December 9, 2018

Bitcoin Is a Long Con Aimed at Those Least Able to Affort It

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Here’s a fairly typical email I got in response to my post last night about Bitcoin:

You write reckless articles without dd , s recent international survey shows bitcoin mining is 60% mined with renewables on top of that your foolish article is reckless because as price dropped it also reduced the difficulty by 24% in the last week , the lightning network has grown by 16000% in 2 months .

Please let me know what info you would like to know about crypto since you are clueless .

Thank you
Finance Director
John P….

This is one of the reasons I continue to say that Bitcoin is a con. This email is obviously illiterate nonsense, but it’s a typical defense of Bitcoin and it’s the kind of thing that keeps innumerate chumps pumping money into the crypto market.

As near as I can tell, the Bitcoin market is split between cutthroat Chinese miners running huge racks of servers, and hopeful but clueless marks who would be better off putting their money into lottery tickets. So this is the test: Are you a cutthroat Chinese miner running huge racks of servers? No? Then you’re one of the clueless marks. Sorry.

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A full one-third of our annual fundraising comes in this month alone. That’s risky, because a strong December means our newsroom is on the beat and reporting at full strength—but a weak one means budget cuts and hard choices ahead.

With only days left until December 31, we've raised about half of our $400,000 goal—but we need a huge surge in reader support to close the remaining gap. Whether you've given before or this is your first time, your contribution right now matters.

Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do. That’s why we need you right now. Please chip in to help close the gap.

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