At the end of last year, many industry experts were predicting that 2015 would be the year that bitcoins were finally legitimised and would finally be a mainstream alternative currency.

Within seven days of the New Year, Europe’s biggest bitcoin exchange was hacked, leading to a major loss. Patrick Brusnahan writes

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Bitstamp lost approximately $5m in bitcoins in this attack at the beginning of the year due to a cyber attack owing to a bug in the virtual currency’s underlying software.

This led to them closing business down for a week to recover. This follows several significant attacks over the previous year.

The firm faced a similar attack in February 2014 which led to withdrawals being ceased despite the company believing that no bitcoins
were stolen on that occasion.

The biggest hindrance, however, was Japan-based Mt. Gov, at one point handling 70% of all Bitcoin transactions, filed for bankruptcy and was eventually liquidated in April 2014.

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This comes alongside with bitcoin value falling to $170, a stark contrast to its peak value of $1150 in 2013.

The Bitcoin Foundation, an organisation with the mission to standardise, protect and promote Bitcoin, stated it was working on fixing the issue, but it may just be too little too late.

Well regarded Bitcoin outfits are losing their legitimacy. This includes the aforementioned Bitcoin Foundation whose recent board member elections have been runoff due to low voter turnout.

In the midst of all these problems, many are all too keen and predictions of the ‘death of Bitcoin’ coming to the fore. This is not a new development.

In fact, according to bitcoinobituaries.com, Bitcoin has already been proclaimed dead on thirty occasions.

Despite recent pitfalls, 2015 could well end up proving predictions right and Bitcoin could achieve legitimacy.

If not, you can be sure people will predict 2016 to be the year. If not, then 2017, and so forth.