In ten practically funny pictures.
Bitcoin mania is now everywhere. It’s hard to have a conversation with regular people without sooner or later getting into bitcoin. Some of this is just for fun. Manias breed amazement. Miracles are wonderful to behold. But some of it is pretty serious.
“We’ve seen mortgages being taken out to buy bitcoin,” said Joseph Borg, president of the North American Securities Administrators Association and director of the Alabama Securities Commission, on CNBC’s Power Lunch today. “People do credit cards, equity lines,” he said.
Bitcoin futures trading started Sunday night on the Cboe futures exchange. Next week, the CME will offer trading in bitcoin futures. This way, speculators can bet with unlimited derivatives on an unregulated digital entity that is backed by nothing and whose cash trading takes place in unregulated opaque and easily hacked exchanges around the world.
But Borg doesn’t think that futures contracts legitimize bitcoin. Innovation and technology always outrun regulation, he said.
“You’re on this mania curve. At some point in time there’s got to be a leveling off,” he said. “Cryptocurrency trading is here to stay. Blockchain is here to stay. Whether it is bitcoin or not, I don’t know.”
And so the media mania over bitcoin has become deafening. But there were also some bitcoin-free zones.
Here’s CNBC’s home page with three “bitcoin” headlines at the top part of the page, including the featured article:
And MarketWatch with seven articles on bitcoin at the top of its homepage, including the featured article:
Bloomberg had five articles at the top of its homepage, including the featured article:
Yahoo Finance — oh my! — showed 15 bitcoin articles among the first 12 hours of articles on its endless homepage.
This includes wonderfully, “Is it too late to buy Bitcoin?” To show how important the whole affair is, Yahoo featured a bitcoin article and a bitcoin video at the very top, its two most important topics:
The Wall Street Journal was slightly more subdued with three bitcoin articles on the homepage.
But none of them were featured and all of them were beneath some other priorities. The three articles include one — “Buyers Get Unwanted Message: Wait in Line” — that doesn’t mention bitcoin in the headline on the home page, but once you click on the article, the headline starts with “Bitcoin Buyers Get…”
Reuters had only two bitcoin articles in prominent positions at the top, but none were the big featured article. Comcast got that spot:
But the Washington Post was very lackadaisical in its bitcoin mania, with only one article on the home page, way down near the bottom under “Business & Real Estate”:
The New York Times failed to show the proper enthusiasm with no bitcoin articles on the homepage.
However, after clicking my way to the business section, I found a “bitcoin” headline about halfway down, and it wasn’t particularly enthusiastic either:
USA Today had three bitcoin headlines on its homepage, but all three led to the same article. Here is the first reference:
The Los Angeles Times was focused on the horrific fires now ravaging southern California, including parts of Los Angeles.
“The Inferno that won’t die,” its lead article said. Even bitcoin mania has to cede space when the city burns. So bitcoin mania got pushed way down. There were only two bitcoin articles: one from December 7 in the section where old articles are regurgitated; and the other from today, obtained from the Associated Press. It formed the lead article in the Business & Technology section way down on the homepage, shown here:
There were some notable bitcoin-free zones, however, at least for the moment, including NPR’s home page and perhaps surprisingly the homepage of the San Francisco Chronicle.
So is this how good it’s going to get? Is this peak bitcoin mania?
We don’t know what other crazy surprises this religious fervor over the digital betting entities is going to bring in the future, but one thing is for sure: bitcoin’s total dominance of the financial media, which took a while to build up and suddenly erupted, is an amazing sight to behold.
$21 billion of debt. Off-balance-sheet entities. Moody’s wakes up, downgrades it four notches, with more to come. Read… Enron Déjà Vu? Citi, BofA, HSBC, Goldman, BNP on the Hook as Steinhoff Spirals Down
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Now in 9th inning of the “everything bubble”. Bitcoin just barfed. I don’t think it’s a stretch to call a top here for bitcoin. Never was a “crypto” currency, but rather only yet another place for CB fiat to go to die. The first asset class bubble to pop this cycle. Only the first though… Got gold?
https://twitter.com/htsfhickey
fred hickey @htsfhickey
“Crypto slaughter on eve of futures trading. 10th largest crypto, NEM down 42% in past 24 hrs. #4 IOTA down 25%, Einsteinium -39%, Bitcoin -17% to $13.5K from $17K-$19K high late last week.Good chance those were the highs – never to be seen again. Welcome to backside of a parabola
8:07 PM – 9 Dec 2017”
http://www.zealllc.com/2017/btcmnapb.htm
Bitcoin Mania Parabolic
Adam Hamilton December 8, 2017
Bitcoin barf? Not a chance.
Just wait until the Swiss National Bank starts using it’s printed money to buy bitcoins rather than equities. $1,000,000 unit prices are coming.
Not kidding.
It can always go higher. Will just make the crash all the more massive.
It’s definitely the top, merely because I finally got suckered in buying 0.3 coins of ethereum yesterday.
Supposedly I was “given” something like a 10th of a Bitcoin, maybe a 20th, a few years ago. But nothing physical appeared in my hand. I mean, I’d believe I owned it if an envelope came in the mail and a fancy certificate was in it saying I owned a 10th or a 20th of a Bitcoin, but one never came.
So if a 10th of a Bitcoin isn’t worth shiz, I’m pretty confidently saying a whole one isn’t worth enough shiz to fertilize a tulip bulb.
Bitcoin is a bubble, I think the parabolic appreciation is evidence of that. The question is what is the trajectory of the bitcoin parabola? Are we still at the base of the parabola and going above $1 million or at the top and about to stall? No one knows. Bitcoin is valued in confidence (the same as any collectable or currency), it will have value until the confidence is broken. Manias lose confidence when the supply of new money, to feed the mania, dries up but it seems their is a near bottomless supply of new money to feed the frenzy. Where o where could all the gushers of money be coming from? Gee I wonder.
I’m telling you guys – you gotta get some beanie babies, confidence in their value will never fall (they are just so darn cute). You never hear the shoe shine boy talking about beanie babies, that means there is still money on the beanie baby sidelines.
Nope gold is in bubble too.
Serious question: what is the connection between the FED and Bitcoin?
The FED has said they are interested in blockchain tech presumably to roll out their own unbacked (no debt baking) electronic currency. It’s the path to a cashless economy, negative interest rates, real time taxation and the ultimate in control. Rogoff is a jerk.
None?
Fed money is ultimately backed by taxpayers perhaps? (And the petro-$) it’s a nice difference I would say.
Ops I read “differerence” instead of “connection”. My bad. Nevermind.
There can only be 22million bitcoin period. No more no less. The Fed however, can create as many dollars as it wants. I agree, for now, there is no direct connection. But indirectly, the Fed lends out to the Banks, the banks buy bitcoin. That’s what propelling the value of the coin to stratospheric levels.
The penny in my pocket is unique and there can never be another one exactly like it. It is extremely rare, being made up of it’s own unique matter, and yet it is infinitely divisible so it can be used as money – people can start exchanging a paper or electronic unit equal to one trillionth of my penny fully backed by my precious penny.
My penny is a commodity backed money system that will take over as the future reserve currency of the future – you guys would by wise to buy a percentage of my penny now before the price take off – after all it will need to be divided into hundreds of trillions of units after it becomes the reserve currency.
What societies use as currency is somewhat arbitrary. It is nearly impossible to predict what will be the next big currency but I doubt it will continue to be the dollar (so my penny has a shot).
First of all, it’s 21million, not 22. Second of all, it’s widely estimated that this limit will be reached no sooner than in year 2140. In techno time, that’s practically the end of time. And last but not least, it’s a program, so the “bitcoin gods” can decide to change the program to remove that limit.
DTCC wants to use blockchains for clearing of Credit Default Swaps.
I assume (from the article linked below) that what DTCC really want to do with blockchain technology is to push the ever growing computing load in matching of CDS contracts “inhouse” out to the “edge of the network” and onto the “clients”. They get to keep only the “ledger” part, which is the blockchain.
Personally, I think it is not a bad idea at all and it should work. People like DTCC got money and smarts to buy enough of the kind of brainpower it takes to pull this off, while everyone else’s enthusiasts crypto-stuff gets repeatedly hacked all over (and nobody cares, basically).
Wall Street Firms to Move Trillions to Blockchains in 2018
The finance industry is eagerly adopting the blockchain, a technology that early fans hoped would obliterate the finance industry
https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/wall-street-firms-to-move-trillions-to-blockchains-in-2018
PS,
The FED probably, well someone at the FED “on” something, see bitcoin as a convenient blackhole where some of that excess liquidity the FED created can be sucked in and die, relatively quietly. The rest of the FED are as boring as a sack of broken hammers.
“The FED probably, well someone at the FED “on” something, see bitcoin as a convenient blackhole where some of that excess liquidity the FED created can be sucked in and die, relatively quietly. }”
WHEN the Scam coin Implodes .
It WILL take a lot of liquidity with it.
In a world awash with excess liquidity, how is this Liquidity reduction (in itself), anything, but a good.
It is just as effective as allowing securities to mature and not replacing them on the balance sheet at the FED. Plus the Majority of it will be held by those that are holding too much of it The least Economically harmful place to take it from.
I don’t see BTC as liquidity absorbing, instead a flat medium. That is to say for now, in real world, it is a transfer method of liquidity (cash) mostly. That (volume limited) medium fetches whatever the going rate is for part of it. It is an asset while people are still willing to use it, to therefore give it value. Cash (fiat) has value because it is widely accepted as final payment, therefore it makes a final trade ( goods and services) liquid by its own right. If BTC becomes widely and undisputedly accepted as final payment, or receives gvt. guarantee or acceptance as fully valid for exchange into “its” currency, then it could be called liquid. In the meantime it is “additional liquidity”, it allows certain trade and transactions to take place outside of current liquidity parameters, acting as intermediary. If it does become a real world liquidity, I expect it to displace fiat, not an absorber in reality, but a transmuter of one kind of liquidity and its order, to a new kind with a different order.
Said as point of debate.
spot on a moving amorphous target.
it’s all symbolic anyway.
now back to the news and roy moore.
Mobile top up vouchers and retail gift cards have no gov guarantee yet are still widely accepted so possible route there.
The blockchain is just a small part of this craze. At the heart of it is public encryption which can be used for authentication, digital signature, non-repudiation. What you actually want to encrypt is still an open question. I mean, why would you want to keep a chain of all the transactions that have already cleared.
Part of it can be used by not necessarily in the present form, and definitely not as a currency. Store of value of a currency, maybe.
Why keep a transaction chain? Like all questions of ownership, the more complete the ledger the more valid the latest transaction. Take property for example, when you buy you like to see the history of ownerships and their transfer well documented – that makes your claim clear, unencumbered, without questions etc. The transaction chain is the claim.
Happy to see the ad on THIS site for “better than bitcoin.”
10X better!
Yeah, my site has been awash with cryptocurrency ads, and ads trying to feed on the mania in some way. Thank God I don’t know what everyone is seeing :-]
I get Russian Girlfriends, some shiny toy named “foreverspin”, GILF swinger sites, the usual loan offers and some credit cards with brand names I never heard before.
I think this all means that I am indeed one of “Those that have Everything” as it says on the adds for the shiny-shiny and those algos are seeking to take it away from me.
I could use a few “Russian girlfriend” ads every now and then, just to change the scenery. I’m getting tired of the bitcoin ads and ads proclaiming their thingy is so much better than bitcoin ;-]
These are dispatched by bots. Not by human .
Unrelated but interesting regarding online ads.
I have an Amazon prime account. Recently married, my new wife signed into Amazon on her tablet to buy something using my Amazon login. Since then, whatever cookies and scraping happens behind the scenes at Google and Amazon has my wife and I completely intertwined and confused.
I now see women’s clothing ads (today on Wolfstreet is some type of Parka), but worse, we are both seeing ads for things we were shopping for to buy for the other for Christmas: she’s seeing ads for some jewelry sites as I was looking to buy her something, and I’m seeing ads for a composter for the garden that she was looking to buy me.
No Christmas present secrets here this year!
I get the “forever spin” fancy spinning metal top ads, too. Supposedly a perfect top made of a tiny thumb-size piece of metal for only $50 or something. Uh, no thanks.
Better than some ads, though nothing I’d really want to spend money on.
GILF / Swinger? I’m guessing G for “Group”??
But with Swinger, it could be G for Golfer…??
but my money is on guess #1 :)
Wow, maybe I should disable my ad blocking? :)
I only get credit card and blockchain ads. Obviously I don’t visit the correct sites to get the Russian girls.
I get ads assuming I’m Korean, and want to fly places an awful lot. Not sure. Korea? The ads are in Korean.
Poor old Krusty peaked in 2013.
(The Simpsons S25E07)
Tulips are still around, although far less valuable than they once were.
How long before the Scamcoin, becomes a lost memory.?
I come here for a safe-haven.
To escape the Bitcoin articles everywhere else. Please, I beg you, no more Bitcoin articles. :-)
√
There’s a blockchain out there that’s supposed to back by assets. There’s a housing development near Dallas Texas (I think Terrant county) that a Singapore company is developing and you can only purchase these houses with that specific coin. But the SEC won’t allow Americans to use the coin, there is one exemption but I think you have to make over $100,000. I Don’t have all the details and I have finals tomorrow morning and it’s late. I’ll get back on tomorrow and fill in the details.
I get promos like this all the time in my inbox. Every one of them feels and smells like a scam.
Get some details on the company. Possibly I could throw some light on this. Could be a peripheral scam operation.
There are now several cryptocurrencies claiming to be asset-backed (see GENERcoin for example), but the combination of cryptocurrency and real estate in the sales pitch points to Zabercoin.
From the team surnames it appears to be a South African outfit and they seem very PR savvy.
Besides that, I know nothing.
Very likely scam operations. They usually point to owning assets in far away countries. Here there is a case of an investment scam the company known as s
Sixcapital. They claimed to have state of the art fintech and crypto software assets after acquiring a company based in Malta. Authorities stillinvestigating.
Real problem here is how you confirm ownership of assets. It should be possible if the company can put all of its assets and liabilities on a blockchain (since it’s a decentralised ledger using it as a company ledger should work, but you’d need a. Fungible asset with unique identifiers (other than fiat (serial numbers) I can’t see anything that fits the bill. Although filecoin.io is interesting (backed by hard drive space basically however hard drives keep getting cheaper.
The old rule of thumb is that once the mainstream media start carrying headlines about the latest asset mania the big gain are already gone.
Sure, there are still gains to be had but due to extremely high entry costs and hefty fees the only winners in this later phase are the middlemen selling the asset (or asset-backed financial products) to latecomers desperately wanting a piece of the action.
Now if you’ll excuse me I am off to find the next bubble before it draws too much attention.
Bingo! When news of miracle profits and easy money hit mainstream media and the dinner tables, the sharks of the game are preparing to unleash the sea of red.
And speaking of fish, it is said that there are about 1000 accounts holding 40% of all available bitcoins — they are called ‘whales’.
There was a thread on reddit in 2013 where a guy was logging his daily bitcoin moves. He got in under 200 and when it hit 800 he sold it all. I guess he panicked because the run up to 800 was up and down and giving him way too much stress.
Maybe he quietly bought it back in 2015 at $240?
Legitimacy is in the eye of the beholder.
If being traded on the old exchanges adds legitimacy in others eyes. That’s legitimacy.
The consequence of those serious exchanges granting legitimacy is that they spur the entities that would remove or ban the crytocurrencies.
Put another way had those exchanges not opened their venue to Bitcoin the delay in the action by authorities to counter bitcoin would be later rather than sooner.
They are now, thanks CME and CbOE, sooner rather than .
Wise words.
I think it is exactly why legitimacy will put the spotlight and generate pressure on the big whales of bitcoin. Some of them will blink and their manipulation scheme will collapse.
Well, when you look at the ballooning stock market, and the prices of some stocks relative to their earnings per share, is their that much difference between the bitcoin market and the stock market? Is the stock market much more closely linked to reality right now?
Will Bitcoin be the black swan? That’s what I wonder?
“Will Bitcoin be the black swan? That’s what I wonder?”
There is talk that many People, are borrowing against Houses ETC, to buy into scamcoin.
Effectively creating “Margin DEBT” in scamcoin.
If the scamcoin bubble, runs for to long, BEFORE it crashes. It could create, a big Margin Debt pool.
The Implosion of that Margin Debt Pool.
Could possibly trigger a Black Swan Event.
Both bitcoin and the S&P appear, from their charts, to be bubbles. But keep in mind, it is only a bubble if it pops (if the housing bubble never popped no one would call it a bubble). If central banks continue to push enormous sums of currency into the market the money will need to go somewhere. After the dust settles it may become apparent that assets were not in a bubble but in fact it was the currencies that were overvalued all along. In Weimar Germany the stock the Bayer company was worth a huge some of German marks but in the end Bayer stock still had value and the currency did not. Was Bayer stock in a bubble – I think not.
Well both the earnings of Bayernand the price of the stock would be in terms of the inflated Currency, so in a sense you could do a simple price to earnings ratio valuation to judge whether the stock was overvalued or not.
But it would be near impossible to do a forward valuation of future earnings in a hyperinflationary environment.
But that said, you Could try to do an apples to apples to how fast Bayer is going up relative to houses/real estate and other commodities to judge value.
Bayer was not worth nothing because Bayer made actual useful things. Chemicals. Medicines. Even if times are tough, those things are needed. I suspect Nabisco did OK during the US Depression too.
May be repeating myself:
How can you eliminate a half a trillion dollars in liquidity? Have PBOC use Great Firewall to block all cryptos.
Forget about the bitnonsense. A lot of hype. There are many good pieces of software. A simple C program that generates prime numbers continuously can be sophisticated depending on your understanding. I write the program and continuously run on a cluster of computers to generate prime numbers. You want to pay $19,000 to buy each prime number from me? If not then you buy the Prime number futures. It is cheaper.
I remember from back in the day (1975), my hs chemistry teacher showing me a book containing random numbers out to like 15 digits. Wish I had that old book, I’d be rich!
The Bitcoin mania is being engineered and supported by the CBs, Fed and their players (big money banks).
They want this mania to continue and then they will crash it.
Expect some kind of decision or action that will totally cut cryptos off at their knees. Probaly another year out so that lot’s of people can get their hopes up.
Been following the action of gold? Being kept down and sold off.
Why all of this? Inflation is picking up. Big time. Gold cannot be allowed to reflect this reality.
Bitcoin is the new, high-tech gold. So alot of suckers will be pulled in thinking they’ve found the secret to protecting their assets from inflation (and getting rich on the side isn’t too bad either).
Like I said, you can count on some event that will cut it off at its’ knees. Not a big selloff. That is going to happen. Something that makes it irrelevant as a money system.
Does anyone really think the Fed and CBs are going to allow an alternate money system to be established? Yea, I know they’ve stated they are interested and looking into (total BS) But really?
Better let the masses get in on it, pretend to accept and legitimize it, while engineering a collapse behind the scenes, than refuse and forbid it. A collapse will destroy the masse’s confidence and interest in it, while forbidding would only enhance their curiosity.
They are looking into it to better understand how to deal with it.
And by the way, .gov can tax it, can ban it, and these cryptos will figure out new ways to fight until .gov gave up their printing/oppression and back $ with gold and then nobody will heed bit coin except for true criminals AKA not revolutionarist. The game just began and .gov will show their true color and even the financial illiterate will see.
Good point: “Game just begun”
The whole point of bit coin is to get the power away from the banks, and the government. We do not need banks to do transactions. we will have something you can NOT print, inflate, tax. Will the government be willing to allow it? They do not. This is revolution against the establishment. Will this no-man-no-bullet revolution win? probability not. Most trained sheep think this is just another “asset” speculation to “transfer” each other’s money and they will immediately run when they see establishment oppression. And yet, there are hardcore folks who are willing to take the fight and cut power from the elites. They have screwed everybody for too long, if they do NOT allow revolution, “we” do NOT allow oppression either.
So the fight goes on and the sheep watch, and once some sheep smell a winner, they will switch side. No principle.
You Really Believe that?
I am NOT sure which side will win. With all the nukes and high tech weapon and unlimited information, traditional revolution is close to impossible. Maybe anonymous digital revolution is the way. At least, BTC was created after people lost trust in.gov after 2008. It’s purpose is to neuter the bankers. The point is, its intention is NOT asset bubble or wealth transfer vehicle. Maybe the “bubble” in BTC is created by the bankers so that people will lose sight of its true meaning.
They would be able to easily see every payment, every transaction, blacklist or otherwise control specific wallets far easier than accounts are frozen (could be bypassed but would still be seen) identify tax Dodgers much easier. Implement continuous negative interest rates without having to charge via banks. Have more levers over inflation deflation. So can see quite a few opportunities however places like Venezuela high inflation larger black market are likely to gain most immediately from blockchain do watch with interest. Of course all assumes gov releases blockchain itself.
The financial system is one large mistep from disaster. That’s one of the reasons why we see speculation turned bubble mania in the cryptos. The government could ban the cryptos and destroy 500 Billion in liquidity while their at it. Rather, I think the government wants to see average speculators and mom and pop investors enjoy the bread and circus. Let’s look at Bitcoin from the government’s perspective. It accelerates money velocity, it’s entertaining to the masses, it provides hope to the millennial generation, Bitcoin enforces that more technology is best illusion. Bitcoin preserves the narrative of a progressive and better tomorrow and doesn’t threaten the system. Bitcoin is an illusionary commodity of hope for the masses. Do you really think the media would propagate the Bitcoin story if it was contra government efforts to maintain system stability?
….or if you reached the end of a mega fiat cycle and could not readjust back to any kind of acceptable reality without mayhem, what better than “allow” the currency mantle to pass to the fully public domain ? Just theorising, not saying.
The 2 best arguments for Bitcoin.
The amount is limited. The amount of dodo birds is limited too but that doesn’t make dodo birds valuable.
It takes a lot of energy to make them. Doing donuts in the parking lot uses a lot of energy too. But it doesn’t create any value.
Why is Fiat flowing into Bitcoin? Because Bitcoin is equally worthless but just a little better. It’s gravity pulls in the fiat.
All paper will burn. The paper cannot be tied to real assets on a one-to-one basis and so it’s true value of zero will eventually be revealed.
Not sure the cap on number of coins matters when it’s infinitely divisible.
Matters because allocation of value is then a reflection of the market, not manipulation of BTC volume. However the creation of new forms of crypto currency sort of defeats that maybe.
I think It, ultimately, defeats it definitely. Because it makes plain the fact that non asset backed cryptos can not be a store of long term value. It makes it plain that they r mostly useful for secure transactional purposes.
Suppose a company invented the first sneaker, Adidas, and everyone loved it and bid it up in value. If then Nike, Puma, Asics etal come out with their brands, does adidas first mover / early popularity advantage negate the utility of the products produced by the other sneaker companies?
The answer is, of course, no.
Now trying doing this thought experiment with real money like gold and silver and see how many “companies”’ r able to enter the market.
How it seems to me. The only way crypto could remain feasibly “solid” is by a monopoly by one crypto, and that means basically government mandate excluding competition by force.
OTH … If you imagine people were left to trade freely, create any crypto they liked, and crypto/s were the chosen currency ( for whatever reason) … how would it end up… what kind of system would come to exist ?
Food for thought.
@crysangle
To attempt an answer ud have to know what the purpose of the cryptocurrency was… to value it.
And if it is to simply perform secure transactions can it be anything but a tiny fraction of the value of the transaction itself? Like a PayPal or credit card fee??
“The amount is limited. The amount of dodo birds is limited too but that doesn’t make dodo birds valuable.”
Since dodo birds are extinct, I imagine a live one would probably fetch a pretty hefty price. I know personally I would pay more to see a dodo bird than I would to buy Bitcoin.
It might actually take a while for Bitcoin to implode. Quite sure that tons of black market money still needing to be laundered will help prop up higher demand. Also, it is interesting to speculate how involved certain regimes, like North Korea for example, are in driving up Bitcoin demand for quick profits.
Eventually gravity should win out but this mighty bubble has some distance to go ….
Probably one of the few ways they can get goods. You don’t know it’s not NK the other end of your transaction and they have lots of coal for energy for mining like China. China is the dominant miner maybe they sponsor no with bitcoin. Then front company can buy with bitcoins and truck or across the border. Sanctions evaded
The latest news on bitcoin is that all transactions using it will be taxed. Every transaction will be a two parter, first the conversion into fiat establishing a gain or loss, then the purchase. I wonder if they will allow deductions for all those stolen coins?
My thought on cryptos being embraced by the fed, it’s all about the public ledger. They want to know were every “coin” goes. This gives them control over every transaction and every distribution system.
Let’s all gamble on one of the most volitial currencies in the world with no official entity to protect it’s value.
Basically if you have a bit of free cash, maybe 1% of your real investable assets you can go join in the wave so you have a story to tell when you are old.
If someone proposed creating a transaction only digital currency I would invest, but of course there would be nowhere to invest and nothing to invest it. Money as a store of value is the real problem here, and Bitcoin has only amplified that problem.
There is only so much real value to store and it tends to not need a monetary tag , the rest is speculation… people like to speculate, scheme ideas that might create new wealth, or gouge existing wealth … or just stop themselves from getting bored…all of it is a hypothesis based on trust pushed by promise.
yes there is a lot of media hype because of the bitcoin futures the price of bitcoin has gone up a lot.The trend will continue especially with the bitcoin etf coming in a few months but be careful with the bitcoin reserve act regulation and taxation is coming for cryptocurrencies.
A few others coins are interesting ether is good but with too many bugs the parity wallet bug is a joke.crypto kitties is a interesting concept on the network but the price of the kitties are already crashing hard.
tezos was pump by tim draper but tezos has huge governance problems all the money from investors is stuck with the foundation they have no money to finance the project tezos could become a big disaster for investors.
A lot of those coins and icos are proving not to be what they say they would be.A lot of coins and icos are scams.The best investment after bitcoin because the price is already very expensive are the coins that have been around for a while and maintained a level of success in crypto like litecoin and a few others
Bitcoin is only in the 4th inning at this stage. 50-100k per BTC will be hit before it crashes. Which it eventually will.
How do you know bitcoin will continue exponential growth (something not possible on a finite planet)? Predictions are ridiculous. Nobody knows the future. It seems to me the big money has already been made – even if it goes to 50-100k that is a tiny gain compared to profits made by people who bought for well under $1.00. Getting excited about bitcoin now is like getting excited over the lottery – there have been people who made vast sums of wealth but it’s too late to buy for less than $1.00. It happened, the huge move is over, move on.
“Know what you own” seems like a quaint idea.
Funny, but only those to own Litecoin at 30.00…….
Let’s try a variation of Ron Paul’s question which asked if you would rather have $1000 in gold or bitcoin.. stated this way we get people thinking more about real value.
Your dying rich uncle is leaving you a trust fund, that you can not touch for ten years after his death, that will be funded with $10,000,000. He asks you choose either that it will be fully funded with gold coins or bitcoin. Which will you choose.
Millenials will choose crypto. The rest will go for gold.
It’s the same as Paypal vs other e payment providers. Older folks use Paypal, the millenials go for Nerdwallet, etc.
I would prefer not to speculate in either mania. If gold were no longer hoarded, and only used for it’s few industrial uses, it would be priced in pounds (or tons) not ounces. Hoarding either of them is equivalent and they are pretty much equally useless.
When bitcoin was @ 12,000,the estimated value of all crypto curremcies was 370 Billion.
If all cyrptos went up at the same rate ,the value of all crypto currencues would be 3.7 trillion with bitcoin at 120,000 and
37 trillion with bitcoin at 1,2000,000
Currently the total assets held by all Central banks combined is ~ 24 Trillion
Total currency in circulation is ~ 5 trillion
Total value fo all gold ~7.5Trillion
Total value of all US real residential real estate is ~30Trillion
Total value of all California residential real estate is ~ 4 Trillion
Total value of all residential real estate in NYcity is 1 trillion
It going to be amusing as all those who fail to report their cyrpto gains on their income tax returns are hounded by the IRS
The total global money supply (M0) is $7.3 trillion. So if BTC reaches $7.3 trillion will all other currencies be worthless.
If the dollar system was to disadvantage savers by CB’s orchestrating years of negative real interest rates penalizing the very engine of capitalism (deferred consumption) and all of a sudden people were given an escape, what would that asset’s price trajectory look like? Saving is not a sin and savers have been penalized to the point the system is broken. Early mover advantage exists for Bitcoin up to USD$100k. These are extraordinary times for sure. Look up the 3 stages of truth. Denial, Violent opposition, accepted as self evident – look at the bubble in everything – that will be the evidence to support the final stage
I stopped using GoogleChrome to browse the web and have been using Baidu because think it won’t be as clued up for non chinese users.
However, a few months back I signed up with coinbase to buy crypro currencies and attempted 16 times to buy US$500 of bitcoin but was unable to get the transactions to go through. A few days later received a message from Coinbase that the failure to buy was because the credit cards I tried to make the transactions with would not make the transactions with me using Baidu as my browser.
At the end of the day, any minimally trustworthy currency HAS to be accepted by at least one basic need provider, otherwise it remains a mark for bets to a game not valid outside of the game. Big providers, with governments selling us safety being the biggest among those, will determine the future of any *coin. And I cannot see any real reason for governments to abandon fiat money in order to validate the hardest type of money it has been invented in history. Of course noone knows where the ceiling is.
Pls excuse my English, read “casino tokens”
I find it quite disturbing that the pioneer of crypto, that originally espoused itself as the the replacement for cash, takes several hours if not a day to confirm a transaction … and likely will incur substantial fees for small movements between wallets.
How is this better than the electronic payment system we currently have ? It takes 10seconds to buy cat food at my local store and my credit card refunds me 1.5% of my purchase.
With bitcoin as a currency my cats would starve and my transaction fees would cost more than the food.
Let’s stop calling it a currency. It’s a gambling pyramid scheme.
And
And,
There are at least a douzen stocks I can name that have risen 10x since 2010.
At least with a stock there’s some semblance of underlying value.. regardless of being over hyped or bloated. There’s some general link to delivering a service that people need.
So if bitcoin rises 10x in a year I congratulate the speculators for their grit and courage. They deserve the reward, no doubt. However they’re gain only materializes when they convert to their despised fiat currency of choice – HOW IRONIC. And their gains come at the expense of the suckers at the bottom of the pyramid.
Bitcoin is useless as a payment system. So then one must ask what is it good for? Money laundering is the most likely value. And there are at least 2 douzen crypto coins to do that with. So bitcoins unique value will eventually equal the cost of mining plus a margin for the convenience.
Good luck to anyone that buys this above mining costs.
Cash out into fiat , where your money is safer.
The more savers are penalized for doing so in a system where real interest rates are dropped below zero for decades, the more opportunity for alternative stores of value to emerge. The bizarre thing is Bitcoin’s blockchain mimics what our fiat money system does (a non-specie ledger of who owes what to whom) without debasing the unit of account.
It wouldn’t succeed if it wasn’t a better deal. Understand how corrupt our current system is before trying to undermine its nemesis.
scarcity value, methinks.
at some point, there will be scarcity in the opposite direction.
no man knows the appointed hour, none.
I think everybody should own a little bit coin in their portfolio for diversification. The US dollar, gold, and bit coin are all funny money. Any one of those could explode.
Bitcoin bubble was created exclusively by governements which decided it is wise to erase interest rates and penalise pensioners and savers and prompting funds to seek ‘returns’ in imaginary currencies and idiotic start ups.
The end to this lunacy can not come too quickly, and the later it comes the worse it will be, escpecially on the poor.
True, and thats why the fed is either secretly behind it or will take it out – its competition for them in their quest to impoverish and control the masses.
No one discusses the incredible electrical cost underlying crypto currencies. The mining process uses more electricity than some countries. Seems a little unsustainable IMO.
Interesting. I actually bought LiteCoin a couple days ago, when a good friend of my (hardcore Libertarian), recommended it (he hates the FED). Coinbase has a $750 weekly limit on LTC purchases – in which case I was allowed to purchase about 3.84 LTC.
Woke up the next day and had $1500 in my account due to overnight appreciation/speculation. Unreal.
Not sure how long this is going to last, but when it crashes, it’s going down hard. I’m in it for fun, may work my way up to about 10 LTC, but no more.
I’m tempted to just cash out and throw the money on my wife and I’s yearly cruise.
A great number of people are about to get a near-instantaneous refresher course in just exactly WHAT the first word of “disposable income” really means.