Bitcoin community has been hampered by a dysfunctional culture that has grown increasingly hostile toward experimentation. That has made it difficult for the Bitcoin network to keep up with changing market demands...Bitcoin's larger problem may be that it just doesn’t solve any problems normal people have.

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2017年1月3日 • $1,032.61

Dan McCrum

Editor, Financial Times

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$2,669.00
BTC balance
0.36587170
Current value
$23,485.29
Percent change
779.93%
As a phenomenon bitcoin has all the attributes of a pyramid scheme, requiring a constant influx of converts to push up the price, based on the promise of its use by future converts. So the ultimate value for bitcoin will be the same as all pyramid schemes: zero.

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2017年6月2日 • $2,479.42

Raoul Pal

Macro Strategist, GMI

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$2,519.00
BTC balance
0.23771586
Current value
$15,258.97
Percent change
505.76%
Bitcoin was supposed to be a store of value, you couldn’t mess with the formula… and now they are talking about a ‘hard fork’ changing it? Even if they don’t change the formula, the fact that they could? That’s enough to say it’s not a long-term store of value.

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2017年7月26日 • $2,522.32

Howard Marks

Co-chairman, Oaktree Capital

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$2,465.00
BTC balance
0.21636607
Current value
$13,888.53
Percent change
463.43%
In my view, digital currencies are nothing but an unfounded fad (or perhaps even a pyramid scheme), based on a willingness to ascribe value to something that has little or none beyond what people will pay for it.

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2017年10月9日 • $4,777.53

Kenneth Rogoff

Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Harvard University; Former Chief Economist, IMF

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$2,390.00
BTC balance
0.19673436
Current value
$12,628.37
Percent change
428.38%
My best guess is that in the long run, the technology will thrive, but that the price of bitcoin will collapse.

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2017年10月23日 • $5,888.25

Al-Waleed Bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al Saud

Citigroup shareholder

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$2,376.00
BTC balance
0.19418822
Current value
$12,464.94
Percent change
424.62%
I just don't believe in this bitcoin thing. I think it's just going to implode one day. I think this is Enron in the making.

Archive link

2018年4月24日 • $9,652.21

Bill Harris

Founder & CEO, Personal Capital; Former CEO of PayPal and Intuit

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$2,193.00
BTC balance
0.17459846
Current value
$11,207.47
Percent change
411.06%
In my opinion, [Bitcoin’s] a colossal pump-and-dump scheme, the likes of which the world has never seen.

Archive link

2018年11月28日 • $4,208.48

Robert C. Merton

Nobel Prize-winning Economist; Failed and bailed out co-founder, Long-Term Capital Management

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$1,975.00
BTC balance
0.14208631
Current value
$9,120.52
Percent change
361.80%
The problem with bitcoin at the moment, despite Ohio, is just what its champions decry: It is not a government-controlled currency. And therefore, asks Merton, who is responsible for the value of our currency if tomorrow morning all the bitcoin screens go dark?

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2019年7月24日 • $9,792.79

Steven Mnuchin

United States Secretary of the Treasury

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$1,737.00
BTC balance
0.09319642
Current value
$5,982.28
Percent change
244.40%
I won't be talking about Bitcoin in 10 years, I can assure you that. […] I would bet in even 5 or 6 years I'm no longer talking about Bitcoin as Treasury Secretary. […] I can assure you I will personally not be loaded up on Bitcoin.

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2020年1月1日 • $7,170.63

Tendayi Kapfidze

Chief Economist, LendingTree

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$1,576.00
BTC balance
0.07473092
Current value
$4,796.98
Percent change
204.38%
“It’s a pyramid scheme,” LendingTree Chief Economist Tendayi Kapfidze tells Yahoo Finance. “You only make money based on people who enter after you. It 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.”

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2021年2月12日 • $47,525.21

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Flaneur, or something like that

Daily buy
$1.00
Total invested
$1,168.00
BTC balance
0.03683427
Current value
$2,364.39
Percent change
102.43%

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