Well, so, Bitcoin has reached a new high of over US$66,500. What do we think about that? And what do with think about Bitcoin?
Here's Forbes Magazine with a pithy view:
"Nah, it's a bubble. Great fun to play with no doubt but it's a bubble. Myself, if I had any, I'd be cashing out around now."
A little harsh maybe?
But, ah, yes, I've just tricked you, dear readers.
You see...
...That quote did not come from today.
The Bitcoin price then?
It was US$92.
That was apparently a bubble. Cue laughing emoji.
And lest somebody should accuse me of being a real meanie and attempting to make a fellow scribe look silly, here's yours truly from November 2017:
I would say the more I understand about Bitcoin in particular, the more I am convinced it is a quite enormous bubble that will, as sure as night follows day, burst.
The Bitcoin price when I wrote that was around US$7000. Three weeks later it had more than doubled.
And now, approaching four years later it is over US$65,000.
Maybe US$65,000 is cheap. US$92 was. US$7000 was.
My gaze was diverted this week by promos for an upcoming crypto 'Summit', featuring among others Anthony Scaramucci, who was very briefly the White House Director of Communications in the previous US administration.
"Why we know that Bitcoin will reach $307,000 within months, and $12 million by 2031," is the attention-grabbing kicker for the Summit.
A preposterous statement?
Well, history might suggest not.
And that's why nobody should be laughing. Or talking about bubbles. Or worse, just ignoring Bitcoin.
As at the time of writing this, Bitcoin had a market value of a touch under US$1.25 trillion.
That's about six times the size of New Zealand's GDP.
And actually, the Bitcoin market cap holds its own when compared with the GDP in the mighty US of A even, which is a little under US$23 trillion.
The entire market cap of the crypto market is over US$2.6 trillion.
If Bitcoin was to reach US$300,000 in value, this would give it a market cap of over US5.5 trillion. And logic suggests the entire crypto market - of which Bitcoin remains very much the heartbeat - would be in excess of US$10 trillion.
If that all collapsed, nobody would escape a bloody nose.
And I'm not going to even start running the numbers and scenarios over a Bitcoin price of US$12 million...
But with or without such price scenarios coming to fruition, what we are dealing with today, with Bitcoin valued at around US$1.25 trillion, is I would suggest becoming pretty systemic.
We are actually fast approaching a point where Bitcoin is moving into the 'too big to fail' category.
No longer must it be cast aside as a silly little flight of fancy that will go away. It would not go away now without making a lot of noise.
While the likes of Elon Musk have made loud public utterances about investing in Bitcoin, you can just bet that a heck of a lot of people out there have just quietly invested. The point is, more people will have a stake in Bitcoin than might be imagined. So, more collateral damage if something goes wrong.
This is always the case when something becomes an investment sensation. And the extent to which EVERYBODY has got involved only becomes apparent if there's a nasty crash.
Which is why there needs to be some sort of sensible global strategy taken with Bitcoin.
I'm not entirely sure where you would start. But a start is needed.
I think central banks globally have just assumed Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies would just disappear at some point - perhaps made redundant by digital currencies issued by the central banks themselves.
That's not going to happen anytime soon. In the meantime Bitcoin just gets bigger and bigger.
I have thought for a little while now that the next big financial crisis might actually start with cryptocurrencies and then feed into the 'mainstream'.
The bigger the cryptocurrency sector gets, the more that has to be a concern.
Instead of treating Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies like some errant car-converting teenage renegade and waiting for them to go away, the world powers-that-be need to go into collaborative mode and work out how Bitcoin and the others can be made to fit inside the 'system' rather than outside of it.
I don't know how you do that. But somebody needs to get on to it. Rather quickly.
115 Comments
You’d have to switch off the whole internet.
That could happen... A war where infrastructure is destroyed, a natural disaster, an EP device or devices activated above the earth, a solar flare large enough to cause global outages,... what would digital currencies be worth then when something of a global magnitude occurs?
Gotta take down the Bitcoin satellites in orbit as well.
Bitcoin is built for resilience, I think people underestimate the difficulty of actually taking it down.
Quick. Stop that train. Wall Street is not in control. We can't go against the natural order. Bubbles are OK, as long as they're sanctioned by the ruling elite and the appropriate middlemen get their cut. The snouts closest to the trough of the fiat system are very concerned by this.
Why do you believe "Wall Street" is not manipulating Bitcoin as it does with every other financial asset?
I think that "Wall St" is doing their best to wrestle control but they're also reliant on the SEC and the U.S. govt as 'partners'. Wall St has already cornered gold and silver to a large extent. Their strategy for BTC in particular is likely to have parallels. The problem is that the underlying asset (BTC) is far from their hands.
The fact that this article is barely more than a headline suggests nobody really knows how to regulate cryptocurrecy. China banned all crypto transactions less than a month ago and nothing happened. Binance, the world's leading exchange, is releasing new tokens almost monthly which drives up prices as Binance is seen as the exchange with the most legitimacy. I would hazard a guess that the first thing Governments will do with working quantum computers is disrupt the blockchain to maintain their financial monopoly. If that day ever comes.
first thing Governments will do with working quantum computers is disrupt the blockchain to maintain their financial monopoly.
Meanwhile the public will rioting in the streets because hackers will have used quantum computers to steal funds from, and take down the banks, while holding the nuclear arsenal for ransom.
Governments themselves are getting into Digital Currencies, their own. China is far ahead in this field. Some of the Cryptos are already being used as medium of exchange and also value. The Value will increase as their use as Medium of Exchange grows. The Future is clear, though the path is not.
What I think will happen is that CBDCs like eRenminbi will become so strong that they will kill off most of these cryptos, which are in thousands of versions now. The consolidation will result in a few standing cryptos, which like the Visa/Mastercard now will compete for the payment systems. Value wise, it depends on what the public take to, which is a big unknown.
May be CBDCs and a few Cryptos will occupy the space together.
Seems like the actions taken to prevent the fallout of collapse are doing more harm than good these days - look at the property bubble central banks everywhere have blown when the property market looked like it might get a bit shaky at the start of the pandemic. They just made the problem worse.
Bitcoin collapses a few times a year without any intervention needed, I've seen my portfolio cut in half nine times since I first bought.
Each time it collapses it comes back stronger.
There shouldn't be any intervention - let corrections happen.
Bitcoin collapses a few times a year without any intervention needed, I've seen my portfolio cut in half nine times since I first bought.
Right. And you can't go crying to the govt when the price falls or 'collapses'. Unlike the property bubble. Ardern and Robbo are not there to 'ensure' the price of BTC because people 'expect' the price to go up.
That expectation that the government will step in seems like a large part of the problem.
I know multiple people who have extended themselves beyond my reckons of what is sensible, most of you will probably know of similar stories. There's no caution to their investment decisions - they've got as much leverage as the bank will allow and their portfolio is all in on a single asset class and why not, if the market is in trouble the government has their back.
I think central banks globally have just assumed Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies would just disappear at some point - perhaps made redundant by digital currencies issued by the central banks themselves.
Well David kind of missed the point I guess. CBDCs are a completely different entity to BTC. The former is inflationary and controlled by the ruling elite, while the latter is deflationary and decentralized among one of the most powerful networks in the digital age.
Once the reserve bank tries to convince the citizenry of the benefits of their Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) the average person will become acutely aware of why cryptocurrencies exist, how central banks are addicted to debasing currencies, and the advantages of a truly public and open currency.
Bitcoin is only just getting started. The Lindy Effect means that the longer it sticks around, the more staying power it has, just like the internet which we all know is not going away.
Bitcoin is the most pristine collateral in the world, you can prove you own it and that no one else has a claim to that Bitcoin. It will eat Silvers lunch (1.31T) then it will eat Gold (~ 10T) then it will go on to eat government bonds (100T) that have a negative real yield, why would anyone hold those (other than those mandated to)??
There is currently $12,000,000,000,000 in negatively yielding bonds, down from a high of $18T that is completely illogical for anyone to hold, why would you want to receive back less money than you gave someone??
We are also so early, well less than 500,000m people would wide would own Bitcoin themselves, but more would most likely have some exposure to it through public companies such as Tesla.
Bitcoin is decentralised and antifragile. China full on banned it a few months ago, and not only did that make it more distributed but the price has fully recovered. Hows that for a big FU to the CCP?
Like you said, Bitcoin would require a globally coordinated crack down to ban it. Chances of that happening? 0. Esp now that El Salvador has adopted it as legal tender, and they are only just the first. It is all game theory basic economics. The best strategy is to go early and go hard!
Here's the gold standard provider out there. Not the best rates, but probably the safest.
Currently earning from 6 to 6.2% with:
https://ledn.io/en/btc-savings
https://celsius.network/rates/
Used to be with Blockfi but their rates are not attractive enough for me anymore.
"Bitcoin is the most pristine collateral in the world, you can prove you own it and that no one else has a claim to that Bitcoin": Isn't that the same for pretty much every crypto ever invented? What makes Bitcoin better than Dogecoin or a potential JimboCoin? Or are they all worth trillions?
This article is peak fiat thinking.
Bitcoin can't be banned. You can regulate it at your peril. Central Banks will be forced to buy bitcoin at the next crisis. This is exactly what Bitcoin was designed to do.
Bitcoin isn't here to take part. It is here to take over. You'll buy bitcoin at a price you deserve.
The current monetary settings across the world go hand in hand with the upwards momentum of the bitcoin price.
If they raise interest rates, compensate savers and lower real inflation capital might slow it's headlong charge into bitcoin.
Central banks know they can't, sovereign debt is to high across the board. Consequently, there will be sustained upside for bitcoin with intermittent drawdowns.
If they raise interest rates, compensate savers and lower real inflation capital might slow it's headlong charge into bitcoin.
If the CBs increased rates in order to encourage banks to compete with the rates of decentralized finance, the squealing would be piercing. And let's be honest, people are not encouraged to save anyway. The ruling elite wants people to be living paycheck to paycheck and spending like drunken sailors. This has been clearly obvious for quite some time.
Its now at the top of another pump cycle and its time to sell. I will give it the fact you sure can make a lot of money with it by buying and selling at the right times, the problem is I wouldn't put a couple of thousand into it and even with 50% returns a year I'm not interested.
" I’m going to re-accumulate like it’s 2009. ": I am not a fan of Bitcoin at all, but I think this very statement is why it will probably succeed from here. God even I would buy it if it dropped. I always thought it was a bubble but now I am not so sure, there are plenty of people willing to buy if the bubble starts to pop. Although it does have some classic bubble qualities, like the fact that no one would actually want it if it wasn't going up in value, its about as useless as a tulip.
Ever heard of El Salvador? Strike? Jack Mallers?
Dont have to own Bitcoin to use the payment rails
https://twitter.com/jackmallers/status/1441089090628177933?lang=en
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p8T0bhUTN8
Your argument is dead in the water
Firstly, nice username - keen to see if VET/VTHO can do what it should have done in the early bullrun (never quite got that magic $1). VET is a strong example of a utility coin that has an enduring place beyond a pump and dump that many people associate the entire crypto space with.
Secondly, yea, we still have some cycles to go through - the top has to blow off BTC, we should see a dip in BTC.D and possibly even a full-fat alt season, and who knows, maybe another degen/meme token (with the added bonus of NFT exchanges) cycle as well.
Haha nice spot - was wondering if anyone would pick up on my username. Been a VET holder since bagging millions under half a cent, a great coin indeed, albeit a slow performer thus far comparatively. Should be good for the fabled $1 IMO. Nice to see someone else here who knows how things work, should be an exciting run towards the end of the year!
Reading comments like BTC is unstoppable blah blah blah is the concern.
These worshippers are convinced that it is hear to stay, but history (of challenging State power) would say otherwise.
We will see digital currencies, but it will be in the interest of every major State (China, USA, India, etc) to see off BTC.
Think not? One word...Gadaffi.
We will see digital currencies, but it will be in the interest of every major State (China, USA, India, etc) to see off BTC.
You already have digital currencies. Most of what you spend is exchanged digitally. Every time the bank issues a new mortgage, it's created digitally. You're talking at cross purposes.
Imagine if there were 30,000+ Gaddafi’s distributed around the world…then you can get an idea of how many nodes there are distributed around the world, running the bitcoin protocol. That’s the beauty of decentralisation, there’s no single point of control or failure.
And yet, the theoretical cost of a 51% attack is really not that big. If a government or major tech company wanted to they could easily disrupt the whole thing.
The problem there is, they have to get that much hardware! Do you understand the cost and coordination required to set up a mining farm of that scale!? And then why would you spend billions on trying to coordinate all of this just to attach the network and make all your money that you have spent worthless? The whole system encourages people to protect it.
But it's not actually that much hardware. Most governments wouldn't have it sitting around, but if you take a look at the major cloud providers: AWS, Google, Azure a few million dollars of compute resources per hour is chump change, and outside of demand peaks is literally just sitting there idle.
These aren't everyday servers, these are ASICS, Application-Specific Integrated Circuit devices. They are specifically made for mining Bitcoin and have no other purpose. https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/hardware/
And there is already an extreme shortage in supply.
Also, all a 50% attack does is re-write the old chain so that the new chain is the real history. All you can do with that is double spend THE COINS YOU ALREADY HAVE.
So not only have you spent all this money on the hardware, mining facilities, contracts for power and facilities, and buying the Bitcoin that you want to double spend, but then when you do it, the price will most likely plummet, making all that Bitcoin you brought worth even less.
It really just doesn't make sense
It's cheaper to do it with ASICs, but doesn't mean you can't do it on GPUs or even CPUs, it's just going to cost more, but the cost is nothing to a major player that spends billions on hardware a year.
I mean sure, you can only double spend the coins you already have, but spending $100 worth of coins a million times is still pretty nice. But for the major coins it wouldn't be from a direct money making angle, it would be if a government or the like decided they wanted to shutdown the network. Even if there's a fork, they can just keep rejoining the new forks and doing the same thing.
Lol, the most powerful graphics card on the market, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090, does 121 MH/s.
The best ASIC miner does 110TH/s, that's 110,000,000 MH/s or 909,091x as much hashing power.
Good luck with that, and trying to get that man GPU's, there's already a shortage of those as well (mainly from people wanting to mine Ethereum (it uses a different hashing algorithm so is easier to mine))
Lol, you compared a eth hash rate on a gpu to a btc hash rate on an asic. The difference is nowhere near that big, maybe 100x between gpu vs asic on btc so not your average joe billionaire, but maybe your big tech with millions of GPUs already there in datacenters
https://www.quora.com/How-good-is-the-Nvidia-RTX-3090-for-mining-Bitcoin
I did get the Eth hash rate, my bad.
The actual Bitcoin rate appears to be twice as bad.
Unless you can find some other figures?
Easy Crypto is a NZ based company.
https://easycrypto.com/?ref=2573
Depending on how many $ you are putting in you can start with a wallet on your PC or phone such as Exodus https://www.exodus.com/
download the app, go to bitcoin, click receive (or the little in arrow) and copy the address. This is your receiving address. When you sign up and purchase from Easy Crypto, just paste your Bitcoin address in. Make sure it is the Bitcoin address, not another crypto as they all have different networks. Also double check it is correct (I usually check the first few, couple in the middle and the last few)
Then you pay direct form your bank account, and EC will send the bitcoin to your address. simple :)
Or I would recommend a hardware wallet such as Ledger or Trezor https://shopnz.easycrypto.com/ if you are putting a substantial amount in (but I would recommend a small bit to start with and get used to the system then do the larger purchases).
Also remember that it is likely to go up in the coming months, but then very likely to dump all the way back down, maybe even to 30k. So either plan to sell soon (not recommended) or consider it as life savings to pass on and just lock it away. Long term is the key.
Always happy to try and teach people :)
I’d recommend looking into Binance. It’s the exchange I use and generally accepted as the largest exchange. You can deposit using your eftpos card so it’s easy as.
Getting into crypto is pretty easy. Getting out of it is a little more complicated so while exiting might not be front of mind now, definitely think about it before the time arrives. Most the time though just park any liquidity in a stable coin - withdrawing in fiat is a taxable event.
In terms of how to learn. Coinbureau on YouTube is informative and easy watching. It’s like the crypto tabloid; just don’t get swept up in every alt coin they feature!
For more technical analysis I recommend Benjamin Cowen on YouTube.
The biggest, but most fundamental question is; WHY? Some of the commenters above dance around this, but don't quite get there. First up, what is it a threat to? and then the mandatory question is why?
Drilling down it seems the powerful elites have mismanaged the role of Government so much that the people are looking for ways, any way to make themselves financially secure when the system seems designed to drive them down, make them and keep them dependent and pliable for those powerful elites. And for all their self admiration, those elites never saw this train crash coming, some have even got on board.
So now we are worried by the volume of people who are gambling on a non-existent (physically) digital creation with not one jot of physical support that demonstrates at any level the basis of its value as somehow being a threat to something? True if the value crashes some people will get very poor very quickly, but if they are as smart as they think they are, then they will/should have spread their risk. What else can go wrong?
True if the value crashes some people will get very poor very quickly, but if they are as smart as they think they are, then they will/should have spread their risk. What else can go wrong?
But it has been happening. Those who are speculating on leveraged BTC plays 'have' been getting wrecked. It's a common theme in 2021. These people are washed out. Those who buy and hold and forget about the price just plod along. Weak hands vs diamond hands. Like any risk management, don't own what you can't afford to lose.
"gambling on a non-existent (physically) digital creation with not one jot of physical support"
This one sentence alone clearly illustrates you do not understand the immense amount of physical resources that it takes to mine and secure the Bitcoin network.
"the immense amount of physical resources that it takes to mine and secure the Bitcoin network." A bank builds a vault to protect the money it holds, but the cost of building that vault does not establish the value of the money, and is actually not connected in any way to that value. so can you explain how your sentence describes what establishes the value of bitcoin, and why 10 years ago it was only worth say 10 cents and is now over $60K? I suggest the value of bitcoin is an emotional thing, only established by peoples desire to have some, the proverbial pot of gold. It's value is only growing through gold fever,. and worse - what can you do with it?
I'm not convinced. If Bitcoin was just holding its own against inflation it wouldn't be popular at all. Bitcoin is only popular because the price is going nuts. No one is using it as a currency, no one considers it more stable or less risky than Fiat, everyone is just piling in to make a quick buck.
There are plenty who see it less risky than fiat. That is the point of why it is so popular - a store of value rather than a currency as such. Central banks around the world continue to print trillions of dollars diluting the value of cash savings whilst Bitcoin has a defined supply, completely decentralized, built on the worlds most secure network.
How do people still not get this?
If you are not holding $BTC and other solid alts right now, you're a madman. Crypto is entering the final phase of its ~4 year cycle. There will be a huge parabolic run up towards year end. Then you take profit and walk away as it enters another bear market.
All my friends talk about is property, which is the crowded trade. Who the hell wants a rental (depreciating asset) with the rules, tenants, rates, insurance etc. Sure you might make some capital gains, great story. I'm doing solid 5 figures every day right now sitting in my underwear trading crypto with a trading bag. Learn the cycles, make bank. You don't have to believe in the tech or any other dribble.
Sincerely, ~30 year old kiwi with 7 figure crypto portfolio & mortgage free in Auckland.
Anyone that retires early has more critical thinking skills than your illogical test. Some of the best minds got BTC years ago...they understand what sound money is...if you are still in the dark I doubt your critical thinking ...you probably think the current inflation is "transitory"?
How has no one mentioned the first Bitcoin ETF that was approved and started trading yesterday?
Did over $1b in volume in its first day making it the second highest volume launch of any ETF in the USA ever.
https://www.tradingview.com/x/DFcEbWr4/
And we all know what happened to the price of gold when those ETF's were introduced.
(Even though it is a futures based ETF which is shit it is still a good first step)
Well BitCoin looks like a bubble to me. But what looks even more ridiculous is the NFT space. Even our favourite (well maybe second favourite) All Black, Dan Carter is on on the game: https://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/300396376/dan-carter-kicks-off-crypt…
When people start fighting over pixels, it's the end of the world isn't it?
I wouldn't worry about Bitcoin that much. Many of our tenants are crypto fans and most of our home home buyers aren't. And from what I see every fan is a potential lifelong tenant and there may exist a relationship between crypto preferences and rental preferences.
"Bitcoin: Don't call it a bubble, call it a worry"
David : Same applies to housing - basic necessity of life but never heard that from you and your community.
Speculation in Bitcoin does not effect average Kiwi unlike speculation in housing - Can you and like don't understand the same.
Think.
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