On May 23, 2014 PMNTS.com (“what’s next in payments and commerce”) published a piece (“Guess What Folks, Overstock.com Does Not Take Bitcoin”) by David S. Evans that is as remarkably poor an example of research and analysis as one is likely to see these days.
- “Partick Bryne, Overstock’s CEO and ‘Bitcoin Messiah’, even gave the keynote at last week’s Bitcoin2014 conference in Amsterdam. If he’s not a believer, who is?” asks Mr. Evans in his opening paragraph (misspelling both my first name and last in a foreshadowing of the general shoddiness of his homework).
- In the next paragraph Evans falsely asserts about Overstock’s acceptance of Bitcoin, “To pay with the Bitcoin button you need a Coinbase wallet.” In this he is simply wrong: Anyone with Bitcoin can pay with that button (I suspect that this mistake is another expression of Evans’ unfamiliarity with Bitcoin and inattention to detail).
- Now jumping to the end (where Mr. Evans buries his lead), “In the end, in this bizarro world, even the Bitcoin Messiah wants greenbacks.” Actually, even the Bitcoin Messiah has to pay his suppliers, and since they want greenbacks, at some point the Bitcoins that customers spend at Overstock must be converted to greenbacks to pay for those goods and services. This basic truth has Mr. Evans so agitated that he sees the whole process as “smoke and mirrors.”
- In developing the previous point, Evans falsely asserts, “Overstock.com never takes possession of bitcoins or anything denominated in bitcoins.” This is also wrong: at checkout our customers’ Bitcoins are moved to our wallet, then Coinbase sells Bitcoins from that wallet back into the market in return for dollars on our behalf (however, we have stated publicly and accurately that we are accumulating Bitcoin reserves equal to 10% of all Bitcoin spent on our site).
- Another paragraph, another blithering idiocy: “It gets weirder. How did you get bitcoins in your wallet in the first place? You were asked to link your bank account to Coinbase.” Actually, there are a plethora of ways one may acquire Bitcoin that have nothing to do with Coinbase, and all of the Bitcoin thus acquired works with Overstock.
- “Overstock could have a bitcoin account, and pay people and vendors in bitcoin, regardless of whether people want to buy stuff from Overstock using their bitcoins.” Except that nobody (e.g., the IRS) has worked out the tax issues related to paying employees in Bitcoin (though I have on several occasions said publicly that we wish to be at the forefront of paying Bitcoin to employees and vendors who will accept it, and have publicly invited firms that work in those areas to contact me).
And so on and so forth. Nearly every paragraph of David Evans’ initial piece, and even in his back-spinning “clarification,” has errors that would make a college sophomore blush. That is quite an accomplishment for a man who bills himself as “ranked among the top 3 percent of economists in the world” (with, as one comes to expect from Mr. Evans, no explanation or citation).
Thanks for taking the time to respond to this bullshit piece from David Evans. I just gave a podcast interview on pymnts.com via his partner Karen Webster and was horrified to read this article on the same website. Well done!
Not shocking. Accuracy and human decency have never been strengths of PYMNTS.com.
To paraphrase Shakespeare … Mr. Bryne “doth protest to much, methinks”
Shakespeare probably used the right “too”
Gold and Silver Manipulation:
Whether silver prices move high enough is a function of how aggressive the raptors are in liquidating their record net long position and how aggressive JPMorgan and the 7 other big shorts are in adding new short contracts.
This is the key unknown. But what is clearly known is that the current concentrated short position of nearly 317 million oz is already so large that it proves the silver manipulation on its face.
That the position has no hedging or economic legitimacy makes it outrageous to even contemplate that it may increase further.
If there is one thing to focus on in silver, it is what happens to this criminal concentrated short position in COMEX silver.
– Silver analyst Ted Butler: 24 May 2014
http://www.caseyresearch.com/gsd/edition/chinas-gold-demand-falls-in-the-second-quarter#the-wrap
Way to go Mark Mitchell and Gary Aquirre!
Journalist Sues SEC to Get Naked Short Selling Files
Lawsuit Filed in Chicago Seeks to Tear Down SEC’s Veil of Secrecy
CHICAGO, IL, May 29, 2014
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/journalist-sues-sec-to-get-naked-short-selling-files-2014-05-29
–SOURCE: Aguirre Law, APC
I can’t wait to see what dirt shows up when Mark pulls back this particular carpet.
I wonder if the SEC, DTCC criminal kleptocracy will claim the dog, [or flood of the ‘vault’] ate their home work.
Hanging is too good for them, I say we designate them as ‘financial terrorists’ and give them the same treatment that the other terror suspects were given in search of information.
http://www.nl.idebate.org/debatabase/debates/Law/house-would-use-torture-obtain-information-suspected-terrorists
Bitcoin is for fools (fools gold, if you will). There’s not much difference between that and the “Tulip mania” craze, except at least tulips were real and not digits on a computer screen.
History does repeat itself and the con-artists are always out there ready to reel in the unwary.
QX
Really? This guy can’t get any facts right! First spelling Patrick Byrne’s name incorrectly now calling the website deepcover.com. Wow that’s pathetic!
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