People that are borrowing money to speculate on beany babies... I mean tulips.... ooops. I meant bitcoin.
Jpm/chase and others would be wise to revoke credit to these morons.
An extremely long line of respected financial people and economists have warned people about bitcoin. Sadly, greed compromises people and the idea of a quick buck is tempting.
I own a financial institution and have been in finance nearly my entire adult life. This bitcoin thing is just but another scam that I’ve witnessed in my long career.
Big banks should prohibit the purchase of cake, ice cream, candy, sugary sodas, guns, and donations to Donald Trump.
They should also prohibit the purchase of theatre tickets to movies and events they don’t like.
Of course, they should allow purchases of abortions and abortifacients that are not covered by Medicaid or insurance.
Yeah, I like your idea. The banks should make decisions for everybody! Then life will have its BLISS!
There's a speculative aspect which was complemented by a pump and dump by bigger players. It is very thinly traded and easy to manipulate in the short run. But there's a store of value you are ignoring. Those of us who bought in the low hundreds hoping to store value at those same numbers were shocked to see it rise so much. I was unconfortable and took some money off the table in December.
But studying it more I realized that the main reason is went up is price-insensitive purchases by Chinese and others. They fully intended to sell, and were just using BTC as a vehicle to move money. The key factor is that selling takes a while especially if you don't want to be tracked through a legitimate exchange. (my sales are all going to be sent to the IRS for long term cap gains tax, I have 1099s for some and will document the rest). The delay from purchasing to sale caused the rise. Again, there were a lot of price-insensitive buyers. They didn't care.
The banks were caught off guard by the fast rise in crypto and have been fighting against it, still Dimon backed off his initial claims. I encourage you to read Nakamoto’s 2008 paper. Bitcoin is one implementation of his idea, but the idea has merit, IMO. If you have read it, do you take exception with his position or do you take exception the specific implementation called bitcoin?
“This bitcoin thing is just but another scam that I’ve witnessed in my long career.”
You have dealt with fiat currency your entire life, and stolidly maintain that there is some inherent legitimacy because your preferred ponzi scheme is supported by world bankers and nation states who enacted the system? Seems a bit of a logic loop. The “full faith and credit” is underpinned by only debt. This has been so most, if not all of your long career.
Comparing crypto currency to tulips is easy if you discount the fact that niether cryptography nor currency have any inherent value. As a basis for commerce, the dollar (fiat currency) is an unsecured note controlled by a Byzantine private corporation. With the exception of XRP, crypto currency is a currency without the fiat. In your world, such an entity makes no sense.
Yet, when one realizes that all currency is a transaction, it becomes clear that the value lies not in the currency, but the transaction.
The security of that transaction is where the crypto part comes in. Rather than relying on some “benevolent” corporation to secure my transaction, the currency itself is secured by encryption. The other part is the transaction itself which is recorded by the block chain. Every transaction is recorded in the block chain that forms the chain. This technology is already making inroads in numerous areas beyond the crypto currency area.
Crypto currency is an esoteric idea, and it certainly is not mature, but consigning it all to the tulip market myth is a bit simplistic for one who understands economics. The speculation is foolish and there are certainly bad actors, including the large corporations now trying to usurp the free market, but it’s not going away.
Those swept away in emotion always lose, but there are still nice tulips in Holland and many a family making a living at developing new ones. I am no prophet or fanatic, but I do see this maturing in unimaginable ways.
The likelihood of any particular variant becoming the norm is negligible, but the likelihood of the major fiat currency evolving into some form of crypto currency is almost inevitable. Of course, by then it will have devolved into just another link in the plutocracy’s chain rather than a real free market transaction basis. You and your professional progeny should be safe from us heathens.
“This bitcoin thing is just but another scam that I’ve witnessed in my long career.”
yep. just like tulips, trading sardines, and all the weird, short-lived “future” contracts for various intangibles (e.g., “broadcast advertising time”) invented and traded by Enron.
i really get a kick out of how many Freepers passionately defend bitcoin like it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.
The people warning about crypto currencies are fighting the last war.
Your professional finance cabal, along with the Fed have ruined the dollar. Let’s see what happens when the inflation, held captive by the fed over the last eight years is unleashed.
Last week was just a taste.