TOP10 The Most Stupid Predictions (including Bitcoin)

By Slava Solodkiy, Managing Partner at Life.SREDA

1. “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” Western Union internal memo dated 1876.
2. “I do not believe the introduction of motor-cars will ever affect the riding of horses” Scott-Montague, MP, in the United Kingdom in 1903.
3. “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” David Sarnoff’s Associates rejecting a proposal for investment in the radio in the 1920s.
4. “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” H.M. Warner (Warner Brothers) before rejecting a proposal for movies with sound in 1927.
5. “This is typical Berlin hot air. The product is worthless.” Letter sent by Heinrich Dreser, head of Bayer’s Pharmacological Institute, rejecting Felix Hoffmann’s invention of aspirin. At that point, Bayer was standing by its ‘star’ painkiller diacetylmorphine. This alternative drug reportedly made factory workers feel animated and ‘heroic’, which is why Bayer decided to aptly name it ‘heroin’. Later on, due to its ‘funny’ side effects, it was decided to take heroin off the market. Bayer’s chairman eventually intervened to overrule Dreser’s decision and accept aspirin as Bayer’s main painkiller. More than 10 billion tablets of aspirin are swallowed annually.
6. “Who the hell wants to copy a document on plain paper???!!!” Rejection letter in 1940 to Chester Carlson, inventor of the XEROX machine. In fact, over 20 companies rejected his “useless” idea between 1939 and 1944. Even the National Inventors Council dismissed it. Today, the Rank Xerox Corporation has an annual revenue in the range of one billion dollars.
7. “The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.” A Yale university professor in response to Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. Smith went on to found FedEx.
8. “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”  Ken Olsen (President, Chairman, and founder of Digital Equipment Corp) in 1977.
9. “So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.” Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer.
10. Bitcoin is a fraud that will ultimately blow up, according to JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon, who said the digital currency was only fit for use by drug dealers, murderers and people living in places such as North Korea. Dimon says ‘stupid’ bitcoin investors will pay the price. Speaking at a conference in New York, the boss of America’s biggest bank said he would fire “in a second” anyone at the investment bank found to be trading in bitcoin. “For two reasons: it’s against our rules, and they’re stupid. And both are dangerous.” “The currency isn’t going to work. You can’t have a business where people can invent a currency out of thin air and think that people who are buying it are really smart.” “If you were in Venezuela or Ecuador or North Korea or a bunch of parts like that, or if you were a drug dealer, a murderer, stuff like that, you are better off doing it in bitcoin than US dollars”. “So there may be a market for that, but it would be a limited market.” “It’s worse than tulip bulbs. It won’t end well. Someone is going to get killed,” Dimon said at a banking industry conference organized by Barclays. “Currencies have legal support. It will blow up.” Bitcoin fell to its session lows after Dimon’s comments: bitcoin traded at $4,106.23, down 2 percent. Bitcoin has already soared 315 percent this year. (Earlier on Tuesday, Dimon warned about further declines in trading revenue for the banking giant. Dimon said third-quarter trading revenue will drop about 20 percent on a year-over-year basis. Dimon also said the bank may not give intra-quarter guidance in the future. JPMorgan’s stock fell off its session highs on the comments.)

P.S. Dear Jamie Dimon & Co,

Stop blaming crypto\ICO world!

Do you call us a “bubble”? Ok, then we are The Bubble Generation. Blockchain\crypto\ICO – our new rock-and-roll. Vitalik Buterin is our new Kurt Cobain. Fuck off. Or better join us! We aren’t going to fuck anyone over – but we can be wrong (because you can’t do anything new without making mistakes!). In order to make fewer mistakes and our mistakes not to be so dramatic, we need help from you, from other bankers and regulators around the world! We are not against rules and regulations – we are just for creating new ones (with your help? or resistance?) because the old rules do not fit the new economy.

Sign this petition on Change.org to show that we are not alone, as many people are banned simply because some do not understand what and how they do. Let’s try to fix it by trying to formulate the questions that concern us, the problems that we would like to be solved, and the principles on the basis of which we see that it is possible to find consensus and dialogue. We don’t want to fight, we want to build.