Wall Street Journal Reporter On Bitcoin: Would’ve Been Better if Price Never Went Over $300
Two WSJ journalists wrote the book on bitcoin. Here are their opinions on digital currency.
Michael Casey and Paul Vigna are authors of “The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order”. They also report on digital currencies for the Wall Street Journal’s BitBeat Blog.
These two journalists cover bitcoin as a full-time job. So what’s their opinion on the state of cryptocurrencies?
Casey and Vigna recently went on ZapChain to answer questions about bitcoin. Here’s what they said.
What People Really Think About Bitcoin
“In my limited experience, the most typical reaction is confusion (and that could say as much about my ability to explain it). It’s not an easy thing for most people to wrap their heads around.”
Why Bitcoin Debit Cards Are Stupid
“I think there’s as much friction with consumers not needing/trusting bitcoin, to be honest. There are a bunch of bitcoin debit card projects out there. It hasn’t yet proven to the killer app.”
Apple Pay Could Kill Bitcoin
“I think Apple Pay is an absolute threat. I think a product from an insanely influential company, that offers an easy-to-use payment option on a product tens of millions of people already use, something that satiates their desire for mobile payments, is a threat.”
Why Journalists Get Bitcoin Wrong
“I don’t like to disparage my colleagues in the profession and I’m not sure I’d characterize it as inaccurate per se. But I do think there’s a complete misunderstanding about what bitcoin represents and that’s partly because the concepts are hard to understand.”
Why Bitcoin Isn’t All That Special
“What’s to keep a mega-power from developing its own digital currency? Absolutely nothing. It’s open-source software. Anybody can take it and build their own version of it.”
Micropayments Don’t Make Money
“I do think that micropayments will play some role in the newspaper of the future. But people have done some analysis of the model and I hear it’s not easy to make a case under current reading habits for how it becomes profitable.”
Bitcoin Will Survive Somehow
“I do think bitcoin will still be here in 20 years, one way or another. I personally think that it will be here in more than just token form (no pun intended). I think it will be a legitimate alternative payments system.”
People Shouldn’t Worry About Deflation
“Deflation might be a problem if bitcoin were the only currency in the world. But not only [is this an] unlikely scenario in the medium term but if we did get to that point, society would just gravitate to a new, open-source-based non-deflationary cryptocurrency.”
Who Satoshi Nakamoto Really Is
“Personally, I do think it’s one person, and more than likely one person who was in the Cypherpunks. Beyond that, I have no idea.”
Bitcoin Could Be Just Another…
“I think bitcoin has a great first-mover and established market-cap/network advantage. But Yahoo probably thought the same about their dominance of Internet search at one point.”
Future Won’t Just Have Bitcoin
“I think in 20 years, we’re going to be living in a world of multiple digital currencies, and multiple-blockchain based systems.”
Rand Paul And Bitcoin Means Nothing
“I think it’s interesting that Rand Paul is doing this, but it’s mostly an opportunistic move. I think the number of donors paying in bitcoin is too small to matter to have a big impact in this campaign. It needs more time.”
Bitcoin’s Price Has Been Way Overvalued
“I think bitcoin’s ascent in 2013 may have done more harm than good. The people naturally drawn to it would’ve been drawn to it anyway, and all the media attention did was create an unrealistic expectation that this thing was going to take over the world overnight. Bitcoin would’ve been better off if the price never rose over $300. But that’s over now.”
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