Wired recently produced an article discussing how Wall Street is slowly being “wooed” into buying Bitcoin, aided by increased security and institutions opening up their doors to trillion-dollar funds. A review of the article finds that confusion over Bitcoin still abounds however, with little chance of it changing soon.
Want to store your crypto in a vault under a mountain? Of course, you do. And now you can. A Wall Street-fueled arms race is afoot over who can store cryptocurrency safest https://t.co/7sX3bLKKLf
— WIRED (@WIRED) August 17, 2019
The Big Money Pouring Into Crypto Security
Wired begins by claiming that recent efforts by big-money firms like Coinbase and the Andreessen Horowitz-backed Anchorage to increase their security protocols are being done with one purpose in mind – to reassure “pensions and hedge funds and university endowments” that Bitcoin is a safe investment, both in financial and literal terms. Stating correctly that “vulnerabilities are abundant” in the crypto sphere, they cite Coinbase’s recent purchase of Xapo for $55 million, who have built a reputation for high end crypto security, as an example of the lengths that the big players are going to in order to reassure trillion-dollar entities that the face of crypto is changing. They then move on to discuss the potential impact of the imminent introduction of Fidelity and Bakkt into the crypto space, stating that “companies like Coinbase and Fidelity think there’s room for growth.” This is the first negative tone Wired strikes, but it’s not the last.
The Barrage Begins
Citing Bitcoin’s surge from $3,500 to $13,900 this year both as a reason why interest has increased but also why Bitcoin cannot be considered a safe haven, Wired offers up its current opinion of Bitcoin as a hard asset:
Fundamentally, nothing has changed since late 2017, when the price of bitcoin spiked to nearly $20,000, driven mainly by hysteria. It’s still backed by nothing and managed by no government; it’s still dominated by a select set of mining pools, based mainly in China.
It’s almost pointless at this stage to explain to those who don’t want to hear it how the lack of governmental oversight is a tick in the ‘plus’ column for the world’s first digital currency, and Wired goes on to show its ignorance of the space by listing JPMorgan coin and Facebook’s Libra token as evidence that cryptocurrency is becoming more “sophisticated”; there is nothing sophisticated about two multinationals creating permissioned blockchains that are as closely related to true cryptocurrencies as a block of cheese is to an army training exercise. Wired also explores the potential of Bitcoin as “a potential hedge when nations take up arms in a global trade war”…which might have something to do with the fact it isn’t backed by a government.
Here We Go Again…
Wired has never been a big fan of Bitcoin, and truth be told in this article they lean on so-called experts for most of the actual information, leaving the general impression that they still don’t quite understand it, like that relative you see at family gatherings twice a year and who always asks you to explain “what this Bitcoin thing is” each time. Maybe one day they’ll get it. Maybe.
