Bitcoin 'Roars Back', Surges 50% in 30 Days (forbes.com) 142
A week ago bitcoin was trading at $6,000. Today Forbes reports bitcoin "which has been swinging wildly throughout this week, has suddenly rallied back to over $8,000 per bitcoin, somewhat putting to rest investor and trader fears the recent bitcoin bull run may have already ended":
The bitcoin price has risen around 50% over the last 30 days, pulling many other major cryptocurrencies with it, including ethereum, Ripple's XRP, bitcoin cash, litecoin, EOS and binance coin... The total bitcoin and cryptocurrency market capitalization, which lost some $30 billion in a matter of minutes on Friday morning, has now recovered almost all of that value and is back around $250 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap which tracks most major cryptocurrencies...
The bitcoin and cryptocurrency sector has been celebrating a raft of positive news all this week, from retail adoption [at Starbucks, Nordstrom And Whole Foods] to legendary investor support. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency technical data is also showing the bitcoin price could be heading higher, with well-known bitcoin trader Eric Choe saying he expects the digital token to reach $22,600 sometime in 2020, which would be a fresh bitcoin all-time.
Mark Mobius, the investor cofounder of Mobius Capital Partners who once branded bitcoin a "real fraud", now says instead that in the future bitcoin will be "alive and well."
The bitcoin and cryptocurrency sector has been celebrating a raft of positive news all this week, from retail adoption [at Starbucks, Nordstrom And Whole Foods] to legendary investor support. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency technical data is also showing the bitcoin price could be heading higher, with well-known bitcoin trader Eric Choe saying he expects the digital token to reach $22,600 sometime in 2020, which would be a fresh bitcoin all-time.
Mark Mobius, the investor cofounder of Mobius Capital Partners who once branded bitcoin a "real fraud", now says instead that in the future bitcoin will be "alive and well."
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It's a trap!
Nods Sagely, Strokes Beard (Score:2)
More like... (Score:2)
Appearances can be deceptive.
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More like "it appears to."
Appearances can be deceptive.
In the case of Bitcon, the value is exactly what someone else will pay for it. Unlike a house, for example where you can live, or even a dollar, with which you can pay off your tax liabilities, there is nothing else. This makes it great for random speculation and gambling. If you were planning to use it as a currency and, say, pay someone in bitcoin, suddenly finding that it's 30% more expensive is more than a bit inconvenient.
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In the case of Bitcon, the value is exactly what someone else will pay for it.
Actually, it is significantly lower. Of course, you have to offer significantly below market to get somebody to buy in the first place. But your statement covers that. But then, if you want your transaction to be processed at all, you have to offer a significant transaction fee. That fee can get so high it eats all possible profits.
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And then suddenly this stops working when you really need it....
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And it's easy for people with a lot of money to inflate and deflate the value of it at will to make a profit.
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Which is a thing that Bitcoin most certainly isn't.
Why does Bitcoin need to be a currency? Most people I know who actually use Bitcoin, mainly use to to send money to other people overseas. Faster and cheaper than a wire transfer.
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The only stable form of Fiat is a pile of rust.
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This is why nobody can take your set seriously -- delusional statements like this.
USD, CAD, Euros, Yen, Yuan. Won, each are far more stable that Bitcoin over any time horizon that you could identify. They are backed by large economies and governments that have the ability to tax in those currencies, and thus do not tend to move in any direction very rapidly or even in a sustained manner except as they reflect long term swings in those underlying economies.
Bitc
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The value of everything is exactly what someone else is willing to pay for it, FWIW.
Price is not value (utility). This vexed economists for a long time, but it's pretty well established that value and price are not the same thing, and that different people derive different value in different ways from the same item. E.g. I could buy a house to live in and derive shelter from it as well as investment value. or rent it out and get income and investment value, but those are different values. The price I am willing to pay is likely to be a function of the utility, but it's often not a simple f
I'm rich! (Score:2, Funny)
I took my profits from Bitcoin and invested it all in Tesla stock! Rei and I are going to be even richer!
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It's OK. We we all be happy once we get to Mars.
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Hehehehehehe....
Pump and Dump Redux (Score:5, Funny)
Tuuuuuuulips, get yer tuuuuuuulips.
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Came here for the hurr durr tulips comment and was not disappointed. Please point me to the nearest tulip exchange, I'll check back.
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They had literal tulip markets, where people went to bid on tulips.
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Re:Pump and Dump Redux (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh...did you even read that? That so-called debunking doesn't actually debunk anything that's commonly said about tulips. The common story is that tulips exploded in value, people invested great sums in it just because it seemed valuable, and then the market crashed. That article (like several other BS debunkings people like to link to) debunks some BS claims that every person at that time was involved, that people committed suicide over it, that the economy of the country was nearly destroyed...bullshit claims like that. Well, I'm sure an idiot here or there said it. I mean, almost anything you can imagine, you can find some idiot somewhere saying it. But those are the edge case lunatics. The common story about tulips is nothing that extreme. And that link even indicates the elements of the common story are true.
If in the next year or two cryptocurrencies all go completely bust and never recover, in a few hundred years people may be trying to debunk the story that nearly everyone lost their fortunes investing in crypto, but since it was only 1% of the population that were involved, that means the cryptocurrency craze never happened. But indeed the craze did happen. The value went up and up with no basis other than the fear-of-missing-out, and then crashed back to the ground. It's just that the craze was limited to no more than 1% of the population.
TL;DR - You can't debunk a story merely by debunking a greatly exaggerated version of that story
It's cycling between $8-7000 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Tell me how bitcoin is any different than trading stocks?
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Re:It's cycling between $8-7000 (Score:5, Insightful)
"Tell me how bitcoin is any different than trading stocks?"
Regulated, orderly and transparent markets where brokers can't front-run buyer or seller orders. Pretty much the first thing that pops to mind.
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Well it was sold as currency. It fails at that purpose because the value is so volatile. It's an interesting psychological experiment right now showing the irrationality of investors into a "fund".
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Can Elon dump all his stock without crashing the market? No. Same goes for crypto.
Re:It's cycling between $8-7000 (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell me how bitcoin is any different than trading stocks?
Owning a stock is owning a part of a company, and you can also get a part of the profit it generates. The only purpose whatsoever of owning a bitcoin is selling it to someone else who thinks that he can sell it to someone else - who again thinks that she can sell to someone else for even more.
The profit of these transactions are, of course, intended to be in real currency. Not bitcoin.
Bitcoin has is useless as a real currency (hardly usable anywhere, fluctuates wildly), unsafe, is horribly energy inefficient and is the closest thing to "finding a bigger fool"-scheme we've seen for many years. Even sock pupppet [wikipedia.org] made more sense.
.
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> The only purpose whatsoever of owning a bitcoin is selling it to someone else who thinks that he can sell it to someone else - who again thinks that she can sell to someone else for even more.
You realize that is the function of money, right ?
The difference between bitcoin and the USD is that the USD is guaranteed to slowly lose value over time, while bitcoin slowly gains over time.
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The difference between bitcoin and the USD is that the USD is guaranteed to slowly lose value over time, while bitcoin slowly gains over time.
That's not the only difference. Also, it should be noted that deflationary currencies are problematic. They discourage investing and liquidity, and tend to make financial shocks much sharper. This is why central banks aim for the currencies they manage to have a gentle, predictable inflation over time.
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There are several fiat currencies that are a lot less stable than bitcoin.
List them.
Are any of them not among the most unstable or poorest nations in the world?
Re: It's cycling between $8-7000 (Score:2)
You don't know? That might explain a lot.
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Tell me how bitcoin is any different than trading stocks?
Most bitcoin supporters don't know the difference either.
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Even junk bonds (that have no real-world value whatsoever, like BitCoin) have some laws and mechanisms limiting fraud and insider trading. Bitcoin has nothing.
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Bitcoin is traded much more thinly, on exchanges that are regulated by precisely no one, which regularly 'get hacked' losing lots of other people's money. That is, when the founders don't die after having played games with the money they were holding for other people. https://amycastor.com/category/quadriga/
Bitcoin's ups and downs regularly give every appearance of being the result of large investors playing around with the market to take money from smaller investors.
https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/201
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Wash trading in shares is illegal.
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Yep. Depends on whether you jump out before the pump turns into the dump.
Truly amazing (Score:2)
Meanwhile, in reality... (Score:5, Informative)
More details: https://amycastor.com/2019/05/... [amycastor.com], https://davidgerard.co.uk/bloc... [davidgerard.co.uk]
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Hey, it'll stabilize once the NFL starts paying it's players in Bitcoin [ccn.com]. Heck, that's probably what killed the AAF [aaf.com].
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It only spiked up 50% in the first place because of a Slashdot article last week.
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I don't think the Bitcoin Core price reflects its value (only the Cash chain isn't a technological deadend), but what you're describing is a temporary blip that exhausts the orderbook at higher prices on exchanges. This happens to low-volume securities of every type.
I mean, to be forthright, you have to say how long that price sat at a 20% discount, right?
Reality is many folks want a quick fortune (Score:2)
A single transaction caused the price to drop by ~20%...probably an exchange looking to dump, because it was a single transaction with 5,000 BTC (~$40M). Prices have since recovered, but this is not a sign of a healthy economic sector.
This is exactly what speculators want. Most "retail investors" are desperate for the next "sure thing". Volatility is a feature, for them.
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PUMP & DUMP & REPEAT!!! (Score:1)
Price of shares of a scam going up does not mean, it is not a scam anymore!!!
Unfortunately our world never runout of greater fools, who are easy to make thinking "it starting to going up again & I must not miss the train & I must invest all my remaining life savings ASAP"!!!
Every Ponzi scam ends sooner or later!!!
I wonder who will they will blame, the people who lost all their money in the end, after so much warning???
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Hehehehe, indeed. This Mobius guy must have found that there are even greater fools available and now wants a piece of that action.
The ones that lose will 90% blame somebody else and insist "it could have worked" and 10% will learn something, if that many. The 90% will also fall for the next scam of this type if they have money left to lose.
Different this time. (Score:3)
Do you know the definition of insanity?
https://youtu.be/OIfXdtml2gU [youtu.be]
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Most of the human race does not have independent intelligence, but just follows the crowd and their own base desires. Greed works pretty well to manipulate people.
It's now totally done for as a currency (Score:2)
Everyone seems to have given up on making BTC a usable currency for small transactions with fast validation of trades. It has become a digital "investment," playing off mankind's ancient affection for hoards of ones and zeroes. Occasionally, it gets used to pay off a kidnapper or a ransomware gang, just to make life interesting.
As far as this week's action: Is somebody doing a giant pump-and-dump?
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Everyone seems to have given up on making BTC a usable currency for small transactions with fast validation of trades
Bitcoin Core abandoned "Peer to Peer Electronic Cash" in 2017. Bitcoin upgraded to remain able to scale for cash uses (Bitcoin Cash chain) but the Core people refused to upgrade, so it's totally unusable for its original intended purpose now.
As far as this week's action: Is somebody doing a giant pump-and-dump?
Tether (USDT) is about to go under. The NYAG is conducting a criminal investigati
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As far as this week's action: Is somebody doing a giant pump-and-dump?
Pretty obviously. And this Mobius guy has found that the scam is legal and wants in on the action. He has certainly _not_ changed his mind.
Re:It's now totally done for as a currency (Score:5, Funny)
Pretty obviously. And this Mobius guy has found that the scam is legal and wants in on the action. He has certainly _not_ changed his mind.
I've asked Mobius about this, and all I can get from him is one side of the story.
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Is it real economy or just a casino game? (Score:2)
Here is a question for Slashdot readers, many of whom I suspect are knowledgeable about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies whereas I am not. I understand the hypothetical possibilities of cryptocurrencies as a new form of money suited for the techno era. I understand the hypothetical merits of blockchain. I have also observed the cycles of enthusiasm and pessimism, positive views and negative. I understand it has become a medium of exchange on the dark web. I have even seen some reputable vendors willing to
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It's like any other currency? What currency goes through the valuation gyrations, save the currency of a collapsing country (like Venezuela)?
I see you didn't take my advice, and you don't understand FOREX, what causes the value to go up, and what causes it to go down.
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I understand FOREX, I do it regularly (having accounts overseas as well as in the US). I trade quite a bit, sometimes intentionally, usually automatically (thanks, HSBC, for free FOREX trades on rules!). What currency has 30-50% swings in it, on a weekly or monthly basis?
Claiming bitcoin is like any other currency is like stating your housecat is like any other Bengal tiger.
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I understand FOREX
Then what are the things that cause a currency to go up, and what are the things that cause them to go down?
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Trust
Trust is nothing. What you mean to say is expectations on supply. Is the central bank going to print too much of the currency, or not enough of the currency?
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Re: Is it real economy or just a casino game? (Score:2)
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Bitcoin has no chance to ever become a "reputable currency". There is basically no protection against pump & dump scams (as the one currently run and where the original story is part of the scam), the mechanism is clunky and slow and there is no additional benefit like anonymity.
In principle, the idea of a cryptocurrency has some merit, bit Bitcoin is sadly lacking to make it a viable candidate. If we ever see one that works, it will have a rock-solid exchange rate, ease of use, fast transactions, high
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Very thoughtful insightful answer. Thank you.
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You are welcome.
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If we ever see one that works, it will have a rock-solid exchange rate, ease of use, fast transactions, high level of security and no speculation.
In other words, it will have to be centrally managed by authority of a government treasury. Cryptocurrency is basically useless until the government gets in on it.
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> How is it inherently different than playing at a casino or any other game of chance backed solely by the real money that will be exchanged between the losers and the winners?
Is there any casino where you can make one small bet then wait 5 years and be guaranteed to win form double to 100 times the amount you bet?
The reason its not a casino is because its not a zero sum game.
Time to sell (Score:2)
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I thought it was "Buy sheep and sell deer".
crypto pyramid scheme (Score:1)
Bitcoin is not really a currency.
No one uses it as a currency.
It is only really used a a pure investment vehicle with no backing assets.
It mimics a scarce resource, by tying the creation of new coins to an exponential burn of natural resources.
To restate, the value is not tied to any creating or obtaining any asset, rather it is tied to the destruction of assets.
While blockchain in general could be implemented in a reasonable way, tied to meaningful work or assets.
Bitcoin and similar schemes are the opposit
Gold vs. Re:crypto pyramid scheme (Score:1)
Gold currently is mined and refined often with cyanide or mercury as a value component of exchange in the world economy.
Bitcoin yes uses resources in the energy sector as well, but it is somewhat cleaner in a literal sense if hydroelectric is utilized and economics wise since it ha the least centralized control of its value or more importantly, utilization!
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Gold is not mined with cyanide. Cyanide is used in gold ore processing to effectively float off the gold from the waste. The cyanide is - for the most part - recaptured. Mining is energy intensive (also sometimes hydro), but it produces a moderately useful physical product. Gold is used as a store of wealth and in electronics, jewelery, etc. The process produces something other than waste heat, and is, therefore, nothing whatsoever like Bitcoin.
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To be fair, Bitcoin could have been a currency, but the speculation and the clunky, slow, and manipulation-prone mechanism it uses made that impossible. At this time, it is a completely empty shell, it has zero intrinsic value. As the ones behind the repeatedly done pump&dump steps have managed to keep the illusion that it has value up in an large group of greedy morons (that, as is customary in any good scam, think they are smarter than everybody else) the fraud can continue nicely.
This "message" serve
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Bitcoin is not really a currency.
No one uses it as a currency.
It is only really used a a pure investment vehicle with no backing assets.
It mimics a scarce resource, by tying the creation of new coins to an exponential burn of natural resources.
To restate, the value is not tied to any creating or obtaining any asset, rather it is tied to the destruction of assets.
While blockchain in general could be implemented in a reasonable way, tied to meaningful work or assets. Bitcoin and similar schemes are the opposite, and destructive by nature.
This is probably the most insightful summary of BitCoin on this thread.
market manipulation (Score:2)
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Indeed. And this Mobius guy has either been bought, or he found that it was a legal scam after all and wants some part of the action.
Only stupid ones have their fear put to rest (Score:2)
Of course, theis whole speculation bubble based on _absolutely_ _nothing_ (Bitcoin has no actual uses at this time. No, _really_ not.) is not stable in any way. The whole course-changes have the structure of a classical pump&dump, as is common with "junk" bonds. You know, make sure it raises a bit, get all the idiots in to make it raise more, then cash out and leave all the idiots much poorer. Don't worry, as long as they still have money to lose, the morons will come back with delusions of getting rich
Color me skeptical (Score:3)
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Yes, now is the time to put in your retirement money and the kid's college savings. This baby is going to the moon!
(Specifically people like me will be mooning the next batch of suckers going in for this latest pump and dump)
Stable unit of exchange and store of value? (Score:4, Informative)
No, it's acting much more like a speculative investment. Check back in ten years after all the hype and speculation has worn off.
The surge is pump and dump (Score:3)
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They do. There is always an ample supply of greedy morons that think they are smarter than everybody else.
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Funny thing is that whenever the exchange rate drops, the BC blockchain gets so incredibly slow and transaction fees get so high, that you cannot sell except at a massive loss.