The day following a mass of mainstream fiat media attention to long time saboteur Mike Hearn's latest thoughts on Bitcoin's rejection of him, fiat had a concretely worse day than Bitcoin. Not only did Walmart announce their first mass store closure in the United States, oil prices fell to under 30 United States dollars a barrel and stock markets crashed as well. The same New York Times Dealbook which ran Hearn's narrative was forced by circumstances to admit their beloved fiat economy might be morbidly obese and on the decline as the beginning of 2016 continues to break all of the wrong records (archived).
As in August when Hearn and Gavin unveiled XTCoin, the broomstick fired on fiat/Bitcoin interfaces. The appearance of this firing is more polished than it was in August, but that doesn't change the fact that the effect was insufficient to even take reported Bitcoin prices down to where they were a year ago at this time. For all the ways the manufactured crisis around the ClassicCoin hard fork push is made to seem more polished than the XTCoin manufactured crisis, the results of the effort somehow seem still more underwhelming.
Maybe it's the part where back in August fiat markets were just starting to show indicators of an impending downturn, but now things are solidly falling apart? Could it be the full depth of the wealthlust inspired in various fiat "law enforcement" agents upon their exposure to Bitcoin's promise coming to light? How about the months long game of good cop/bad cop various fiat backed start ups have been playing in an effort to see just how many forks they might be able to sell some Bitcoin holders on. Perhaps it is just the fact that Bitcoin absolutely trounced fiat in every way that matters over the course of 2015.
If it seems like various fiat interests, outlets, and agents are getting more desperate in their attempts to alternately dismiss or insert crises into Bitcoin, it is because they are. That line Satoshi inserted into the Genesis block:
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks
is still there seven years later. That bit about what awaits fiat attempts to hard fork Bitcoin into something else remains one year later. Actual Bitcoin interests have abided the turmoil presented by various fiat/Bitcoin interfaces. By contrast fiat interests are struggling to handle fiat/Reality interfaces and are coping, as is their custom, through various forms of theft (archived). In the moral contest between Bitcoin's indifference to the hungry mouths of the world and fiat's theft from the mouths it promises to feed, there seems to be a clear winner. Sorry for your loss.