This week's most memorable moments

Author

Bitcoin History
September 02, 2024

Greetings,

Rizzo, the Bitcoin Historian here, back with this week’s history recap.

We saw the birth of the classic Bitcoin citadel meme, the most regrettable headline ever, and one truly fatal flaw…

Before we dive in, let’s imagine you lost all your private keys. How would you feel? I’m guessing not good after all those years of stacking.

I went through that possible scenario, and proactively prevented it, by joining Casa. Get 10% OFF with the promo code PETERIZZO, and sleep easy holding your own private keys.

Okay, let’s dive in.

$122 — Bitcoin Citadels are born

This Reddit post did the rounds back when I was just getting started in Bitcoin, and boy did it blow up.

Written like a Bitcoin hater’s fever dream, this lengthy post was written by a “time traveler” who foretold of a future where Bitcoin was worth $1 million, but we had essentially ruined the world.

Global governments in decline, crime rampant, real Terminator stuff.

Anyway, leave it to Bitcoiners to reimagine a meme. In one example, the author explains how the bitcoin rich are holed up in their own private citadels, fortresses that keep them protected from nocoiners.

Of course today, the Bitcoin citadel has been recast as an inspirational meme, a kind of vision for how by buying Bitcoin today, we can expect to lead a future life of sovereignty.

That image is one of three that explains the scenario. For the other two, check them out on my Reddit.

$120 — Oxford adds Bitcoin

In August, 2013, the Oxford English Dictionary added Bitcoin its more than 273,000 words.

“Bitcoin, n.: a digital currency in which transactions can be performed without the need for a central bank.”

According to Angus Stevenson, who was head of dictionary projects for Oxford Dictionaries at the time, the criterion for adding a word is quite stringent, and his team collects billions of words from the internet, publications, newspapers and magazines, before analyzing them.

"We found that bitcoin was a pretty common word, there's a lot of evidence for it on the internet," Stevenson explained.

"We feel it has earned its place – it's frequently discussed in the mainstream media as well as particular parts of the internet and we traced it back to 2008 – that's the earliest date we found of its use, so far, so that's a fair while."

Flashback I wrote this article a year later when Oxford added cryptocurrency to its list.

$10 — Stop sending him bitcoin

There have been a lot of horrendous headlines in the media about Bitcoin but this one has to be the funniest. (Ironically, it’s written by a former colleague, who is probably one of the best crypto journalists, Mark Hochstein).

Knowing Marc, I’m sure he takes this headline in stride. It was written back when he was American Banker Editor and people were randomly just sending him Bitcoin because he was writing about it. (Very much in violation of the publication’s investment rules.)

Unfortunately, Mark had to liquidate most of his stash, but for those wondering, he was still HODLing last we talked.

Marc continues covering news for CoinDesk, which despite its crypto bent, remains one of the preeminent places for Bitcoin news.

$10 — A fatal flaw

Now to another take that aged like fine milk.

On August 26, 2012, YouTuber and “free thinker” Scott Lee uncovered a fatal flaw in Bitcoin.

What did he find? That Bitcoin can be erased from user’s hard drives, which leads to a decrease in supply, or what Lee called “deflation over time.”

He goes on to explain that fiat will die because of inflation, and closes in on the camera somewhat surreptitiously and whispers “and the Bitcoin community doesn’t deny that deflation is going to happen.”

Unfortunately for him, and anyone who listened, they missed out on 640,000% gains. All while Bitcoin slowly deflated away.

By the way, if you don’t want your BTC to disappear like it did Lee’s gains or according to what he called a fatal flaw, definitely check out Casa, and prevent that mistake from happening to you.

$7,100 l Eminem shout-out

Eminem is a true OG of the rap scene, but you may not know, he gave a shout-out to Bitcoin back in 2018— during the depths of the bear market.

The song is “Not Alike,” and the bit where he shouts out Bitcoin goes:

“Everybody doin’ chick joints, probably rob these little dudes at fist point,

Member everybody used to bite Nickel, now everybody doin’ Bitcoin.”

Since then, Eminem has continued to appear alongside crypto-related companies, with his latest being Crypto.com in April this year.

Here’s hoping he’ll become a Bitcoiner in time.

Extra posts

Cheers,

Rizzo

P.S. Casa. Please head there. The amount of people I’ve met over the years that have lost their Bitcoin isn’t funny or even interesting anymore.