‘Bitcoin Is Dead’, Says One of the First Crypto Millionaires
“It may have a bull market or two left in it, but long-term, it’s dead.”
![Bitcoin Promo](https://www.maxim.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/bitcoin-promo-1-scaled.jpg?w=788&h=444&crop=1)
Bitcoin won’t be rebounding after its year-long freefall, at least according to one of the popular cryptocurrency’s earliest millionaires.
Erik Finman, the young German crypto king who famously turned a 2011 investment of $1,000 into $4 million when Bitcoin hit an all-time high one year ago, says BTC is “dead.”
“Bitcoin is dead, it’s too fragmented, there’s tons of infighting, I just don’t think it will last,” Finman told MarketWatch. “It may have a bull market or two left in it, but long-term, it’s dead.”
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Bitcoin peaked at $19,783.21 exactly one year ago today: December 17, 2017. That headline-grabbing landmark was followed by a dramatic 50 percent drop in January, which turned out to be the beginning of a 12-month trend characterized by small gains and huge losses.
One particularly brutal example came when Bitcoin shares shed $1,000 in value over a 24-hour period in early September, bringing other crypto like Litecoin down with it.
“Litecoin has been dead for a while,” Finman added. “It’s like when the sun is going down and there’s that eight minute period just before it goes dark. Litecoin is in its seventh minute.”
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Time has further details on Bitcoin’s notable lows:
One unit of Bitcoin was worth less than $6,000 toward the end of June. Bitcoin’s value then collapsed further in late autumn — hitting around $5,000 in mid-November, all the way down below $3,500 in early December.
As of around 7 a.m. ET today, December 17, 2018, Bitcoin was worth about $3,250, according to CoinDesk. That’s a decrease of 84% compared to Bitcoin’s all-time high reached exactly one year ago.
In other words, if you invested $1,000 in Bitcoin a year ago, it would be worth only $160 right now.
As of December 17, Bitcoin was trading at $3,558.36 per coin and had hit a 24-hour low of $3,181.70 per coin, according to CoinDesk.
![coindesk-BTC-chart-2018-12-17](https://www.maxim.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/coindesk-btc-chart-2018-12-17.png)
But Finman says the outlook is better for other project-based cryptocurrencies—he named Ether and ZCash as two potentially successful examples.
“I’m better at this kind of stuff than those [Wall Street] millionaires,” he said. “They don’t know how to work the system, they’re nerds. I’m more than that.”
If you take Finman’s outrageously decadent Instagram feed as a sign of wisdom, maybe it’s worth heeding his advice.
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