By the way, what is up with Bitcoin? Why did it rise 10x this year?
The couple of times I did have money in it -- for up to two months at a time -- it either fell slightly overall or stayed fairly flat. As soon as I sold, it jumped back up again.
I'm currently accepting offers from Bitcoin investors to prevent me from buying back in again.
I really want to understand some of the economics behind the value of a Bitcoin. Some people say that it's actually worthless, but that can't be true. It lets people move practically unlimited amounts of money anywhere in the world for a relatively small fee. It also provides immutable data that can be used to verify records.
I actually spent this weekend adding blockchain verification to my document generation service [1]. It was actually pretty amazing to look at a Bitcoin transaction [2], and realize that this data has so much authenticity and permanence. Not only does it guarantee that my document existed at a certain point in time, but that hash will probably be preserved in the blockchain for the rest of human history.
That one bitcoin transaction cost a lot of money (0.000846 BTC, or $6.95 USD), but it verifies a large number of records by using a merkle tree. [3]
I have no idea how these fees relate to the fiat price, but that must be one factor. Also the price of electricity around the world. There's a lot of speculation and "tulip mania" too, but even if you ignore all of that, I think it's a very interesting thing to research.
[2] https://live.blockcypher.com/btc/tx/4dc1ef829128355fdbbf3afb...
In the case of this year, there was the major shenanigans with the hard fork from just BTC to BTC / BCH, as well as some heightened cryptocurrency crackdowns in China.
The more negativity/naysers there are, the more stubbornly they continue to hold to prove the elite financial world they are wrong.
If your purchase is high enough it makes sense. Would not make sense for micro transactions
Massive transaction growth, a proxy for user adoption, since the Dec. 2013 crash. That lead to steady growth until this spring when Core's no block increase ever policy stunted adoption but by then the bubble had already started to form. you are seeing a bunch of clueless new folks fomo into the crypto space right now. I would be surprised if we aren't entering the blow off top phase. There was just a ~50% movement in a matter of a week. Bitcoin Cash is probably the true Bitcoin long term that is where I'm moving my money.
* Also significant unease over USDT Tether scheme among the wider community could lead to a second Gox like situation
Big players with billions are now just waiting for the right time to jump in. We’re at that time.