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Bitcoin Just Surged Past $4,000. TechCrunch Explains Why (techcrunch.com)
Saturday night TechCrunch reported the following about Bitcoin:
24 hours ago the cryptocurrency was trading below $3,700. About an hour ago it surged passed $4,000 and has no signs of stopping. It's now trading around $4,135.00. For reference, a week ago Bitcoin hit an all-time high as it passed $3,000 for the first time... So the million-bitcoin question is, why now...?
Two weeks ago Bitcoin went through a hard fork, and came out essentially unscathed... A few days later Bitcoin locked in SegWit, a code modification that fixes malleability issues and frees up space in blocks, allowing for more transactions to be stored in each one. These two code-related developments have helped boost conference in Bitcoin's future. Another reason -- the ICO frenzy. The amount recently raised via initial coin offerings have now (at least temporally) topped amount raised via early stage venture capital. Just last week Filecoin raised $180 million in a few hours. Most investors have to convert fiat currency to bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies to participate in ICOs, which could be driving up the price (and providing some investors with their first taste of bitcoin). Another reason -- Wall Street's new obsession is bitcoin.
Two weeks ago Bitcoin went through a hard fork, and came out essentially unscathed... A few days later Bitcoin locked in SegWit, a code modification that fixes malleability issues and frees up space in blocks, allowing for more transactions to be stored in each one. These two code-related developments have helped boost conference in Bitcoin's future. Another reason -- the ICO frenzy. The amount recently raised via initial coin offerings have now (at least temporally) topped amount raised via early stage venture capital. Just last week Filecoin raised $180 million in a few hours. Most investors have to convert fiat currency to bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies to participate in ICOs, which could be driving up the price (and providing some investors with their first taste of bitcoin). Another reason -- Wall Street's new obsession is bitcoin.
One of the parking valets in my building (get over it! We have parking valets because we have unassigned tandem parking...) gave me a hot ICO tip (Etherium) that I shoulda coulda heeded.
I think he made enough to make-up for his past online gambling losses.
Indicators of the 2001 stock-market bubble that I caught:
- personal trainer giving stock picks
- walked past two rows of cubicles at work on the day of the market top. Every singe screen was displaying a brokerage or stock-quote page
- fattest issues of Wired and Red Herring ever
OK, so we can use 2 out of 3 of these indicators...
How easy is it to turn bitcoins into Euros, Pounds or Dollars? A cursory search shows limits of around 3000K $ per day, so even 300K worth would take about 3 months, and 3 million $ around 3 years. It would seem to be a forced buy and hold investment with a lot of downside risk if it crashes; or even if a lot of people start cashing out which would drive the price down. Is there an easy way to turn say 1 million of bitcoin to Euros, Pounds or Dollars? You want to get out before a large sell order drops the price significantly. can exchanges cover say 1000 people pulling out 3000k at once? Will they commit to the price at the time of the request or recalculate the value due to a price drop?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Here's some data which essentially completely confirms a lot of it is money laundering.
News from late Nov 2016
https://www.google.com.au/sear...
Reaction to said news (click 1 year on the chart)
https://www.worldcoinindex.com...
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Now, see this news also, Feb 2017
https://www.google.com.au/sear...
See the reaction in other digital currrency markets (again, click the 1Y chart)
https://www.worldcoinindex.com...
https://www.worldcoinindex.com... -- *(!!)
Now, finally look at your local property prices, especially if you live in Vancouver, Toronto, London, Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland. .nothing. short of utterly astounding. I repeat, *utterly astounding*, to the complete and utter detriment of the locals under 40 / 50 who don't own a place, they're boned. no chance now.
Any way money can be gotten out of China, it will be by the wealthy / ultra wealthy. The change to my city in the past 5 years, is
* .particularly. telling, that coin was the "b tier" coin to bitcoin, the silver to gold if you will. Like bitcoin, it had a big run several years ago and then, it died off to a stagnant level, logically so too, why should there even be more than 1 digital currency? .booming.insanely. in Mar 2017.
Regarding litecoin, this one is
So here's a coin which has settled to a flat, sensible price, then due to talk of China making some moves against BTC exchanges in Feb 2017, is suddenly
Most of the world buy their goods from there, we're sending our money to China en-masse, immense amounts of it, the wealthy there, are in turn getting out of the country and picking up the premium property around the world. Can't blame them to be honest, devastating for some of the locals though (myself included)