Bitcoin — It’s 2026 and it Failed. What happened?

Imagine it is five years from now and Bitcoin has failed. What happened? This kind of pre-mortem is a worthwhile exercise for anyone investing in any asset. Identify the ways your strategy could fail and assign your estimates for the likelihood of each, and think about the signals the world could send you that would change your estimate. I would be very curious to read your honest assessment of the risks and their likelihoods.

Examples:

A breakthrough in math or computing changed the difficulty of the PoW

Fiat issuing governments banned non-state crypto such as Bitcoin

A better alternative was developed and gained wide acceptance

An event undermined confidence in the security of Bitcoin

Tracking of wallets and transactions removed the sense of privacy

etc.

You might say, “these won’t happen”. I would just ask that we make the list and assign our best estimates to the likelihoods, even if they are very very small — and then think about what would change our minds. The trick with any pre-mortem is not to ask will this happen, but instead to assert it did happen, in this case, that Bitcoin did fail, and then ask how?

The list could be kept public, with estimates and arguments for the likelihoods.