Bitcoin shoppers go bonkers. Bitcoin on steroids. Like a vortex bitcoin is sucking in the non believers. Futures trading on CBOE starts this Sunday.
Bitcoin on steroids:
It’s hard to finish the year without talking about the frenzy for bitcoin. The price of bitcoin has gone insane. Whilst the bankers stand on rooftops in their bow-ties shouting “It’s a fraud, it’s a scam!”, the crowds just don’t care. They want it. It’s like a vortex sucking in non-believers one-after-the-other. Every day is like shoppers gone bonkers on Christmas Eve. There seems to be no stopping the lust for bitcoin at any price.
It’s fifteen times the price at the start of the year. Three weeks ago the price was $6’000. A week ago it was $9000. At one point, yesterday night, the price was well over $19’000. It has since fallen back to around $15’000, 25% below the peak of 24 hours ago. By the time you read this, the price could be anything. Talk about a volatile asset!
Future history books will dedicate a chapter to this amazing phenomenon. We just don’t know the title yet. The story isn’t finished. Will the title include words like “bubble” or “mania”? Or will we see titles like the “Early Development of the Crypto Economy” or “Evolution of Digital Currency”?
The current frenzy is due to the imminent trading of bitcoin futures on US regulated exchanges. Bitcoin, previously an unregulated asset, is about to enter the regulated world.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange, (CME), announced that it will commence trading bitcoin futures on December 18th, with a contract size of 5 bitcoins. Not to be outdone, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) immediately announced it will start trading bitcoin futures 8 days earlier – starting tomorrow, this Sunday 10th December. The CBOE futures will be for one bitcoin (instead of 5, like the CME), and they have announced that trading will be “commission free” until the end of the year. With bitcoin being the hottest “asset” on the planet now, it’s easy to understand why these two exchanges are in a race to grab the largest slice of the bitcoin pie.
From tomorrow, this Sunday, bitcoin will move into an area where every American with a bank or broker account can play. It’s no longer the wild-west. It changes the previous perception that it’s only for geeks in anoraks and silk road hippies. Americans will no longer have to deal with dubious foreign exchanges or cope with complicated trading software. Bitcoin will be just a phone call away.
Is bitcoin like tulip-mania?
The rise in bitcoin’s price has surpassed all previous asset bubbles, including the “dot-com” bubble of the 1990’s. It’s often compared to the tulip mania of the 1600’s. It is said that the price of a tulip bulb then reached that of a fashionable central Amsterdam mansion. That would be about 3 million euros today. We don’t know the end of the bitcoin story yet – or even if there is an end.
The obvious problem with Tulip bulbs in Amsterdam, was that there was an almost unlimited supply of tulips potentially available from the New World. As soon as the prices started to rise, word got out. Enterprising sailors sent out ships to bring them home. The laws of supply and demand worked as they should.
Bitcoins, on the other hand, have a limited supply. There will never be more than 21 million of them. Of these, nearly 17 million have already been mined. It will take more than 100 years to mine the remaining 4 million.
There are 35 million millionaires on planet earth. There aren’t enough bitcoins if they all want one.
Is bitcoin worth anything?
Around 1.7 million people currently own bitcoin. That’s around one adult in 2800. It’s not many. If you are on a small Island, with a bitcoin, you could be the only believer. It would be worthless. A bitcoin is only worth something if everyone else believes it’s worth something. We’re not there yet. It’s still in the “for geeks only” phase.
Those who are investing today believe it’s like having an email address in 1990. Pretty useless back then, but it had potential. They hoped that somewhere down the road, everyone else was going to get an email address (“The early majority”).
It’s like investing in an oil prospecting company. They may strike oil – or they may not. It’s still speculative. If the “early majority” arrive it’ll be worth a lot. At this point, it’s not for your children’s college fund, but if you want in, see the next paragraph.
Swiss railway ticket machines sell bitcoin
The 10’000 CFF railway ticket machines all sell bitcoin. You need a Swiss mobile phone number and a bitcoin wallet downloaded from the App store.
Bitcoin related words
FUD = Fear Uncertainty and doubt
HODL = Hold on for dear life
FOMO = Fear of missing out
dapp = decentralized application. – i.e. an app made by groups of programmers, not owned or controlled by any person, government or company, which does not show you ads, nor mine your data. Currently there are many under development.
“Limit-Up” = They halt bitcoin futures trading because the price moved too fast. (It’s a new word from this coming Sunday). You may also hear “Limit-Down”.
Image is of a rare Casascius physical bitcoin, the first physical representation of a bitcoin. Production was shut down by the US Financial Crimes division. This coin is part of early bitcoin history. It’s fully loaded with one bitcoin, plus all the forks (1 bitcoin cash and 1 bitcoin gold).
The private key is under a hologram sticker which self destructs as soon as it is peeled or tampered with. The window shows part of the key which allows any investor to go on the blockchain and check that the coin is fully loaded.
Its value is unknown, since one has never been sold in auction. Most likely it would be valued at substantially more than the bitcoin it contains.
Elegant knowledge accompanies you in this article. It would be interesting to know the code and see how much potential that physical currency has. I am sure that in the next few years it will be as relevant and valued as the paintings of your previous articles.
Hello friend, that bitcoin in that representation, can be worth a lot of fortune, and the private key that contains makes it more real and reliable, it is magnificent. Excellent.
Nobody can say for sure how much the Casacius coin is worth today because there is no relible quote. One day it will be in an auction with a big firm like Christies and then I will know. As I see it there were only around 11k minted. That’s a small number.
yes friend, I understand that currently its value is not known, but it can cost a lot in the future.
But the thing is that Bitcoin doesn't exist in a vacuum. It exist along with over 900 coins and most of them are garbage. But there are many technologically superior coins with added functionality. http://www.blocktivity.info/
STEEM alone can handle 500 times the Tx of BTC and still not break a sweat while being Free and confirmed withing Seconds.
Dash, PIVX, NEM, Verge are all better products with functions BTC can only dream of. And here is a quote from Charlie Lee who created Litecoin:
This is a scary revelation. I dont want people judging me bsed on where i got my bitcoin from, or where i spent it, or worse, how many bitcoins I have left.
That's why privacy coins are important. Privacy and private property is a measurement of civilization. Komodo supports decentralized private ICOs. Zcash even had praise from Snowden. So that's a very big green flag. PIVX was the first and only PoS coin to implement Zerocoin protocol. I'm personally very impressed with zk-SNARK tech (including the cool sounding meaning of the acronym)
Dash has trustless mixing which has still unbroken privacy which they keep on improving with 4+ million USD per month budget.
Monero is not something I'm willing to trust after their privacy got completely and utterly broken. They claim they've fixed and it's probably true. But the track record of the team isn't so bright.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dashpay/comments/65fz68/dashs_privacy_feature_has_never_been_broken_turns/
https://getmonero.org/2017/04/19/an-unofficial-response-to-an-empirical-analysis-of-linkability.html
Verge(XVG) seem pretty impressive and I'm positive about the project. But I don't think I've done enough research to make a claim about the coin.
Hope the info was helpful :-)
Magnificent article. You could describe complex things in plain language. This is art. Very, very, very valuable knowledge: A bitcoin is only worth something if everyone else believes it’s worth something.
That would be pretty awesome to have one of those coins. Not just for its value but to have one. With my luck though, I would probably just loose it in my couch cushion!
I think that there were only around 11’000 of them minted. They are thus much harder to find than bitcoin of which there are 21 million.
I’m not sure how many are still “fully loaded”. Over the years some people will have peeled the sticker to spend the bitcoin. It loses is allure if it is not “fully loaded“.
I guess lots of people would like to own one to show their grandchildren and there are probably more than 11’000 museums which have a section dedicated to the history on money.
So, if you come across one, grab it, and pay the price which will be much higher than a bitcoin. Mine is not for sale - even at any price).
My Granddad gave me a gold sovereign when I was 7 years old. I still have it 53 years later. I wish he would have given me a bitcoin instead.
Sometimes there appear to be sales of a Casascius coin via internet forums, but the prices are unreliable, and your counter-party is untrusted. I would also like to own more than 1, but I can’t find them anywhere.
Maybe those can't be found so easy because people who own them don't think about selling. I mean why would anybody sell one?
Yeah, I imagine as time goes on and the value keeps moving up, its only going to get harder to find them. As with anything there are shady people that come crawling out of the shadows trying to cash in so you definitely have to be careful as well if you do come across someone selling and do some research on them. Just as @mejustandrew said though, why would anybody sell one? I would hoard it until the end of days, or until retirement!
Is there a way to buy a coin that has already been "cashed in" so to speak? Even if the physical coin wasn't actually worth the price of a bitcoin, it would still be super cool to own. Someday those coins will be in museums and the plaques will talk about the frontier that was once cryptocurrencies.
Yes, you can buy the unloaded coins on EBay. EBay won’t allow the sale of fully loaded Casascius.
Don’t forget that once the hologram has been peeled, the numismatic value is much less. It’s like a 1550 Dutch gold Sovereign. If it’s in good condition, its worth gold price + numismatic value, i.e $1300 + $27’000. On the other hand, if the condition is poor, the numismatic value is less, e.g. $1300 + $1500.
Some months ago, the unloaded Casacius were selling for below $1000 on EBay, but maybe the interest in the collectible has risen since.
I just went and looked, and it looks like the days of getting one for below a $1000 are over! The most interesting thing I saw was people selling the fully loaded coins for a casual 50K USD. It also looks like other people are getting in on the game and offering coins they made loaded with .5, .01, and .001 BTC to try and get in on the physical coin market. That's a very cool coin you have by the way, who can say where its value will end up one day.
Wow, I am astonished people are asking $50k for a fully loaded Casascius bitcoin. It’s more than I thought. I am still not selling mine. (What would I invest the fiat into? Dilemma dilemma)
As for all similar physical bitcoins being sold, they are not part of the internet history as they were not the first. Also, their supply may not be limited.
The supply of fully loaded Casascius is limited because he was shut down by the financial crimes division.
I don’t think I can judge the value based on an Ebay asking price, nor a Reddit “auction”. In both cases we could have shills bidding on their own coin, or untrusted counter-parties who keep serious buyers like museums away.
I will judge the price after a Casascius is sold by Christies or Sotheby’s.
Yes, shill bidding is very frequent on ebay especially, but it does give an interesting ballpark look at how valuable people must think they are. I'm not sure why you would sell now, I don't think anything has close to the upside that the original Casascius coin has. That would be similar to taking an investment out of a thriving company and burying it somewhere lol.
Wow, even if the Bitcoin will collapse (which is very unlikely) these Casascius physical bitcoin will be worth a lot! It's like a piece of history there or it can be compared with a rare painting. I wish I had owned any of these and I don't think I would be selling if I had one, even for a big amount of money. I just understand the people having these and not selling them. Thanks for sharing, I didn't knew about Casascius physical bitcoins till now, but I will keep reading about them, maybe someday I will have the occasion to hold one in my own hands. At least I can dream about it :)
If you are lucky, you might get one in a garage sale or flea market. Keep looking, and you will find.
Well I learned something new today about the Casascius coin. That's a solid trivia question. Is that one yours???
If we think we're in mania mode, just wait until after January/February when most people get their bonuses, with the media having 1-2 more months of pumping/fudding to spread the word around. I met with my friend yesterday who works at Fox News, and she said everyone is buzzing about Bitcoin like crazy in the offices/sets.
I don't actively use Coinbase, but I got an email from them today saying that the demand is super high, so much that it's creating "extreme volatility and stress on our systems." Perhaps if the exchanges struggle to scale, it'll keep some of the buying frenzy at bay, like letting people through a funnel.
Having a bitcoin will be like owning a painting of da Vinci in the future as you related these two assets in one of your posts.
Fantastic post... resteeming 4 sure!