Bitcoin is just another manifestation of how much people distrust government.
Whatever its faults, Bitcoin’s primary virtue is that it is not under the control of any government or NGO.
Beware some web sites use your browser to mine Bitcoins ,even when you close the browser . It’s the only way to make money with Bitcoins , LOL
Doing some research on bubbles throughout history…
I ran across this gem.
History does repeat and does rhyme at the same time.
+++++
Mississippi Company
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Mississippi Bubble
Louis XIV’s long reign and wars had nearly bankrupted the French monarchy. Rather than reduce spending, the Regency of Louis XV of France endorsed the monetary theories of Scottish financier John Law. In 1716, Law was given a charter for the Banque Royale under which the national debt was assigned to the bank in return for extraordinary privileges. The key to the Banque Royale agreement was that the national debt would be paid from revenues derived from opening the Mississippi Valley. The Bank was tied to other ventures of Law—the Company of the West and the Companies of the Indies. All were known as the Mississippi Company. The Mississippi Company had a monopoly on trade and mineral wealth. The Company boomed on paper. Law was given the title Duc d’Arkansas.
Prisoners were set free in Paris in September 1719 onwards, under the condition that they marry prostitutes and go with them to Louisiana. The newly married couples were chained together and taken to the port of embarkation.
Law exaggerated the wealth of Louisiana with an effective marketing scheme, which led to wild speculation on the shares of the company in 1719. The scheme promised success for the Mississippi Company by combining investor fervor and the wealth of its Louisiana prospects into a sustainable, joint-stock, trading company. The popularity of company shares were such that they sparked a need for more paper bank notes, and when shares generated profits the investors were paid out in paper bank notes. Law’s pioneering note-issuing bank thrived until the French government was forced to admit that the number of paper notes being issued by the Banque Royale exceeded the value of the amount of metal coinage it held.
The “bubble” burst at the end of 1720, when opponents of the financier attempted to convert their notes into specie en masse, forcing the bank to stop payment on its paper notes.
Still a long way to go before it gets to fiat currency levels of crazy.
And there was nothing wrong with the Tulip bulbs other than rampant speculation in futures, and no real structure to the market. It was a commodity/product no different than wheat or precious gems.
Just dont invest more than you are willing to lose.
One thing I can tell you about Gartman....if he says it, it is virtually assured to be wrong. No opinion on bitcoin. There is no reason it cannot go vastly higher now that it can be hedged on the CME.
A cousin of mine got in on this early and just sold a month ago. Made a bundle. Of course, even though he did make money, he moaned about not staying in a bit longer. Can’t just be happy with the money he made I guess.
I wonder if perhaps bitcoin has taken hold. If the real powerful global crooks (politicians and others) are using it to avoid government scrutiny, it's here to stay.
The “greater fool” theory can be very powerful. In this case, you REALLY don’t want to end up being the “greatest fool” in the end.
Can someone explain how logistically bitcoin works?
I want to buy something and I want to use bitcoin. My understanding is that my bitcoin is some long chain of bytes of data identifying it as unique. Do I hand over a data file (which, as bitcoin’s are mined, grows in size)? Will a thumb drive suffice? Can I buy something via email, with my bitcoin as an attachment?
Well...if I hadn’t taken my 8k out of bitcoin I’d now have almost 700k. I think about that a lot while I’m sitting here in my cube looking at spreadsheets.
Has China decided whether or not it’s going to ban cryptocurrencies? I know it was thinking about it. That’s certainly something that could trigger the burst.
Wish I’d listened to Mike Cernovich and Richard Nikoley last year.
Actually, bitcoin is not the largest bubble in history and probably not in the top 3-5...
Cryptocurrency is here to stay.
Those who call it a fad are like the ones who called the Internet a fad back in the mid-nineties (like one man I worked for in 1995 who owned a computer networking business).
The cost to manufacture and protect traditional paper currency from counterfeiting is getting too expensive and difficult. Coins with metal content have tangible value, but this is not fiat currency (when valuation is based on the metal value) and requires the existence of sufficient assets to supply them.
Fiat currency has value because governments accept it as payment for taxes. And taxes are inevitable.
Governments are slow to adopt cryptocurrencies because relatively few people understand them. But, with a growing acceptance, governments will begin to adopt them.
How do you cash one in?
In order to buy Bitcoin these days you actually have to come up with $19,000 in physical cash? I don’t know much about it.
Doesnt that defeat the purpose?.
I recall when silver hit $50.00+ per oz.
I was trading commodities at the time and watched a guy loose a house in a split second...
Litecoin is up over 300% in the past two weeks.
I am doing OK.
Bitcoin is like NFL Fantasy Football. You can say you won the Super Bowl if it’s in a computer somewhere saying that you won the Super Bowl.
Try getting the Lombardi Trophy in your home onto your Awards shelf sometime. Well, I guess if you have an image of the Lombardi Trophy on your computer, and it says you won it, then you did.
Bitcoin and its copycats will, IMHO only, be one of the most laughed-at bubbles in history when this is viewed years from now. It’s fake, it’s a mirage, and only the ones who are lucky enough to escape before the Bitcoin/Blockchain explosion will make any real hard cash money.
The rest of the “investors” will toss their virtual worthless bitcoins into the virtual toilet in their computer. And that will be REAL MONEY lost, not virtual money gained.