The St. Petersburg Bitcoin Bowl was supposed to be a great success for Bitcoin, as Bitpay made a three-year deal to be the title sponsor of the event. Business Insider said “The attention brought to bitcoin by the game will only further boost its ascension into the mainstream. Bitpay itself bragged of 100 businesses accepting Bitcoin.

But this year’s bowl was just the St. Petersburg bowl, as Bitpay had to drop out of the deal.



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Nobody’s using Bitcoin in what Bitpay called the Bitcoin Capital of the World. Those 100 businesses? They’ve moved on and forgotten now. The Bitcoin Accepted Here stickers are dull and faded.

Of course, the price of Bitcoin was over $600 when the deal was made, down from the peak of over $1,000 (you know, back when people said Bitcoin’s fixed supply would cause it to rise in price forever). When the deal officially ended, that price was down in the low $200s. On top of that, thieves stole $1.8 million worth of Bitcoin from the company, money that could never be retrieved due to the irreversible nature of Bitcoin transactions.

Bitcoin has recovered to the 400s, but it’s obvious the shine is long gone from this hype train. Bitcoin is like the caricature of fiat money: it’s a volatile mess, based on nothing but the faith of its excited investors. It doesn’t even have the IRS and Legal Tender behind it.

My prediction: Blockchain technology is going to get used by big businesses internally, to manage transactions done in US Dollars and other forms of real money, and Bitcoin investors will freak out because they will feel like their technology has been hijacked by the very businesses they were hoping to defeat.

And the next St. Petersburg Bowl sponsor? It’ll work in US Dollars.