Listening to the CNBC today one would be left with the impression that once having purchased bitcoin, there is nothing one can do with it (except check its price 30 times per minute of course). Which, of course, is dead wrong: one can buy pretty much anything that Overstock (among increasingly more online retailers) has to offer, one can purchase a home not only in the US but also the UK, and as of a week ago, one could pay an Albany car dealer the digital currency and drive off with any vehicle off the lot.
And now, rushing to capitalize on the countless brand new crypto millionaires minted in the past year, is Moonlambos, an online dealership for supercars with offices in Santa Monica and London which dubs itself "the premier destination for exotic supercars that deals exclusively in cryptocurrency."
What some may find most fascinating, however, is the constantly changing price in bitcoin for any one car - a result of the most volatile underlying asset currently in circulation (with the possible exception of electricity).
However, the real news here is not that there is now an exclusive online outlet aimed at bitcoin millionaires: it is that - as we have mused previously - there are so few of them when one considers that the population of crypto nouveau (ultra) riche has exploded in recent months, and is so very eager to spend its newfound wealth. It is almost as if, due to ideological barriers or other irrational considerations, retailers - who are all hurting in Amazon"s shadow - think they are too good to accept a new currency which millions would be delighted to spend, and would rather file for bankruptcy than accept the likes of bitcoin, ether and ripple.
Oh, and for those who say that cryptos are too volatile for any merchant to accept, here is a word you can ask Alexa to look up: "hedging."
Let us regard the wonders of technology & innovation: Suddenly, we now have multiple easy ways to lose money betting on bitcoin. Giddyup!
With incredible speed, from your laptop or even your smartphone and without even thinking about it, you can open up a new account, inject real U.S. dollars into it, use that to buy a teensy piece of your favorite cryptocurrency, and begin surfing the bitcoin wave. Or begin getting crushed by that wave, depending on your timing, smarts and luck.
This occurs to me on a recent Thursday night, as I visit an old friend in Brooklyn and bring along Big Guy, a college pal who stands 6-feet-4 (“and a half,” he feels it necessary to point out). The Big Guy and I had been hanging out at the famed Waverly Inn in the West Village in Manhattan, where I had the vodka martini, marked down on special: just $28, down from $30 list.
This next point has nothing to do with bitcoin, okay? I gotta say: Anybody who regularly spends 30 bucks on a martini is a P.T. Barnum-scale sucker. What a waste of money. Waste it, instead, on something really irresponsible. . . . like bitcoin.
Anyway, we’re standing around a table in my friend’s apartment in Brooklyn, and Big Guy is taking swigs from a bottle of Blue Point Winter Ale and staring into the screen of his smartphone, as if mesmerized by some new videogame. Instead, he is tracking his own cryptocurrency trades.
“Uh oh, Ethereum is flash-crashing,” he says. He had gotten got into Ethereum (ETH), a newer “altcoin” alternative to bitcoin, a few days earlier at $620, watching it rise to $740 in a day or two and holding on, only to see it crash instantly down to $650 just this moment. Should he sell?
Guy resists the urge and doubles up on his bet, adding to his ETH holdings (as well as Litecoin, LTC) “to lower my cost basis and scalp the bounce-back from the flash crash,” as he describes it later. By 3 a.m. that same night, Ethereum had re-inflated to rise back up even higher, to $850. Whew.
Big Guy had put $10,000 into a new account he opened at Coinbase, a digital exchange akin to the New York Stock Exchange (except it is unregulated and carries no particular guarantees, far as I can see). He had bet his stake all on bitcoin, pulling out after a 53% gain in a week, after commissions.
Guy opened up a second account, this one on GDAX, a 24/7, online platform in the rather unregulated, Wild West of crypto (it is owned by Coinbase). GDAX offers FDIC guarantees up to $250,000 (what happens to your money as a result of your trades is on you). On GDAX, he bet his bitcoin profits on the two lesser lights, ETH and LTC. He says he can take profits out of Litecoin in only minutes, while transferring money out of bitcoin would take several hours. (LTC is lighter-traded than the binge-fueled bitcoin.)
GDAX charges him 25 basis points (0.25% of the total value of the trade) for “taking markets,” that is, buying coin shares on offer, and no fee at all for “making markets,” or selling on the platform. Coinbase’s buying fee, at 1.5%, is fives times as much that of GDAX. A few days after he sat out the mini-flash-crash, Guy transfers some LTC from his GDAX account to another coin platform, Binance, where he wants to sell LTC and spread the proceeds among various coins trading below $5 apiece.
And a day or two after that, Big Guy is beaten down: He was up 75% and lost most of it all when he panicked and fled ETH and LTC at the bottom of a later plunge. Too fidgety. Easy come, easy go. He’s back in Ripple, though, and it has been “outperforming.”
Yes, the Big Guy admits, he does worry that in a flash crash or especially high trading volume, he may not be able to minimize his losses and take out cash. In cryptocurrency trading, the bigger question than whether to sell may be: Can you sell?
Coinbase limits how much money you can pull out of your account after you sell your crypto and convert the proceeds back to U.S dollars or whichever “real” currency you desire. So, in the event of a crash or some sudden, sharp de-valuation in bitcoins, your ability to act fast and sell your coins might be hampered, and selling your coins could be all but impossible.
Think of it as a football packed with cheering buyers, most of them unaware that there’s only one exit—and it is the size of a doggy door. Buyer beware. Puppies, too.
The intensifying energy consumption of the bitcoin network is becoming a concern for environmentalists who have begun to question whether digital currencies should be considered a socially responsible investment. As we pointed out last month, Digiconomist’s Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index stood at 29.05TWh.
That’s the equivalent of 0.13% of total global electricity consumption. While that may not sound like a lot, it means Bitcoin mining is now using more electricity than 159 individual countries, including Ireland and Nigeria.
As the share of the world’s electricity consumed by miners of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies rises, miners will likely face pressure – both economic and social – to find efficiencies wherever they can.
In anticipation of this trend, a crypto startup called Comino is marketing a mining rig that also functions as a heater.
Back in October, the Next Web published a report about the company and their new product, the Comino N1. In launching the product – priced at an affordable $5,000 per rig – the company is hoping t make it easier for novices and those who have only a glancing familiarity with crypto technology to start mining coin.
A reporter from The Next Web tested out the miner – and found that it both the heating and mining functions worked well. He even used it to heat his room during the winter.
After running the crypto-heater for a little over a month now, we are finally ready to share our experience with the device...
Once we installed the mining rig in our office, which practically included connecting the crypto-heater to the internet via the web-based dashboard system developed by Comino, it automatically created a wallet and began mining Ethereum. As easy as this.
Of course, if you already have a wallet, you still have the option to connect it to the dashboard. You can also connect any other mining rig to the Comino dashboard, in case you want to follow all of your mining efforts in one place.
Among other things, the online dashboard shows a number of statistics the Comino developers had programmed to monitor, including the current and average hashrate at which the miner is solving cryptographic puzzles, the current and average temperature at which it operates, as well as the unpaid balance of Ethereum you’ve accumulated. It also shows stats for the temperature of each separate GPU.
...
Throughout this one-month trial, the only issue I experienced with the miner was that – for some reason – its ambient temperature sensor inaccurately picked up the temperature of the GPUs inside (which had just taken a break from mining); this prevented the device from booting up again, until it cooled down a little.
...
And in case you were wondering about how reliable the Comino was as a heater : it certainly kept the temperature high enough to save some energy on heating bills, but not enough to make you turn on the air conditioner. Which is exactly what you want from a a machine that was built to bank on crypto.
The Comino N1 maintains an average hashrate of about 200 MH/s, and an average temperature of approximately 60 Celcius – about 140 degrees Farenheight.
Since installing the miner on Nov. 16, TNW reported that it has so far transferred a total of 1.2 ether to the company’s designated wallet. Since Ethereum is currently trading around $700 a coin, the miner would pay for itself in eight months, assuming the value of Ethereum doesn’t crash, or that an influx of new mining capacity decreases the miner’s efficiency.
Isn’t Christmastime just wonderful, so much time with family, really, just… so… much time. With family.
If you caught the irony in that statement, you, too, need a distraction, an excuse to detach from the conversation and take a little “me” time. So take a few minutes to read this, our fourth column on bitcoin and all that it has unleashed. Your relatives will appreciate that you did.
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Gold, the precious metal found in dental work, beautiful jewelry and Fort Knox, has been a “store of value” for five thousand years. Invented by nature or God (take your pick), it is able to survive global economic meltdowns and even nuclear meltdowns. It has been said that if you accumulated, in one place, all the gold mined since humankind started doing it, you’d have enough to fill only three or four Olympic-sized swimming pools.
An ounce of gold currently trades at $1,280 or so.
Now compare that to bitcoin: extant less than a decade, invented by unknown creators in 2009, said to be in a finite supply of only 21 million coins, and weightless, invisible, untraceable. It started the year 2017 priced near $1,000 and just bumped up against the $20,000 mark before settling down near $15,000, with millions of people trying to get in on the Bitcoin Bubble.
So, what holds up the price of bitcoin? Not GDP growth or earnings at any particular company; not the price of gold. The main thing keeping bitcoin prices aloft is little more than speculative frenzy and the virally spreading desire to own a piece of this newfangled invention. This is emotional, and it is important to force the emotional to bow to the rational.
Here are five easy pieces of advice for investing in bitcoin and its lesser brethren:
Bet only money you are willing to lose. When you buy a stock, usually the chances are almost zero… that the price will fall to zero. Buying crypto-coins is more like trading in puts and calls on the CBOE, options that have a definite expiration date and which often end up worthless. So invest only what you are willing to lose at this roulette wheel.
It is utterly insane to borrow money from elsewhere to invest in bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, whether the borrowing is from a new low-interest credit card or from a second mortgage on your home. Be smarter than that.
It may be safer to buy bitcoin and skip the imitators. In the long run, anyway. In this realm, the Shakespearean axiom that a rose-is-a-rose-is-a-rose seems untrue to us—there’s bitcoin, and then there’s everyone else. We would advise betting more on bitcoin. Other currencies such as Litecoin (LTC) and Ripple (XRP) may rise higher in percentage terms when they do rise, given bitcoin’s extraordinary climb, yet bitcoin’s price may fall less that that of its knockoffs.
Even bitcoin may be only a short-term play. Some “investors” may ponder putting up $20,000 for one bitcoin, locking it away in some Coinbase-like account (“cold storage”) and returning ten years from now to unearth a coin worth $20 million. One-thousand-fold returns have happened for the earliest bitcoin buyers. Now, however, the Law of Large Numbers makes a thousand-fold rise from these levels much more difficult. So if you do make a wager, watch it closely and constantly, and be ready to bail.
If you invest, consider the “halfsies” rule. I know, it’s pussy, right? (As in “pusillanimous,” gutless, timid.) Yet it is a way to avoid Bitcoin Bubble Bankruptcy! So if you put up, say, $10,000 in a bitcoin account, and the price doubles from where you started, sell half your stake to recover your original bet, and let the other half ride. This way your principal will be preserved, yet you retain a stake in the next round of upside.
Remember, my friends, the way to get rich is focused more on preserving and protecting what you have earned than on finding the next windfall. Good luck.
Next: The new face of bitcoin investors. Gardener, a Burner and a Big Guy.
Update: as of 9:30am ET, the @JulianAssange accounts has returned, although it appears to be a truncated or restored one, which shortly after its reappearance shows just over 1,000 followers.
A "returned" Assange tweeted the following cartoon.
Julian Assange"s Twitter account was mysteriously deleted on Christmas Eve, leaving perhaps the most important witness in the Trump-Russia investigation cut off from the rest of the world while he sits in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
Attempting to access Assange"s Twitter account results in the following message:
This page only appears when an account has been deleted, not suspended - by either Twitter or the account owner.
It wasn"t clear whether the account was suspended or deleted by Twitter or Assange himself -- or why or for how long. Twitter wasn"t commenting
This tweet by the WikiLeaks Task Force - an official WikiLeaks handle, suggested that people shouldn"t jump to conclusions, as "haters and conspiracy theorists rush to post the usual attention seeking rubbish," before wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.
Julian"s account disappears, so haters and conspiracy theorists rush to post the usual attention seeking rubbish. Ah, Twitter.
The official Wikileaks Twitter account was still live but wasn"t mentioning the Assange account.
According to CBS, an account purporting to be an alternative Assange account was claiming Twitter had deleted his official one ahead of a blockbuster story he"s preparing to break. There was no confirmation that Assange was authoring that alternative account -- and that account has now been suspended by Twitter.
Meanwhile, Journalist Charles Johnson - who traveled with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) to London to meet with Assange in August, posted the following on Facebook after Assange"s Twitter account went down:
Moreover, on December 1, WikiLeaks" official account tweeted "Merry Christmas from @WikiLeaks" with an embedded video referencing perpetual war, and the hashtags #Yemen #Libya #Iraq #Syria #Pakistan #Afghanistan #Somalia #Ukraine
Some have suggested that the events are part of some Christmas-linked plan, although so far there has been no confirmation.
The account deletion comes on the heels of a break-in last Monday at the Madrid office of WikiLeaks lawyer Baltasar Garzon"s, in what police described as a "very professional" operation. Garzon told El Periodico and Ser magazine "They had not taken what they have been looking for," and client security "has not been affected," however police are analyzing his computer equipment to determine whether any files were taken or copied.
Hours after the break-in, Julian Assange published a tweet calling a Jimmy Dore video "Brilliant" - prominently featuring Assange"s interview with a Dutch television host in which the WikiLeaks founder strongly implies that slain DNC IT staffer Seth Rich was the source of emails published by WikiLeaks during the 2016 election. (Assange clip at 21:30)
During the clip, Assange can be seen nodding his head in response to a question about Rich:
In August, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher travelled to London with journalist Charles Johnson for a meeting with Assange, where Rohrabacher said the WikiLeaks founder offered "firsthand" information proving that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia, and which would refute the Russian hacking theory.
Rohrabacher brought that message back to Trump"s Chief of Staff, John Kelly, to propose a deal. In exchange for a presidential pardon, Assange would share evidence that would refute the Russian hacking theory by proving they weren"t the source of the emails, according to the WSJ.
“The possible “deal”—a term used by Mr. Rohrabacher during the Wednesday phone call—would involve a pardon of Mr. Assange or “something like that,” Mr. Rohrabacher said. In exchange, Mr. Assange would probably present a computer drive or other data-storage device that Mr. Rohrabacher said would exonerate Russia in the long-running controversy about who was the source of hacked and stolen material aimed at embarrassing the Democratic Party during the 2016 election.”
‘He would get nothing, obviously, if what he gave us was not proof,’ Mr. Rohrabacher said.
When Trump was asked in late September about the Assange proposal, he responded that he"d "never heard" of it, causing Rohrabacher to unleash on John Kelly, who he blamed for blocking the proposal from reaching the President, Rohrabacher told the Daily Caller:
“I think the president’s answer indicates that there is a wall around him that is being created by people who do not want to expose this fraud that there was collusion between our intelligence community and the leaders of the Democratic Party,” Rohrabacher told The Daily Caller Tuesday in a phone interview.
“This would have to be a cooperative effort between his own staff and the leadership in the intelligence communities to try to prevent the president from making the decision as to whether or not he wants to take the steps necessary to expose this horrendous lie that was shoved down the American people’s throats so incredibly earlier this year,” Rohrabacher said.
Contributing to the notion of deep-state interference, CIA director Mike Pompeo referred to WikiLeaks as a "hostile intelligence service" in April, calling Julian Assange "a fraud, a coward hiding behind a screen" for exposing information about democratic governments rather than authoritarian regimes. This quite the ironic statement, considering Pompeo used leaked emails from WikiLeaks as proof "the fix was in" against President Trump.
Mike Pompeo was sharing Wikileaks documents on his Congressional Twitter account less than a year ago pic.twitter.com/cl5P6vnXSE
Let"s also not forget Donald Trump proclaiming "I Love Wikileaks!" less than a month before the 2016 election.
So Julian Assange - ostensibly the most important witness in the Russia hacking investigation, offered to prove that Russia was not the source of the leaked emails in exchange for a pardon. This proposition was conveyed through Rep. Dana Rohrabacher to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, who Rohrabacher says never allowed the deal to reach Trump for consideration. Months later, WikiLeaks attorney Baltasar Garzon"s office was raided in a "very professional" operation which is being labeled an attempted robbery. Hours after the break-in, Julian Assange tweets a Jimmy Dore video containing his own strong implication that Seth Rich was the source of the leaked emails, and six days later his Twitter account is gone.
That said, tweets directly from the WikiLeaks urge not to jump to conclusions.
Assange"s account deletion also comes on the heels of several new Twitter rules rolled out on December 18, which many feared was the beginning of a "purge" of conservative accounts over user behavior both on and off the platform. The rules are aimed at people who associate with hate groups that "use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes" - however nothing Assange has done comes close to fitting that description.
So did Julian Assange delete his Twitter account - and if so, why? Was this yet another rogue Twitter employee lashing out on their last day, as was the case with President Trump"s temporary account deletion in early November? Or did Twitter delete the account of one of the most important figures in the 2016 election.
Update 1600ET: Thanks to some serious dip-buying, the landcape across cryptocurrencies is not as completely devastating as it appeared this morning...
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Update 1300ET: Bitcoin prices have somewhat stabilized for now around $13,000...
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Update 1245ET: GDAX is down...
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Update 1220ET: Mike Novogratz has shelved plans to launch his fund, warning that: "We didn’t like market conditions and we wanted to re-evaluate what we’re doing...I look pretty smart pressing the pause button right now."
Warning traders that Bitcoin may drop as low as $8,000 in the near-term... but the bull market isn"t over.
Bitcoin prices are higher since his announcement...
Update 1045ET: Andrew Left of Citron Research has covered his GBTC (Bitcoin Trust) short.. as the arbitrage spread to futures has roundtripped...
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Update 1025ET: Bitcoin Futures have resumed trading and the BTFD"ers are in control - ramping Bitcoin back above $13,000 from near $10,000 lows...
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Update: 0950ET - CME"s Bitcoin Futures Contract was halted limit-down (down 20%) at $12,265 at 0945ET...
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Following the most aggressive drop in Bitcoin in almost three years (plunging 37% from its highs in 5 days)... Bitcoin is now down over $9000 from its highs...
Back to a $10,000 handle...
And then it was suddenly ripped $2000 higher...
Every bounce is sold...
However, today"s collapse isn’t even particularly eye-catching on a logarithmic scale, used to compare relative percentage-point sizes of moves.
At least three times since 2010, the first year for which Bloomberg prices are available, bitcoin has retreated more than 70 percent from record highs. Caveat emptor.
Surveying the damage this morning is nothing short of a bloodbath...
If one looks carefully, one can find a few glints of green - Tether, NXT, Komodo, Bitcoin Dark, and SmartCash but they are all microcap.
Futures and spot fell together with various circuit-breakers kicking in...
Some have argued that this was a key technical breakdown of the exponential uptrend...
These kind of drops are not entirely unusual, Bitcoin has crashed by over 30% in every quarter since its inception...
In fact, drawdowns are very much business as usual...
As Reuters notes,for the week, it was down around a third - its worst performance since April 2013.
“A manic upward swing led by the herd will be followed by a downturn as the emotional sentiment changes,” said Charles Hayter, founder and chief executive of industry website Cryptocompare in London.
“A lot of traders have been waiting for this large correction.”
“With the end of the year in sight a lot of investors will be taking profits and saying thank you very much and closing their books for the holiday period,” he added.
Ethereum is also getting crushed...
Interestingly, Ripple, the third-biggest, has more than quadrupled in price since Monday.
“A lot of the capital is flowing from bitcoin into alternative coins,” said Shane Chanel, equities and derivatives adviser at ASR Wealth Advisers in Sydney.
But it"s not just the underlying cryptocurrencies that are bloodbathing. Various companies that have changed their names in recent days/weeks to try and capitalize on crypto"s rise are in trouble this morning...
Riot Blockchain, Long Island Iced Tea (Blockchain), Net Element, and LongFin are all crashing in pre-market...
...Meanwhile, the newly christened Long Blockchain revealed in an SEC filing on Friday that it had secured a new loan agreement with Court Cavendish, a lender trying to expand its technology portfolio, according to the filing. The company received a $2 million loan, with the option of increasing it to $4 million with the consent of the lender.
The loan is secured with warrants...
Long Blockchain, née Long Island Iced Tea Corp, has a new loan with some, uh, interesting terms: https://t.co/1sImykVUr3
Stephen Innes, head of trading in Asia-Pacific for retail FX broker Oanda in Singapore, said that there have also been moves out of bitcoin into Bitcoin Cash, a clone of the original cryptocurrency. Oanda does not handle trading in bitcoin.
“Most of it is unsophisticated retail traders getting burned badly,” Innes said on bitcoin’s recent retreat.
Finally, many are noting the recoupling ion the relationship between Bitcoin and Gold...
Bitcoin has become a buzz word in the investing community, not as an alternate currency unit replacing the fiat money, but as an asset class with a spectacular 1,600%+ return this year, valuation almost doubled just in the December month alone. Bitcoin was heading towards $20,000 before pulling back to $15,000 level on 12/21/2017, and . The entire cryptocurrency market capitalization rose above $600 billion for the first time on Dec. 18, 2017.
Bitcoin Chart Dec. 21, 2017
Despite what you might have heard people raving about the "money of the future," the fact is that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are very expensive and experimental as well.
Existed Since 2009
Bitcoin is a form of digital or virtual currency and is not as “new” as you might think. It has existed since 2009. In January 2009, a programmer implemented the bitcoin software as open source code and released it under the alias of Satoshi Nakamoto. There have been many rumors regarding the true identity of Nakamoto, but nothing conclusive so far.
A Mining Math Game for All
With many companies adopting it as form of payment and many others getting ready to, bitcoins are an extremely fast-spreading “currency”.
Unlike fiat currency controlled by world’s central bankers and partly backed by gold reserve, Bitcoin is based on mathematics and totally decentralized. That is, much like the precious metal, bitcoin can only be “mined”, not “printed”. All Bitcoin transactions, including Bitcoin creations, are recorded and verified on the blockchain, also originally developed by Satoshi Nakamoto. Today, around the world, people and companies are using software programs and computers following a mathematical formula to produce bitcoins around the world.
1,000+ Rival Crytocurrencies
It was not until 2011 when other rival crypocurrencies emerged partly due to bitcoin’s increasing popularity. Currently there are over 1,000 cryptocurrencies in circulation with new ones frequently appearing.
How Many Bitcoins Are There to “Mine”?
It seems anyone, with proper equipment, can “mine” bitcoins. The logical question would be is there a limit to how many bitcoins can be mined? According to Bitcoin.org, the bitcoin protocol – the rules that make bitcoin work – say that only 21 million bitcoins can ever be created by miners.
Silk Road Anonymous
Because Bitcoin was purposely designed with anonymity and lack of control in mind, it is quite attractive for criminals. Heard of Silk Road, the darknet black market, best known as a platform for selling illegal drugs? Though the U.S. government shut down Silk Road in 2013, Bitcoin benefited from Silk Road’s headlines and front pages of the mainstream media.
Gone in 60 Seconds at Mt. Gox
The lack-of-control nature of Bitcoin also comes with some security issues. In January 2014, the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox went offline, and its total of 850,000 Bitcoins disappeared. Investigations are still trying to figure out exactly what happened. At today’s prices, those missing coins would be worth about $12 billion. Nevertheless, the bottom line is that those owners never saw their Mt. Gox Bitcoins again.
Bitcoin Futures Launched
Despite debacles at Silk Road and Mt. Gox, Bitcoin futures debuted on CME Group late on Sunday, Dec. 17, 2017, and on CBOE a week earlier. Many hailed this recognition by major exchanges as the pivotal moment of bitcoin to legitimacy. However, as Reuters reports:
“…. an almost twentyfold increase [of Bitcoin] since the start of January has also led to increasing warnings about the dangers of investing in an immature, opaque and largely unregulated market.”
1,000+ Whales Control the Market
The Bitcoin market cap is about $215 billion, but 40% of that “immature, opaque and unregulated” market is held by about 1,000 users/whales. What is even more disturbing about this market structure as Bloomberg reports:
“….the whales can coordinate their moves or preview them to a select few. Many of the large owners have known one another for years and stuck by bitcoin through the early days when it was derided, and they can potentially band together to tank or prop up the market.”
Late Does Not Mean Never
In other words, whales can easily make or break the market by colluding and manipulating the Bitcoin prices. This is akin to the Hunt Brothers cornering the silver market back in the ‘70s. It was illegal what the Hunt Brothers did, do you think regulatory agencies around the world would just sit idly by and watch the same thing happen in the new Bitcoin market?
Regulations are notorious for lagging way behind technology. Nevertheless, it is inevitable that sweeping regulations will catch on in the near future. France’s finance minister already said his country would propose that the G20 group of major economies discuss regulation of bitcoin next year.
"Gold Rush in the Wild Wild West"
To sum up,
Bitcoin is “created” or “mined” by a math program written by an unknown person.
The program protocol caps the creation at 21 million bitcoins.
40% of the market is controlled by 1,000 whales who know and communicate with each other regarding buying and selling of Bitcoins.
There are over 1,000 cryptocurrencies in circulation rival to Bitcoin with new ones frequently appearing.
The current Bitcoin Market lacks the proper structure that a healthy asset market should have, that is,
Reasonable transparency,
Long and short players (Bitcoin right now is a long only market),
A diversified pool of producers (supply) and users (demand)
Appropriate regulations/portocols to prevent collusion and market manipulation.
Bitcoin Investment
Right now, much of the hype is about getting rich by trading Bitcoin. One thing to remember is that just like any other exotic asset class, Bitcoin is even more vulnerable to the boom-and-bust cycle. Bitcoin’s first crash took place in 2013 when the price of one Bitcoin reached $1,000 for the first time, but then the price quickly plummeted to around $300. It took more than two years before Bitcoin reached $1,000 again.
Many traders are on the sideline right now waiting for a significant pullback to get in on Bitcoin. The key is to buy low and not develop a sentimental/emotional attachment thus missing the proper selling point. Before jumping in, it is also important to understand risks and opportunities in the bitcoin market. Expect much higher than normal volatility and sweeping regulations that could drastically change the market landscape.
Today, mankind stands at a crossroads, and as GoldSilver.com"s Mike Maloney explains,the path that humanity chooses may have a greater impact on our freedom and prosperity than any event in history.
In 2008 a new technology was introduced that is so important that its destiny, and the destiny of mankind are inextricably linked.
It is so powerful that if captured and controlled, it could enslave all of humanity.But if allowed to remain free and flourish - it could foster unimaginable levels of peace and prosperity.
It has the potential to replace many functions of Wall Street and even of government, as a tool to empower individuals. In the latest episode In the latest episode of Hidden Secrets of Money, Mike Maloney examines this technology and its incredible potential.
Whether you believe in the potential or not, we think Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have proven at a minimum that they must be taken seriously. All investors would be wise to ensure they understand the phenomenon.
It has the power to replace all financial systems globally, to supplant ninety percent of Wall St, and to provide some functions of government.
It has no agenda.
It"s always fair and impartial.
It can not be manipulated, subverted, corrupted or cheated.
And - it inverts the power structure and places control of one"s destiny in the hands of the individual.
In the future, when we look back at the 2.6 million-year timeline of human development and the major turning points that led to modern civilization - the creation of farming, the domestication of animals, the invention of the wheel, the harnessing of electricity and the splitting of the atom - the sixty year development of computers, the internet and this new technology will be looked upon as a single event...a turning point that will change the course of human history.
It"s called Full Consensus Distibuted Ledger Technology, and so far its major use has been for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin....but its potential goes far, far beyond that.
The Crypto Revolution: From Bitcoin to Hashgraph is our latest episode of Hidden Secrets of Money.
It’s about the evolution of cryptocurrencies and full consensus distributed ledger technology, and how they will change our world. I believe that this video is by far the easiest way for the average person to gain an understanding of what cryptocurrencies are and how they work, but more importantly, the immense power of full consensus distributed ledger technology and the impact it will have on our daily lives. I have an absolute passion for monetary history and economics, and I love teaching them. Cryptocurrencies are our future, and there is no escaping it… this is the way everything will be done from now on. But, we now stand at a crucial turning point in history. Full consensus ledgers such as Blockchain and Hashgraph have the power to enslave us, or free us… it all depends on how we choose to use them.
If we choose to support centralized versions issued by governments and the financial sector we will be granting them more control over our daily lives. Politicians and bureaucrats will be able raise taxes instantly, whenever they want, on every dollar you make as you make them, and every dollar you spend as you spend them. If they think the economy needs stimulating they"ll be able to enforce huge negative interest rates, effectively punishing you for not spending everything you earn before you earn it. They"ll be able to decide where you can go and where you can’t, what you can buy and what you can’t, and what you can do and whatever they decide you can’t do… and if they don"t like you, they can just disconnect you from the monetary system.
So, will the monetary system become fully distributed and help to free mankind, or will it be centralized and enslave us?
The choice is in front of us right now, and our decisions will create our future. I believe that this will be a binary outcome, there is no middle ground, it will either be one future or the other. The question is, will it be the future we want? Or the future they want? I’m a precious metals dealer and one thing I’ve learned is that gold, silver, and now free market decentralized cryptocurrencies, represent freedom.
Because of this knowledge I started investing in crypto currencies long ago and also became one of the first precious metals dealers to accept bitcoin as payment for gold and silver.
I would really appreciate it if you could share this video with everyone you know. I think it’s very important that as many people as possible find out about the changes to the global monetary system that are happening right now… nothing will affect us more, and everyone’s future depends on it.
MarketWatch is out with a hard hitting story of a Paris dominatrix who"s been pimping out clients to mine cryptocurrency in a "Crypto Slave Farm" where they deposit the proceeds in a digital wallet.
The woman who goes by Theodora is a financial dominatrix, which MarketWatch describes below:
...clients — many of whom never meet her in person — derive sexual pleasure from giving her gifts and money. Exchanges of money can range from several dollars in “tributes,” as they are called, to gifts of more than six figures. Some clients even become a “human ATM,” meaning they give her complete control over a bank account.
Theodora says she makes between $7,000 and $10,000 per month in cryptocurrencies, on top of $10,000 per month she earns making video hypnosis sessions and financial domination videos. Last year she claims she made nearly $1 million from cryptocurrencies alone.
Theodora
“It’s a form of psychological domination where money is the tool for the transfer of power,” says Theodora, adding “It’s quite common for powerful men like politicians or CEOs to look for a form of sexual release by submitting to a woman — they are in control all the time during the day — and giving up control financially is a more tangible instrument of power for them.”
Theodora has been working as a dominatrix for eight years, and accepting payment in cryptocurrency for four. Her clients, mostly from the U.S. and U.K., are typically men in their late 30s to early 50s - and include a "core group of 20 to 25 regular big spenders who make donations as high as $100,000 at once - some of whom she does "real time" session with in person." She also has a following of 200 to 300 people who make smaller contributions online for $25 / minute video chats.
MarketWatch sat down with Theodora for a few questions about her adventures in crypto:
MarketWatch: When did you decide to start taking cryptocurrency?
Theodora: In this business of domination, it’s common for dominatrixes to take crypto payments. We cannot take PayPal because they blacklist sex workers. I have been making my clients mine for me for a couple of years.
[Mining is the electricity-heavy process of using computer power to verify cryptocurrency transactions — miners are given a monetary prize for their contributions, which Theodora routes to her wallet.]
MarketWatch: What is your crypto slave farm?
Theodora: It is a little tool where people use the resources of your computer to mine [cryptocurrency] for me from a distance. So even though it might be a tiny amount, I have quite a lot of traffic on my website so it adds up quite nicely.
MarketWatch: How do you make money in cryptocurrencies?
Theodora: I take donations and also have people mining for me. I take a lot of geek clients who like new technology and they were really excited when I taught them how to build a mining rig for me so they could mine 24/7 from their home.
Theodora says she has her "favorite currencies" she"s betting on, noting "Bitcoin could crash in two days, you don"t know what"s going to happen, so if you have enough to invest in smaller currency you should," and adding "For me, it"s play money."
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