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Bitcoin Prices Surge 26% in November, Pass $8000 (bloomberg.com)
Bitcoin's value has increased more than 26% in less than three weeks, writes Bloomberg. An anonymous reader quotes their report:
Bitcoin topped $8,000 for the first time, as investors set aside technology concerns that had derailed its advance earlier this month. Bitcoin rose 4.8 percent to $8,071.05 as of 7:17 a.m. Sydney time on Monday. It's now up more than 700 percent this year after shrugging off a tumble of as much as 29 percent earlier this month. It's been a tumultuous year for the largest cryptocurrency, with three separate slumps of more than 25 percent in value all giving way to subsequent rallies.
Bitcoin has plenty of intrinsic value.
Both stocks and houses have intrinsic value
Tell that to people in the 1988 condo crash, or the upcoming housing crash here in Canada. That $1.5m house in the burbs that's a hot ticket item right now is only going to be worth $250k in a couple of years at best guess. Especially since they're talking about multiple interest rate jumps. To explain just how *bad* of a crash they're talking? At 0.25% 10% of mortgages could be under water. At 0.5% it's around 25%. If the prime goes up by 1.5% in the next year(a very strong possibility), you could see 50-60% of all mortgages across Canada go under in 60 days and it would be like the hyperinflation crash back in the early 1980's. Speaking of which, my parents mortgage rate in 1981 was 13.5%. And people are worried going from 2-3% to 4-5%.
Om, nomnomnom...
As a leftist I encourage this kind of reasoning. The more second amendment, alt-right Nazi freaks invest their life savings in BTC, the fewer new weapons will be purchased once it craters. Don’t let the government tell you how to spend your money! LOL
In the 1980 coal crash in Alberta, entire communities were wiped-out. The houses, townhouses and so on lost 99% of their value in the span of months. Places that were selling for $60k in 1980($175k today), couldn't be sold for $10 on the market. They were worthless, this happens a lot more then you'd think too. You can see it with the steel crash in the US, or in Hamilton, Ontario. In Alberta's case, the provincial government had to step in and assume liabilities, re-assess entire areas and assume the debt for failed towns.
Om, nomnomnom...
But it is a lot more than that. Same was true for the Roman and British empiresâ(TM) currencies. But both were unstable compared to The Dollar.
The US government doesnâ(TM)t overtly mess with the currency. For example, if they printed a ton of money, it would cause inflation and that would hurt China & India who hold a lot of our currency. Both would look at this as âoecheatingâ and stop accepting dollars, further tanking the value. For the US, it would bring back jobs and manufacturing. Looks like a win win. However, most of the dollars are held by US citizens. Thus the damage would be felt at home too. Domestic investment would dry up, which would mean foreign ownership would go up.
So the US govt doesnâ(TM)t play much games in the dollar manipulation. They have a lot of credibility in the world financial markets and have gained that through decades of discipline. Even during the WWs, both sides kept gold in the US!
Of course the US govt does some manipulation in terms of quantitative easing, interest rates, reserves, and printing. But itâ(TM)s relatively minor in comparison to other countries & currencies. The next closest contender is the Euro and it is far behind. The gold medal goes to first place, not the fastest.
The Roman Empireâ(TM)s currency was fairly close to the US dollar in terms of confidence. But that wasnâ(TM)t really due to their discipline. The currency was basically pegged to precious metals. However the downside was that almost no manipulation could be done that would have provided the empire with financial buffers.