Bitcoin Smashes Past $7,000 For the First Time (cnbc.com)

A reader shares a report: Bitcoin hit another all-time high Thursday morning, surpassing $7,000 for the first time. The cryptocurrency has had a bullish streak throughout the week following the CME's announcement that it will introduce bitcoin futures contracts. According to data from CoinDesk, the virtual currency reached an all-time high of $7,242.69 at about 7:08 a.m. ET. The jump in price saw the virtual coin rise by more than 7 percent on the day. A surge in the digital coin's value saw the total market value of all cryptocurrencies top $189 billion for the first time Thursday. The market cap of bitcoin alone is currently more than $121 billion, according to data from industry website Coinmarketcap.

Comments

Cue in Bitcoin deniers

[Anonymous Coward]

They're convinced there's $121 billion worth of illegal transactions happening with Bitcoin because that's all it's good for even though every single transaction is right there in the blockchain.

Re:Cue in Bitcoin deniers

[Khyber]

"They're convinced there's $121 billion worth of illegal transactions happening with Bitcoin"

If you'd read some law in countries other than your own, say China, you'd see that this kind of financial activity (which has been what's driving Bitcoin's prices up for a good while, wealthy Chinese moving/hiding their money out of the country in HUGE quantities) is actually illegal.

But hey, you keep your narrow education and world viewpoint. Those of us with broader global mindsets and experience and education will simply laugh at your stupidity.

Re: Cue in Bitcoin deniers

[Rhacman]

That heatmap is deceptively bright considering how sparse it is when you actually zoom in to even a large city. Basically if you are in a big city you might be able to drive 20-30 minutes to buy a coffee, have your carpet cleaned, or some other novelty. Even if I could buy every-day staples nearby with it it's far too volatile to hold on to for any duration of time for anything other than speculation.

Re: Cue in Bitcoin deniers

[Ash-Fox]

I tried using Coinmap recently, the 6 places near me it said that accepted Bitcoin, didn't accept it. Could you provide an accurate map instead?

Soo... when is the correction coming?

[leonbev]

Anyone who's ever studied basic Economics knows that Bitcoin is in a price bubble right now. They real question is... when is that bubble going to pop?

I sure as hell wouldn't want to be the one buying Bitcoin today, though.

Re:Soo... when is the correction coming?

[neonv]

I agree. The price seems to be going up because people are speculating that it will continue to go up and more, causing the price to further rise. Few people are buying it as a tool for exchanging goods and services. As a result, there's not much backing the current value other than rarity, which probably isn't enough. It will drop drastically in value eventually once the speculating stops.

Re:Soo... when is the correction coming?

[Jeremi]

Bitcoin == San Francisco real estate prices. If you bought in 1970 you are rich as low prices WILL NEVER return. Yes fluctuations will happen. But all the 6 things stated above will make it a reality unlike gold. I just wish I got in earlier.

That's a pretty good analogy, perhaps even better than you realized.

Bitcoin is like San Francisco real estate prices, in a scenario where many investors have not yet realized that there are other viable cities out there to invest in besides San Francisco.

Currently a lot of people are pouring money into Bitcoin because it's the one virtual-currency "brand name" they are most familiar with, but what happens once it becomes widespread knowledge that other virtual currencies (Ethereum, Monero, etc etc etc) are also perfectly valid and useful investments, and in many cases perform better than Bitcoin (which you would expect since they all had the benefit of watching Bitcoin evolve, and don't have the backwards-compatibility constraints the Bitcoin does)?

My prediction (and I'm usually wrong, so you take this with a grain of salt) is that sooner or later people will realize that Bitcoin is just one of many blockchain technologies, and not necessarily the best one, either. At that point they will start to diversify their investments more, and the value of Bitcoins will necessarily drop as the investor pool gets diluted.

Completely volatile

[aepervius]

If you look at the history of price in BTC/USD, the bitcoins are (relatively...) stable until end 2016/start 2017, then it went completely volatile with rising in spike, and having dropds which were higher than the full price it was end of 2016 (e.g. drop higher than 1000$). Yet the number of Tx per month did not rise in parallel to values. So what you have here is an extremly volatile speculative commodity and that's it. Anybody would be insane to use it as a currency.

Re:Completely volatile

[Zocalo]

I think we've actually got two quite distinct groups of BTC users at this point (with some members of both groups); those that are using it as a currency, split between those who maintain a float of BTC in a wallet and those that just buy BTC on demand for a specific purchase, and those that are using it as a high-risk speculative investment. Depending on the size of the wallet and the timing of the (probably inevitable) price correction, the former group shouldn't be two badly burnt by it, especially if the BTC in the wallet were acquired before, or fairly early on, in the recent spike in value. If/when the correction comes, then the bag holders are (as usual) going to be the latecomers to the latter group with larger holdings than the level of risk they can bear - if you bought in for your investment at $2,000 (say) and it crashes to $3,000, you're still good, albeit probably a little put out that you didn't bail a little sooner. If you were late to the party and bought in at $5,000, $6,000, or even $7,000 though... Note also that being gung-ho about blockchain and related technologies - as is the case for much of corporate interest - does not in many instances actually entail that they hold any significant holdings of the currency themselves; all the real financial risk is elsewhere.

Re:"Attention Kmart Roulette Shoppers!"

[PolygamousRanchKid]

If you want mine your own bitcoin

Most folks don't want to mine their own bitcoins. The Facebook-Intertubes news has educated them to know that they only need to speculate with bitcoin to become as rich as the next President of the United States of America, Mark Zuckerberg. He earned so much money with bitcoins . . . that he can pay all Russians to vote for him in the next election!

Re:Satoshi Nakamoto owns about a million BTC

[JcMorin]

Those coins haven't moved since their own creation. Satoshi may have them, may have lost them, may have destroyed them or may even be dead. Who knows. For the best of Bitcoin, those coins should not resurface... or at least not all at once!

Re:The jig is simple.

[Oswald McWeany]

BTC is going to $10k and it's that simple. Then it will crash to $1 where you can buy it back and ride it to $100k and repeat.

I agree it will hit $10k and then drop- but it won't go all the way back down to $1. Maybe $7k or $8k and then start rebounding again. BTC is too widely used in illegal transactions to completely collapse. It's more like gold than tulip bulbs. As in, it is both a currency with a certain worth, AND an investment medium rather than just a pure useless investment medium.

If citizen Joe panics and starts to sell, warlord Bob won't because it's not about investment to him.

$10k is a very solid psychological barrier though- first time it hits $10k some people will panic and sell; but not everyone.

As Molly says,

[PopeRatzo]

Fuck your block chain
Fuck your crypto currency
Fuck your imaginary techno utopia built out of my burning world

https://motherboard.vice.com/e...

"An index from cryptocurrency analyst Alex de Vries, aka Digiconomist, estimates that with prices the way they are now, it would be profitable for Bitcoin miners to burn through over 24 terawatt-hours of electricity annually as they compete to solve increasingly difficult cryptographic puzzles to "mine" more Bitcoins. That's about as much as Nigeria, a country of 186 million people, uses in a year.

This averages out to a shocking 215 kilowatt-hours (KWh) of juice used by miners for each Bitcoin transaction (there are currently about 300,000 transactions per day). Since the average American household consumes 901 KWh per month, each Bitcoin transfer represents enough energy to run a comfortable house, and everything in it, for nearly a week. On a larger scale, De Vries' index shows that bitcoin miners worldwide could be using enough electricity to at any given time to power about 2.26 million American homes."

Re:As Molly says,

[green is the enemy]

Given the numbers above, the average transaction cost is about $22 at $0.10/kWh. And it's only increasing with time. With costs like that, Bitcoin no longer makes sense for normal, everyday purchases. Why does Bitcoin have this amazing staying power? Why can't another cryptocurrency with cheaper transactions supplant it?

Now much more than that

[aepervius]

https://bitinfocharts.com/comp...

The fee are ALSO utterly volatile making it impracticable for small amount as the GP said. A week ago or so it was 8+$. Now it is in average 5+$. Again volatility at work, and making it utterly improper as currency use.