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Bitcoin Price Jumps 21% Over 4 Days, Reaching a 21-Month High (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader shares a TechCrunch report: Bitcoin is back! Or at least, there are positive signs indicating that bitcoin might not be as dead as everybody thought. Bitcoins are now trading at $547.40 on Bitfinex (the largest USD/bitcoin exchange according to Bitcoinity). And it represents a big 21.4 percent price jump over just four days. Today's price represents a 21-month high. Surprisingly, bitcoin prices had been relatively stable for the last two months before this weekend's jump. What's the reason behind this jump? It's hard to say. Huobi and OKCoin, the two dominant Chinese exchanges, have seen many new sign-ups, as well as many buy orders. Increasingly, bitcoin's price variations are correlated with macroeconomic trends in China. These trends tell us that China still fears a deflation.
The Feds are planning to raise interest rates at their next meeting in June.
The rationale behind Bitcoin is to ensure that everyone/everything, regardless of jurisdiction or position, have access to a common economy. What matters is its penetration to everyday lives.
Market price is irrelevant. It could go sky high and still fail in its mission.
We've seen a uptick in ransomware infections over the same time frame. Coincidence? I don't think so....
While there are lots of places to spend BitCoin more and more local businesses are accepting BitCoin than ever before. In Keene, NH we've got a bunch. Maybe New Hampshire is different, but I don't even have a phone capable of spending BitCoin yet. I'm a bit of an oddball in that the majority of my BitCoin activity has been on my computer. My company has been accepting BitCoin for a while now and we've gone from depositing funds into our bank account to simply spending them. That's a dramatic change. We have employees who want to be paid in BitCoin too! It's not dead and we're not even to the stage where its ramping up. There are no businesses as far as I'm aware that are even targeting merchants in the physical world. There are potential business models and people that are beginning to move from helping businesses get setup with BitCoin to making money off it. Once we see that there is profit to be had in spreading BitCoin at a local level then you'll see it increase much more rapidly.
It's not hard to say, over there weekend there was a currency devaluation in China.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
If you knew that the cash that you saved will buy less than it does right now, how would you protect it? Buying bitcoin is one possible answer. By the way, the fear is not deflation. Deflation would mean that your cash can buy MORE in the future. This is a devaluation, where your currency will buy less. China fears that they will need to print up large amounts of cash to bail out several bankrupt industries, and is attempting to devalue now to prevent a massive crash.
Lol? This can only end well for them.
Or why else?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Bitcoin isn't really designed for investment, in the buy-and-hold sense where you hope the value goes up.
What it's designed for is making transactions, so you can buy and sell regular goods over the internet with lower transaction costs than credit cards or PayPal, and so you can buy and sell (ahem) less regular goods over the internet with much less traceability than credit cards or PayPal, even though you don't get the advantage of being able to cancel the payment or limit it to $50 if the seller defaults.
Of course, what it's really not designed for is storing in a bank where somebody you don't 100% trust is holding it for you, because it's also an extremely convenient transaction methods for embezzlement, either by the bank's managers or employees or other insiders, and digital safecracking lets you become an insider without all the noise and dust of using dynamite or the risks of using guns.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Because let's be honest--who doesn't want a currency whose value is 20% different than it was last week?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
after all of his irrational attacks on it.
tl;dr Please buy bitcoin. I refuse to count the sunken cost.
(said every Ponzi scheme investor ever, alas)
The Feds are planning to raise interest rates at their next meeting in June.
From a previous post, you seem to be in touch with economics and financial matters. Here's a question for you, and I'm not trying to be snarky.
The fed lent out money at 0% interest for the last 7 years or so, in an attempt to kickstart the economy.
The loans went out to big banks, and I remember at the time that a lot of the loans were going to foreign banks, especially in Germany.
Question 1:
Many of those banks turned the money around and lent it back to the US at higher interest. This just about doubled the national debt over that period.
If we were giving out 0% loans, why couldn't we have repurchased our own debt with 0% loans? The amount of money would have been the same, but instead of profits going to the banks, we could have reduced our debt burden and increased net revenue for government spending.
Question 2:
We're told that social security will go bankrupt in a few years, in our own lifetime, due to a temporary glut of baby boomers retiring. We have to adjust by accepting smaller payouts and working longer.
Why can't we just give the SSA a 0% interest loan to cover the shortfall for a few years? Social Security has almost always taken in more than it spends yearly, and if it can work through the glut it would become solvent a few years later.
I'm trying to understand economics, but I don't have the benefit of the standard curriculum.
Can you tell me why these things aren't just that simple?
In a time when negative interest rates are becoming more common, going to cash would be a rational choice. Given how difficult getting and holding lots of cash is, perhaps bitcoin is the next best thing.
Volatile currencies are only good for people who trade currency. People who are trying to get things done want a nice stable currency so they don't have to play day-trader on the side while running their business.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
Most operations with bitcoins are just exchanges from/to other currencies, not to exchange goods. Bitcoin is not a currency, it's a commodity that is bought and sold with different currencies, or kept. As shares or any other financial product.
Like many products that are not consumed or worn out, they are object os speculation, with bubbles and crashes. As the intrinsic value is zero, any value is overpriced, so it's always a bubble.
There is no chance in hell I'm every using a currency that jumps 21% in 4 days, or even 21% in 4 months. Stability triumphs.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
Repeat: There's a sucker born, every day! Apply to bitcoin.
The reason why the federal government has budget deficits is [...]
That wasn't the question.
When the music stops the people left holding the bitcoin will be the losers because Bitcoin is the pay-to-play version of musical chairs.
It's never been worth anything and still isn't worth anything let alone $545, $525, or even $500.
It's a VERY-TEMPORARY right-to-sell that keeps getting transferred from last week's sucker to next week's sucker.
This is "timely /. news" in the same sense that Prince's hard drive may be auctioned off at some price.
E
A couple of days ago the UK passed into effect some extremely draconian anti-drugs laws that banned "anything that can change your mood" to capture analogous substances to actual restricted drugs. I suspect the spike is due to that whole market now immediately begin pushed onto the dark web.
Bitcoin was only way to buy in. A bunch of eager Chinese bid price up. I suspect something similar.
"what it's really not designed for is storing in a bank"
Actually, a lot of people with more than just a little bit of Bitcoin print out an encrypted private key on paper and get a lock box at a regular bank. That does work.
New things are always on the horizon
> Or at least, there are positive signs indicating that bitcoin might not be as dead as everybody thought.
There has been a campaign from some guys who disagree with strategy that the bitcoin codebase is taking. They are producing a stream of "bitcoin is dead" and "the fall of bitcoin" articles and publications.
This has nothing to do with reality. They have their right to their opinion. They have the right to try to inform the public of their opinion. But their "mud-throwing" in an attempt to destroy bitcoin is uncalled for IMHO.
"Bitcoin isn't really designed for investment, in the buy-and-hold sense where you hope the value goes up."
Just like any other currency, but they also get traded. Probably more than Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is still a small economy.
New things are always on the horizon
Modern time economy
(search images for "Just a normal day at the nation's most important financial institution")
Should have setup a solar powered BC mining operation sooner.
Nice, a bitcoin is 'worth' $547.40 today.
But it costs $597.23 to 'mine' one, and that assumes that you're set up to mine them as efficiently as possible, rather than mining them on the side. [1]
[1] http://www.coindesk.com/microscope-economic-environmental-costs-bitcoin-mining/
BitCoin is, by definition, deflationary currency. Because MOST people, including economists have no working knowledge of a deflationary currency, most people don't understand the value in human liberty. By working hard, accumulating currency that grows in value over time (rather than lose value) it allows people to be free from government manipulation of nominal fiat currency. And that is what you are seeing in China, and why you are seeing it.
You can have a Yuan that can buy an egg today, but require two Yuan's tomorrow, or you can get BitCoin, and buy two eggs for a BitCoin tomorrow. Which one do you choose?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.