Back in 2013, the Wired information portal was among the opponents of digital currency who underestimated the potential and prospects of innovation. Then the journalist got rid of the private key of his wallet, containing 13 BTC, to demonstrate that the newfangled coins are just an “abstraction.” Today these BTC are valued at $760,000.
In 2013, journalist Robert McMillan began mining BTC in the corner of his office. The experiment did not impress the journalist and did not convince him of the prospects and value of cryptocurrency. In his article, he wrote:
A popular digital currency is nothing more than an abstraction.
McMillan was sure that the “virtuality” of Bitcoin makes it unreliable. Without thinking for a long time, the journalist threw away the private key to his Bitcoin wallet. He writes:
Our small supply of BTC will remain in digital storage for eternity, or until someone breaks the SHA-256 encryption."

An old Wired article was recently posted on Reddit, where a user BakedPotato840 commented:
It is not surprising that you can find old posts expressing such views on the first cryptocurrency. What really deserves criticism are the people who hold this opinion even today.
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