Bitcoin Is Gunning for a Record and No One Is Talking About It (bloomberg.com) 119
Three years ago, Bitcoin's historic surge dominated Thanksgiving dinner conversations. This year, the cryptocurrency is in the midst of another notable rally and yet almost no one's talking about it. From a report: How fevered has Bitcoin's latest leg higher been? With the coin trading around $16,300, it's been more expensive in only eight other instances in the past decade, Bloomberg data show. Almost all of those came during the 1,375% surge in 2017 that saw it reach close to $20,000 before a spectacular plunge wiped out 70% over the next year. The world's largest cryptocurrency by market value has been through a boom and bust and a second boom since its frenzied heydays in 2017. A lot has changed in the years since, and crypto enthusiasts argue digital coins have gone through a maturing process. But the mania that surrounded digital currencies back then is largely absent, despite Bitcoin being about 15% shy of its vaunted record highs. "The fascination with it has worn off. You have the hardcore 'I'm a cryptocurrency investor' group but it hasn't really expanded because it's been so volatile, there have been so many questions around security and what regulations might do," said Kathy Jones, chief fixed income strategist for Schwab Center for Financial Research. "The number of questions I get on it now is a fraction of what I got a couple of years ago when it was really hot."
Hyperbole much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Three years ago, Bitcoin's historic surge dominated Thanksgiving dinner conversations.
"Dominated?" Seriously? I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that "politics," "family drama" and "should we watch the Cowboys vs Reskins, or some Division I game" probably dwarfed the number of mentions of bitcoin over Thanksgiving dinner.
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Me too.
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Since Bitcoin's late 2017 spike, it has never dropped to a point where anyone else will have a rags-to-riches story by investing in it. It is now simply a game of financial chicken being played by the already well-off, and suckers who can't do math.
At 16 grand or so, it is far too late for anyone with a functional brain to be buying in. This is when you make some popcorn and watch the carnage. Investing is "buy low, sell high", not the other way around.
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You may not know this, but you can buy a fraction of a Bitcoin. You can buy $0.01 worth today, if you wanted.
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You may not know this, but you can buy a fraction of a Bitcoin. You can buy $0.01 worth today, if you wanted.
If you buy $0.01 worth of Bitcoin, it would have to double in its current trading value for your holdings to be worth $0.02. That's entirely the point - the days of small investments bringing huge returns are over.
Let's say you bought Bitcoin at the lowest point of the most recent dip - back in March 14th. You'd have roughly 3x what you started with, if you sold today. That's certainly not shabby, but for the sake of argument let's assume $5k was what you were willing to risk at the time: you'd have $15k
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Let's say you bought Bitcoin at the lowest point of the most recent dip - back in March 14th. You'd have roughly 3x what you started with, if you sold today. That's certainly not shabby, but for the sake of argument let's assume $5k was what you were willing to risk at the time: you'd have $15k today. Great, you made nearly enough money to buy an entry-level Mitsubishi Mirage for cash, and this is in a best-case scenario created with the advantage of hindsight.
And don't forget that you would also have to legally pay taxes on those gains, so your net would be even less than the 10k difference.
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Congratulations: if you have $5k to risk tossing into a pyramid scheme, you are already a rich person playing with money as if it were a toy.
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Seriously?
Look - there are two kinds of people, poor people who treat money like it's a precious resource and rich people who speculate and risk losing money on some things to gain more on average. If you see nothing but the risk to precious money in everything you are not in the second group.
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A 300% gain in 8 months is nothing to sneeze at.
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You may not know this, but you can buy a fraction of a Bitcoin. You can buy $0.01 worth today, if you wanted.
But can you practically do that? How long does it take for a $0.01 transaction to get included in the blockchain? If many people started doing them, how long would it take? If you are just talking about buying at an exchange then you aren't actually buying bitcoin, rather bitcoin indexed securities from some of the dodgiest operators out there. What multiple should you calculate to take into account your exchange risk?
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OK, first you complain that Bitcoin is too expensive. I point out you can buy as little as you want. Then you complain that $0.01 pointless to buy.
Sounds like you're against it, and just want to complain.
To quote Satoshi himself:
“If you don't believe it or don't get it, I don't have the time to try to convince you, sorry.”
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I never pointed out it's too expensive. I'm also not complaining that it's pointless to buy such a thing - in fact the opposite. I'm pointing out that you can't in practice buy in at the $0.01 level because Bitcoin is incapable of handling very small transactions or even medium transactions rapidly. A proper electronic currency where I could make true anonymous micropayments would fit one of my goals of being able to support internet publishers incrementally for small amounts of content without advertisin
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Watch John Oliver break down blockchain and bitcoin on ‘Last Week Tonight’
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Re: Hyperbole much? (Score:1)
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It took me until 2013 to actually understand and buy a lot of bitcoin.
The primary reason not to buy bitcoin is not understanding it. The secondary reason to not buy bitcoin is understanding it. I can demonstrate that simply enough. Do you still have everything in bitcoin?
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Heck... that's true the other way around, as well.
The primary "reason" to actually buy bitcoin is not understanding it [Just like with any lottery-ticket or zero-research penny stock purchase.. lack of understanding leads to underestimating risks and overestimating expectations of potential reward/opportunity based on selective anecdotal stories or marketing hype getting hopes up and bringing in the FOMO].
A secondary reason to buy bitcoin is understanding it [knowing enough about it to trade in on it/expl
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Having everything in any one thing, regardless of the nature of that thing, is clearly insane.
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I'm pretty sure some of Bernie Madhoff's clients said this very same thing.
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The biggest problem with bitcoin is the beggars. I don't know why bitcoin encourages this behavior but they turn up on every forum.
Re:Hyperbole much? (Score:4, Funny)
suggested beanie babies instead.
Makes sense, they are probably more reliably liquid with fewer speculators needing to dump them at the moment when everyone needs to convert to cash and less likely for you to lose them or suddenly get taken from you. Despite the microplastics they are probably better for the environment too. As your financial advisor I'd suggest beanie babies instead of bitcoin any time.
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Three years ago, Bitcoin's historic surge dominated Thanksgiving dinner conversations.
"Dominated?" Seriously? I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that "politics," "family drama" and "should we watch the Cowboys vs Reskins,
It's "The Washington Football Team" now, at least for this year. Way to be insensitive, especially when also talking about a holiday that marks the beginning of the subjugation of indigenous Americans. :P
And on the topic of Cowboys, they'll never win another Super Bowl as long as JJ owns them.
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It's "The Washington Football Team" now, at least for this year.
In my heart, they will always be the Washington Racial Slurs.
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It's "The Washington Football Team" now, at least for this year.
In my heart, they will always be the Washington Racial Slurs.
They should go with the Washington (Potato) Skins as the new name. Would fit right in with the demographic of the NFL fanbase.
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And the ridiculous:
it's been more expensive in only eight other instances in the past decade
It's bad enough when people make a big thing out of the highest market capitalisation ever, the highest grossing movie ever etc. etc. (yes, inflaton'll do that) but this is like saying "today the Dow Jones hit heights only seen eight times in the last ten years" - nobody would report like that. What on Earth is anyone supposed to make of that other than (correctly) that Bitcoin is very volatile and it may well fall soon as it apparently has done eight times before when reaching these sor
what IS Bitcoin? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it a currency? Or is it an investment?
If it's a currency, it needs to have a stable value: news that the price of Bitcoin is spiking is bad news. You don't buy and sell using currency if you don't know what that currency is going to be worth. Investors buying and holding bitcoin is not what you want; currency needs liquidity to be useful.
If it's an investment, then the price spiking is good. But they need to talk to Beanie-baby investors to see how the cycle of investment in collectables works.
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Re:what IS Bitcoin? (Score:4, Insightful)
Pure drivel.
The best description of cryptocurrency is a greater fool bubble.
The most charitable view of cryptocurrency at this time is unregulated gambling.
Just shy of 10% of all exchanges have been hacked at least once.
80% of all icos are scams right out of the gate.
80% of the hashing is controlled by a totalitarian state with no compunction against ruthless controls over their economy see Jack Ma IPO.
Doublespending has already happened a few times after innumerable claims of it being 'impossible'.
It is not based on anything real, there is no actual scarcity, there is in fact an infinite number of completely unregulated 'coins'.
Cost per transaction makes it useless in practice.
Time per transaction makes it useless in practice.
Having zero regulation or oversight, all of the above again relies on the goodwill of anyone in any position at any stage of the project having no uncontrolled/unrestricted self interest, malicious intent or just naked greed.
Get on the Tulip train at your own risk.
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Most of those criticisms apply to the almighty USD too. Most critically that's not based on anything real since the gold standard fell.
If you knew how central banks worked, or any of the financial trading trickery you would not be here complaining about bitcoin. The government is running scams that devalue the dollar in your pocket by a good few percent each year.
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Currencies of the developed world has been stable for decades, despite housing and stock market shenanigans.
Do you know what devalues the currency in your pocket? Inflation. Inflation is unavoidable, not a scam. Modern reserve banks run inflation targeting, which is to keep inflation at manageable level between 2 and 3%. High inflation may be a bad thing, but so is zero inflation. The
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In the last 10 years the EUR/USD exchange rate has gone from over 1.4 to under 1.1.
Try another pair: GBP/JPY. That varied from 195 to 117.9.
You call that "stable for decades"? It isn't. The idea that one USD has some fixed value is imaginary.
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Yes, that's stable. It's still well within the same order of magnitude and many of the (mostly small) movements in those 10 years are explainable due to important government/state policy that directly influence the value of the currency. Current influence on a weaker Dollar for example is the policy of world-economic isolation (in the current US government case) and one for the Pound is the consequences of Brexit (in the current UK government case).
Compare that to Bitcoin which can lose half its value if so
not just the most charitable view (Score:2)
it's the most realistic one.
Thanks to two things: 1: that there is no use case story for bitcoin except "moon," and 2: that it has been from the very start highly centralized in the only way that matters - distribution - Bitcoin will likely reach an exchange-manipulated $100,000 at some point close to it's final retreat into permanent status as a lesson in bad economics.
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Bitcoin needs to decide what it is.
You seem to be confused. Bitcoin isn't entity that is trying to find itself, or one that is seeking to hold to a mission statement, it is just a collection of electronic rules that allows consensus proof of work cryptography. When you see price fluctuations you are seeing the intersection of human, or at least human directed robot, bidding and asking.
By the way it is almost certain that whatever "currency" you refer to does this same thing. You don't notice it because the denomination printed on it does n
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By the way it is almost certain that whatever "currency" you refer to does this same thing. You don't notice it because the denomination printed on it does not change, instead the amount of goods it can be exchanged for does.
We do notice, but we generally don't care (a lot) because it (usually) changes by a few percentage points a year. Double digit inflation is generally considered a bad thing. And deflation is considered to be even worse by economists (though it can appear to be better to the consumer in the short term.) 100% or more inflation or deflation in a regular currency would be a disaster. c.f. hyperinflation, most notably in Germany post-WW1 or more recently in Venezuela.
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Bitcoin needs to decide what it is.
It's a technology. The people who use it will decide what it is. Or they'll abandon it and use something else.
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Here's a good article on whether Bitcoin makes sense [bsalert.com].
The fact that bitcoin pretends to be both a currency and an investment illuminates the reality that it's not particularly good at either.
Bitcoin makes no sense as a payment system because it's not scalable. It can't handle any reasonable amount of transactions. And additional layers of abstraction such as the Lightning Network, are patches on a fundamentally flawed system, that still don't work better than existing methods like credit cards and Paypal.
B
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Re: what IS Bitcoin? (Score:2)
What youâ(TM)ve described is not currency. What youâ(TM)ve described is payment processing, and Visa, MasterCard, et all already do that much better and cheaper for small transactions.
Bitcoin is yesterday. (Score:4, Informative)
Not a replacement for cash.
Not stable as a currency.
Not anonymous.
Easily stolen.
Not insured.
Relatively expensive fees to transfer.
Haven for crooks and thieves.
Shall I go on?
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that's not bitcoin. that's Dai. who isn't paying attention?
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As if no one ever robbed a bank before.
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You seem to be misinformed about several items. Bitcoin never made any claims of being anonymous. In fact its the opposite where every transaction is traceable. As for being stolen, yes if you leave currency on other peoples servers it can happen. If you leave bitcoins in a password protected wallet it’s very secure. Hell you can print out the wallet on paper for a physical copy if you desire.
You should stop - making a fool of yourself (Score:1)
Not a replacement for cash.
Oh really, then why are PayPal and Venmo accepting BitCoin soon [theverge.com] (the reason for the upswing)?
The rest of your arguments are remarkably even less informed / stupider.
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PayPal and Venmo accepting BitCoin (the reason for the upswing)?
Maybe the reason for the upswing is that Trump lost the election.
Maybe it's just the holiday season.
Or... a million other reasons that have nothing to do with Bitcoin value.
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Maybe the reason for the upswing
Are you retarded? The Bitcoin increase followed immediately after the news about PayPal.
Can you seriously not admit that the vastly greater usability of BitCoin for transactions by those two platforms, would of course naturally increase the value of that currency?
Swallow your foolish pride and just admit the obvious JFC the people on Slashdot...
I'll let you have the last word, because I'm pretty sure you would never admit even the most plainly obvious thing.
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And fiat currency is better?
Not stable as a currency (can be unilaterally depreciated by your own government, ex: USA printing billions right now out of thin air).
Not anonymous (you think those serial numbers are there just for fun??)
Easily stolen (it's both digital _and_ physical)
Not completely insured (all banks have maximum caps for fraud)
Expensive fees to transfer (unlike Bitcoin, which only happens when everyone wants to trade at the same time and is only a fraction of your transfer past a certain poin
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Yes. It's backed by nation states and mandated as legal tender for debts. It also has a 100+ year track record of stability. (Despite morons trying to compare civilized nations to Zimbabwe)
This is a myth that crypto enthusiasts keep talking about. It's as credible as Trump's election fraud claims. The USA prints billions of dollars, yes.. a
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Not a replacement for cash.
Not stable as a currency.
Not anonymous.
Easily stolen.
Difficult to insure
Extremely expensive fees to transfer.
Haven for crooks and thieves.
Both gold and bitcoin lend value from their scarcity and is perceived to be a reliable long-term store of value, especially in the face of the rapid monetary inflation currently in full swing. Basic economics predicts that trillions of dollars entering the economy without the corresponding productivity gain to justify it inevi
Look at the stock market. (Score:1)
Explanation (Score:5, Informative)
Go here and click on "all" on the time scale selector: http://bitcoinity.org/markets [bitcoinity.org]
The purple bars under the lines are trading volume. Notice anything different between the 2017 peak and today's peak? That's right, no trading volume in this one.
Conclusion: Somebody out there is pumping and preparing to dump all over the suckers who buy into the hype. Doing it during the holiday season probably isn't a coincidence.
Fool me once...
Re:Explanation (Score:4, Informative)
As an aside: Note how trading volume is on a general decline. That shows the future of bitcoin, right there. Nobody's interested.
(apart from the bitcoin mafia - the handful of people who own 90% of all bitcoins and can manipulate the price at will)
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Yup. All these cryptocurrencies are 'pump and dump' schemes. They're way to volatile, and while in some cases can be used as a sort of 'currency' (often by converting to fiat currency at the time of purchase/sale), they really are not something to plan on holding to buy things with when you need it. If I want my paycheck in BitCoin, I'll take $US and convert it myself. IPO's for cryptocurrencies are way too frequent to be seriously anything but some clever person/group starting their own 'pump and dump' sc
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Notice anything different between the 2017 peak and today's peak? That's right, no trading volume in this one.
Conclusion: Somebody out there is pumping and preparing to dump all over the suckers who buy into the hype.
It is possible to trade BTC outside of public exchanges (which is the only thing that website shows). If I were an investment company looking to invest a lot of money in BTC, I certainly wouldn't go through a public exchange.
Buy buy buy (Score:2)
Bitcoin is nearing the peak of it's sustainable price, you'd be stupid not to buy now when it might go a little bit higher.
Paypal (Score:2)
WHY Bitcoin goes up or down is the stuff of tea-leaf readers, but the news that PayPal was enabling cryptocurrency trading seems to coincide with the rise. When you look into it, you'll find PayPal takes about 4% or more of a round-trip trade into and out of cryptocurrency. (1.5% commission and "up to" 0.5% spread on each trade - higher if the trade is less than $1000.01). That much "friction" in each trade is extraordinary compared to typical trader-initiated trade on public stock markets.
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the news that PayPal was enabling cryptocurrency trading seems to coincide with the rise.
So? It also coincides with Trump losing the election.
More important things, perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps people have more important things to talk about right now than a libertarian pyramid scheme? Such as global pandemic, global climate change, global fascism, and global economic insecurity from all of these?
If we are going to talk about it, let's talk about it consuming more energy than the entire country of Austria?
Bitcoin is a bad idea environmentally (see "Austria" above).
Bitcoin is a bad idea economically (because a fixed amount of currency in a growing economy causes the currency to appreciate in value, stifling its actual use as a medium of exchange which should be the main use of currency).
Bitcoin is a bad idea socially because it's used almost entirely for criminal actions.
Why should we talk about bitcoin as any sort of investment or sound economic idea when it's none of this and never has been?
We've all got much more important and much more sensible things to care about right now.
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Investing in bitcoin is the same as playing the lottery. Bitcoin is an experiment in progress and nobody knows the outcome. We still don’t know who actually created bitcoin. It’s probably the biggest mystery of the century so far.
Re: More important things, perhaps? (Score:1)
libertarian pyramid scheme
The easiest way to demonstrate that you're ignorant about the meaning of a word?? [Attempt to] use it in a sentence.
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Bitcoin is a bad idea environmentally
Bitcoin mining is an extremely competitive business and only profitable when having access to dirt cheap energy, for example excess power generated by hydroelectric dams. For instance, Chinese miners close to dams in Szichuan pay less than 4 cents per KWh for their electricity. In other words, this is otherwise near-worthless energy and if it wasn't for the miners, the energy would have remained unused.
So how come energy can sometimes be worthless? That is because energy is too expensive to store. Supply
Money printing Inflation is at an all time high (Score:3)
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and yet bitcoin core is at $16,300. so if it hasn't fallen, why hasn't it?
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> No one celebrates the âoeall time highsâ of Zimbabwe dollars or Bolivars, why should we care about Bitcoin propped up by Tether Printing. . The 2013 high of âoeonlyâ 1200 dollars was the last organic high before Tether started printing.
You realize these are backwards, right?
If Zimbabwean currency was multiplying its value vs other currencies hand over fist, the whole world would be praising their economic genius.
If you still have BTC unload it (Score:3)
Seriously leave someone else to hold the bag.
The stop speculating about the regulators *might* do. We bloody well know what they are going to do. Taxes everywhere post pandemic are going up. That means pressure to find tax havens which will be concurrency for some and that will produce intense pressure to bring this stuff under normal currencies. Have naive do you have to be to think dear old Uncle Sam is going let you run around with a competing currency for which he can't control the value or apply diplomatic pressure to someone who can to?
Bitcoin is going to zero. One way or another governments are going either deny people the legal ability to use it or effectively tax the transactions with it, to be paid in their own currencies at a highly punitive exchange rate. Basically nothing else can happen. When that happens the whole of bitcoin world because a second rate payment processor, all be it distributed. Don;t go thinking the big banks than will continue to have much interest. They are playing along now because it costs them little to buy in, and its opportunity to learn the technologies, discover how the market place operates, and develop what will ultimately be the nominal suite of retail and commercial service products. However when the regulatory dust settles there is no reason for them to play in bitcoins. Why would they? What advantage is there in their having to use their own cash reserves to acquire enough bitcoin liquidity to offer their full scale suite of banking services? NONE, they will either launch their own crypto-coins or more likely form some industry group so they can be out there with as wide a degree of interop as bitcoin on day one.
When will this happen. No idea, could be February could be a decade away; but it will play out as described of that I am confident. So if you are one of these guys that us 5000% or whatever, do youselvef a favor, cash out. Take that dream vacation, pay off your mortgage, retire early, whatever... but don't wait.
Less than zero-sum game (Score:2)
In reality, there are huge overheads for bitcoin mining, and there are huge losses to criminals, and probably huge losses by idiots losing access to their bitcoins, so overall it is quite negative.
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If every penny that was paid out to people selling bitcoin was paid for by people buying bitcoin, with zero overhead, then it would be a zero sum game.
In reality, there are huge overheads for bitcoin mining, and there are huge losses to criminals, and probably huge losses by idiots losing access to their bitcoins, so overall it is quite negative.
That nicely sums it up. For everybody that wins here, somebody else loses significantly more.
I don't see the allure of BTC (Score:2)
The first thing they said was get BTC, its anonymous (which it isn't anymore because of exchanges).
You can lose it, it can get stolen probably easier than stealing cash if you have the wrong exchange.
The value of BTC isn't tied to anything which some say is a feature, but no one really knows the value either.
Another 'feature' of BTC is its largely unregulated, which also means that the price can be abused by whales or anyone really.
Tell me again why I should buy BTC?
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Everything you said is also true of US Dollars, except for maybe regulation.
Even with regulation, stocks and global currencies get abused every single day.
Why support it? It's the separation of money and state.
Just like the US established the separation of Church and State (in contrast to the European model, like the Church of England), we found that it's best if the State doesn't get involved. Same thing for money. Get rid of quantitive easing, hyper inflation, and all the abuses by the Federal Reserve.
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I don't see the value of the dollar swinging wildly like Bitcoin, BTC is not a stable store of value. To use it one exchanges for dollars anyway, it's not money since not widely accepted. It is subject to theft and fraud without insurance, unlike my bank account.
Why support a gambling token that can plunge to low or zero value without notice?
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you don't see the dollar swinging wildly because you count in dollars. try counting the buying power of dollars in any other commodity (gold, oil etc)
Re: I don't see the allure of BTC (Score:2)
We do. Itâ(TM)s called inflation and if itâ(TM)s more than a couple percent per year then things are going very badly.
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Sure they get abused, but there are laws against it. There are no SEC rules for bitcoin. The value of the dollar is tied to various things, such as events or movements in materials or cash itself, I used to trade forex.
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Tell me again why I should buy BTC?
So somebody else can take your money. The principle is called "greater fool theory".
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Hang on a sec, lemme go mortgage my house.
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I see you get it. That has become somewhat rare here.
There are also people that lost their student loans that way. Never underestimate the stupidity of gamblers.
You keep using that word... (Score:2)
"Grandpa, Bitcoin is surging!"
"What's that, some kind of commie welfare thing? Trump won, get over it! You libtards mean nothing anymore!"
"Hey, Uncle Fred! Did you hear Bitcoin is surging?"
"Bitcoin? What the hell is Bitcoin? Buttcoin, more like! Ha!"
"Why won't anyone listen? It's big news!"
"Hush, Billy. Stop trying to dominate the Thanksgiving conversation. The game is on!"
Since when (Score:2)
"crypto enthusiasts argue digital coins have gone through a maturing process."
And that maturing process would be...? Other than the year when Bitcoin went through its boom/bust cycles where the suckers periodically get fleeced, what has changed?
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Simple: When they find enough "greater fools" the second time, that is a "maturing process". Still the same crap, but the scam is now older and better established.
Marijuana's probably going to be legal soon (Score:2)
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Interesting point.
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No one talking since not news (Score:1)
Bitcoin swings wildly in boom / bust cycles, those that "invest" in it get taken to the cleaners again and again. Exchanges get hacked and money is lost without insurance or venue to get money back.
A fool and his dollars spent on bitcoin are soon parted.
Pump and dump (Score:2)
Currently pumping again. Dumping to follow when enough "greater fools" have bought into it. A pretty nice scam and it seems people really learn nothing.
Fads (Score:2)
Well duh, because the huge multiplier is done (Score:2)
ah, bitcoin (Score:2)
I like my bitcoin the way I like my computers: volatile and prone to crashing.
Still owned by the 1% (Score:2)
Bitcoin is mostly legitimate (Score:2)
But it has problems. As a pocket cash replacement it takes way too long to process transactions. For large transactions most people don't make except for buying a car or a house it's reasonable.
But all the speculation is not good and in my opinion detracts from the currency. My hunch is that there people artificially propping up and pumping the market in order to dump mom and pop investors. Low to high and then crash. Pump and dump.
It's all Tether wash trading (Score:2)
The price of bitcoin is not based on natural demand. It's based on the uncontrolled printing of USDT and how those phony stable-coins are being used to pump up the value of BTC.
That's the elephant in the room.
The summary doesn't talk about the record, either (Score:2)
Read the summary, and still don't know WTF record you're circumlocuting. So I clicked through the article and read a few pages but eventually gave up. Perhaps they finally reveal it at the end of the article, but just tell us: WHAT RECORD?
That dirty money... (Score:2)