Bitcoin Blasts Through $2200, Here’s Why | Zero Hedge as excited believers in this ‘crypto currency’ made out of thin air and backed by absolutely nothing…is a classic bubble fad item. Anything can have this sort of bubble. People sitting on bitcoin ‘savings’ will figure they are millionaires and will hold until…it collapses. The new buyers would buy and sell and buy and sell over and over each time, making more money and then…it collapses and they are bereft. The temptation to keep buying and selling is too great to resist which is why people always end up in the crash despite plans to sell off before it crests.
A very simple rule of thumb of life: nothing goes to infinity. Once one sees that something is doing the ‘to the moon, Alice’ you know it is going to blow up or vanish or crash. Absolutely all humans want to have a free ride. Free rides are fun except you have to pay the final price…meet Mr. Reaper. He is the one who has the final value.
All previous bubbles had another interesting feature: if they are a big market share, if they are ‘rich’ they cause a terrible crash and destroy civilizations and societies and lead to empires in ruin, etc. They are highly dangerous when they are really big bubbles.
Stock Market Crash Causes Depression: note that this bubble is identical to the Bitcoin nonsense. Since the stock market does have things of real value (building/manufacturing/etc.) the surviving stocks slowly recover value. People note that all big market crashes clear out all the dicey stocks based on stupid things. This is why patrolling stocks and preventing fraud is important.
Rip roaring markets see lots and lots of fraud. Panic buying of various items are the same: fraud is nearby. Bitcoins are from day one, a fraud. But enough people want to play with this fraud, we can’t stop them but they better not whine when burned by this silly children’s game.
Once upon a time, governments didn’t allow this sort of fraud. But in recent years, governments have ceased to govern so we have interlocking and overlapping frauds popping up here there and everywhere. So I can’t stop people from participating in these various schemes, only warn them that they are playing with fire which can literally destroy their homes, marriages and maybe leave them begging when elderly.
The Shape Of Market Bubbles (With A Special Look At Gold) – Business Insider: from the recent past. Gold has reality. It never ceases to be a ‘rich item’. Even barbarians love gold, it doesn’t age, go bad, it is very pretty, it is very strong, it has ‘durability’ that can last for eons, quite literally. So, in the last 6,000 years, it has been considered a powerful treasure fit for rulers. Even with the history of being the longest ‘valuable trade item’ it still has…bubbles and crashes!
The bubbles are identical to the Bitcoin bubble only at the end, those holding gold still have gold, at least. It never drops to zero. Even tulips retained a price, not much but still, you could buy and plant these, I have tulips! They are real. Paper money: even the German marks from the inflation years has value today as historical items. But cybercoins have nothing. You can’t frame it. They do advertise it with picture of a real looking ‘coin’ that is pretty. But the cyber stuff is nothing.
This reminds me of the Catholic Church. They sold ‘forgive all sins at the right price.’ This forgiveness was to give one passage at death to Heaven, not Hell. The price went up and up and up and the Church became very, very rich and people became very, very angry and it all blew up and the Church was shattered and the Reformation destroyed the value of all those bequests that were to protect the sinner forever, all destroyed, the church buildings ravaged and looted, all the physical stuff, removed, stolen, etc.
Faith is a very touching thing. People have faith in the most astonishing things, it never ceases to amaze me. I am a realist. Being hit by lightning five times makes me wary of crazy stuff and I like to be prepared for the worst, a pessimist…it is stormy outside while I write. A lightning bolt two days ago landed just down the street from my home. That scares me. Lightning is very ‘unreal’ in that it is electricity, not a solid item. That is, is is energy and has more power than any number of bitcoins and can destroy these say, by hitting the computer systems running the bit coins and shorting out everything. Ahem.
NOOOO!!! See? I wouldn’t want those stupid fake money things. The gods won’t allow it, at least, Thor would make a mess of things.
So, which price do you think it will hit first?
1. $10,000
2. $1,000
? It will do one or the other of those things. Which one?
I dont know where the price of an ecoin goes.
Someone claims there are now 1000? different bitcoin imitations.
Tulip mania, at least a buyer got some bulbs.
Pet rock, at least it could be used as a paperweight.
Hey Jim R – I’m willing to bet you. How about a mea culpa to the one who loses the bet.
OK, with that said I bet $1000.
Of course, this bet will only work if you think $10000.
What do you think?
Lets get it all on the table and get to work. That is what I’m gonna do.
A believer, this is unintentionally comical;
@Buffalo Ken,
OK, I’ll take the other side of that. If it collapses, I’ll owe you a mea culpa.
How about a cup of mea?
OK – it is agreed.
me·a cul·pa
ˌmāə ˈko͝olpə/Submit
noun
an acknowledgment of one’s fault or error.
““Well, whose fault was that?” “Mea culpa!” Frank said”
I made 4,150 dollars on a small investment. I really got burned by this ponzi scheme…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-21/who-owns-blockchain-goldman-bofa-amass-patents-for-coming-wars
bitcoin up— Traded above $4000 in South Korea today. Like wow.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-25/bitcoin-blows-throuigh-2500-2600-2700-overnight-south-korea-demand-soars
It is overdue for a big correction. If it stays above $1000, my little wager with Ken is still on. I think it’ll stay above $1000, but this kind of crazy stuff will not go on for much longer. Someone will say ‘BOO!’ and the price will plummet.
When big bubbles pop, and it is something with no real value, it goes all the way down.
Not to get away from the very important news of the day, but I’ve been thinking about this some more, and Jim W (#11), I would like to raise the stakes and the interest level on our heretofore friendly bet. This is what I propose.
If you win (bitcoin = $10000 or more), in addition to a public mea culpa, I will wire over to you immediately 0.0105 bitcoin (nominal $105). In the same vein, if I win (bitcoin = $1000 or less) you will wire over to me immediately 0.1 bitcoin (nominal $100) and I don’t care about the mea culpa. You can keep that to yourself.
If you are interested we could setup all of the “wiring” details in advance (or at least I think this could be done) although this would likely need to be via a private contract being that “public” betting in this forum probably isn’t kosher (yet – some bill was proposed today, but that is another story).
A better option in my opinion would be a “Gentleman’s Agreement” to send the equivalent funds in any valid currency, and this would be a hell of a lot simpler. I would also accept a token that is “Buffalo-oriented” and reasonably considered of equivalent nominal value. I’m good for my word, but I would need an address to send the funds (and presumably this holds true vice-versa as well).
One last thing: I would like to propose a 12-month window effective at the time of this posting on Elaine’s site after which, the bet is off. Of course, this is optional, but it would be my preference to put some boundaries around this – otherwise we both might be dead before the bet is ever resolved, and being that I’m a betting man and have a general idea of your age, I suspect this provision is in your interest (from a statistical standpoint of course).
The most likely outcome is that neither of us will win, but I think my chances are better and that is why anyone bets……ain’t it?
What you say pal?
Bahahahaha, now you wanna put money on the line. Well, if you think of BTC as money, anyway.
And you want 10-for-1, hahaha! Nah, you can keep your $105.
Oh Well. I was looking forward to discussing possible hedge options on this bet, and maybe getting a buffalo token.
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by “10-1” being that in dollar terms it was $105 versus $100. You can’t compare absolute bitcoins at different prices.
No matter. It is back to a “mea culpa” with no time limit, and if we are lucky maybe a “cup of mea” to the winner!
My prediction record is that I almost never guess right. And by its nature, this new-fangled ‘internet money’ is extremely volatile.
But right now, my guess is that the present correction will bottom out at about $1500, and then it will resume its ascent. It’s a fricken’ roller coaster!
It might hit $10,000 but probably not this year.
OK, Buffalo Ken. . .
How about this: Elaine will hold the purse for our bet. She gets a wallet address, and each of us contributes 0.1 Bitcoin for a total of 0.2.
On June 30 2018, the bet times out. If neither limit has been hit, Elaine returns our 0,1 BTC, minus a 5% fee for her trouble.
When we think one of our limits has been hit, we will submit screen shots from whatever exchange you wish, to Elaine, who will judge whether it is a genuine hit. If she agrees, she forwards the 0.2 BTC, again minus a 5% fee, to the winner.
Obviously this plan is null and void if Elaine does not agree to hold the purse.
I thought this conversation had reached its culmination.
I’m not that comfortable in dealing in actual “bitcoin”. I don’t really understand the mechanics.
Here is another idea. Why don’t we both just contribute an amount of our choosing to Elaine’s blog and then she can use it as necessary. This transaction can be in US $ and that seems more real to me — even if it is a fiat currency. It is much more liquid. I plan on doing this myself regardless and maybe you already have or would like to do likewise.
As for our bet, I think I just want to keep it at the “mea culpa” level. When it goes above or below one of the limits, I think it will be evident.
Peace,
Ken
No way would I take responsibility for a fraud.
Look, the stupid bit coins rose in ‘value’ when desperate people needed these to pay off the criminal hackers. End of story.
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Excellent article, I’d love to donate but I’d rather not use paypal; as the fees are too high and I’d rather not support a company that engages in political discrimination.
I also try to avoid using fiat currency, as it’s inflationary and because as you pointed out, the value of currency is arbitrary.
What isnt arbitrary, is that I can send you money that isn’t tied to a state, instantly, to your phone, simply by you downloading an app called mycelium and sending me the address.
That seems to make bitcoin a rather valuable tool don’t you think?
Do you take bitcoin?
So bad article. You clearly understand what a bubble is. But you seriously dont understand what bitcoin / blockchain / cryptocurrencies / cryptoassets are. You talk like Bitcoin is some kind of company that can be shut down with a switch. Its not a company, its a decentralized LEDGER. You cant shut it down. Technology moves faster than normal stocks. Gold doesnt have any real value. Bitcoin has technology and innovation behind it. Completely decentralized platform thats 100% secure. Thats the value of bitcoin.
All ‘crypto currencies’ have NO SUBSTANCE. If we say, have a war or social collapse, they are useless and impossible, even. The gold standard for ‘wealth’ are three things: gold, slave labor and land. Ownership of all three leads to a life of wealth and leisure.
Also, I grew up inside the ‘computer revolution’ business starting with the computer complex at the University in Chicago where my father had access to IBM top computers to do complex calculations. I even helped build actual computer systems way back during the Vietnam war. Computers are FRAGILE SYSTEMS. And corruptible!!! Utterly corruptible. This is why information has to also be still put on ‘paper’ or other more stable systems.
24–I am going to Blockcon today. ‘Goblockcon.com’
BTC $7K and still got a ‘woody’. Has survived squabbles amongst its nerds, various interventions by e.g. the Chinese government, arrests of people for ‘money laundering’, and so forth.
Note: I do not personally, currently, have any money in it. If I had hung onto the ones I got a few years ago, they would either have been lost when Mtgox went bankrupt (yes they were on that exchange at one time) or I’d be selling them now for lotsa dough (but unfortunately they’ve been scattered to the winds). I did cash some in for a return of my investment, and the rest were given/traded/contributed to various ‘wallets’… oh well.
Caveat emptor, and YMMV.
$8K. …
11/20 Bitcoin now processes $2 billion worth of transactions per day – Forbes
the Bitcoin hype. It’s nauseating.
I have good info (London bankers) who have said Satoshi is an acronym for the US government.
Bitcoin is a Beta-test program for the world financial system (i.e. digital/cashless society).
The ramping up in price is to lure more and more users into the system, to test user ability and efficiency. I will not be a part of Buttcoin that furthers along the system of the anti-Christ.
It isn’t government. But it does have all the trappings of an old fashioned financial bubble. A fad. Like the South Sea Company.
I have no idea how far it will go, or what will puncture it, but can’t see it lasting forever.
If the globalists want to use some of its technology for their ‘globocoin’ that wouldn’t surprise me either.
9K…
It ain’t quite 10 K yet, but it is close enough. “Mea culpa” (through my fault), probably isn’t quite accurate, but I’ll admit I was wrong. So there you have it.
This baby might still fall to 1000 (and if it does, I think it will be in a blink of an eye), but 10000 is likely any moment now.
Peace,
Ken
I thought they were wildly overbought at $250. Yes it is a mania and yes, when it falls it will be sudden.
Bitcoin passed $10k on some Korean market.
Jim R, can you explain these marks in the sky?
Yes, the Asian people especially in China, are buying bitcoins because of their government. But then, ANY item of ‘public interest’ can be used this way, history is loaded with such events, they happen especially when ‘capitalism’ is taking off in some culture or another.
And about vapor trails: these always appear when the humidity levels rise. Suddenly, as a front approaches, we notice all the contrails from across the entire country, instead of disappearing quietly, grow in size and last much longer as the humidity in the higher stratosphere rises.
Oh my! How AMAZING…not. It isn’t ‘chemtrails’ but ‘contrails’. Why people are fixated on this (and why the are amazed that rain usually appears soon afterwards!) never ceases to amuse.
Lou, those streaks are ice crystals. In other words, H2O. And while water is a chemical, one needn’t be concerned.
If they wanted to poison you, they’d use something which does not make visible streaks.
$10K Bitcoin — will it go much higher? It might, but please do not bet the house on it…
And the colors are illusions — you know, like the colors in a peacock’s tail. It is because the crystals are about the size of a wavelength of visible light. If they were much smaller, they’d be transparent and you couldn’t see them. Much larger, and they’d fall out of the sky (which they do eventually, anyway) …
Which got me to thinking about those colored smoke flares you see at air shows. They use special low temperature pyrotechics to disperse various organic dye compounds to give you the colored smoke, red, yellow, green.
But your air show display takes place at maybe 1000 to 2000 feet. You can clearly see the colors from the ground. If a commercial jetliner were to set off a color smoke flare at 35000 feet, you’d need binoculars to even see the color of it. They’d be tiny. The only reason you can see the contrails is because they are really big — planes have to disturb a LOT of air to stay up there.
Why are the planes circling?
Holding pattern?
Isn’t Augsberg near a big American airbase over there in Germany? I am not familiar with German place names and don’t have a feel for the exact location.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augsburg#Military
so they cant land?
Cryptos Are Crashing Again
by Tyler Durden
Nov 30, 2017 8:54 AM
So this happened, and I don’t care. So far it doesn’t look like the ‘big one’ where they all go to zero, but of course that will happen eventually.
Interestingly, it is deflationary to the ‘real’ economy as well, because all that money is destroyed in the event.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-30/cryptos-are-crashing-again
Oh yeah, the link .. almost forgot.
So far with every step back the next day there are two steps forward. I’ve learned that a bubble can grow beyond the wildest imagination. I know there is a tremendous desire for an alternative to fiat currency – I share this desire, and in hindsight, wish I had acted on it (still might). Bitcoin, as well as all the other “cryptos”, represents the value of this desire. It may have staying power, but there is great risk.
I think just now bitcoin has the advantage of being the first offering, but I wonder if the electricity consumption associated with “mining” will ultimately be its downfall. I suspect it will be. I’m sure another more elegant crypto is already out there.
The bigger issue as I see it is these “crypto-currencies” are really nothing more than mathematical constructs and anybody can create one essentially out of nothing more than their imagination and some good computer code. Imagination is great, but what is backing that up? At least a fiat currency has the backup of the government that sponsors it and some governments have lasted for awhile, so there is value in that as well.
Right now I think the total value of all bitcoins out there (including the ones that have been lost forever) is something like 200 billion. If it gets to a trillion or thereabouts then things could get real interesting because I believe the economic ripples of some sort of collapse could trigger other major events.
Speaking of a trillion. A trillion more deficit is nothing to the sick and hateful and deceitful and full-of-crap Republicans (who cares about the little people), but it is still is a lot of money! The Democrats are just as bad and Trump is nothing but a reflection of why the American fiat needs replacement.
Its a conundrum.
-Ken
@ Ken
Yes, it’s a conundrum, one without an elegant solution. So the elites will do what they always do, loot as much as they can.
Now, once again (fool me once and all that jazz…) we have GOP tax cuts on top of another gigantic Wall Street bubble combined with one, possibly two, very hot wars abroad about to kick off. The US seems about to repeat another old favorite trick and burn a few million Asians for the heck of it (it’s been a while since the last time). The old, tried and true, elite recipes for looting the US taxpayers blind in action (including foreign economies forced into supporting the $$$).
Christian.
Acknowledged, and sadly (very sadly), if a war or two commences, I suspect most of the American citizenry will be out waving the flag of pride and cheering our brave soldiers (for whom I have respect) to kill. Those who know better will be shouted down and silenced – just like what happened during Dubya’s Iraq adventure.
The cesspool of Congress is worthless and the generals will follow their orders.
To make matters worse, further escalating the risk is the clueless bombastic undignified asshole in the white house who is incapable of empathy, driven by self-inflated ego, and amazingly out of touch with reality. Who could have imagined that this proud pussy-grabber is our president — the irony is too much.
I hope none of this happens and that we are actually at an inflection point, but history suggests otherwise.
____________________________________
Oh well, back to dealing with things I can affect. I have two crawl spaces I need to inspect today.
Peace,
Ken
trump derangement syndrome
Bitcoin Blasts Through $15,000 – “It’s A Consensus Hallucination”

by Tyler Durden
Dec 7, 2017 5:13 AM
… Should be just fine until people want to start getting their money back out of it … hahahaha!
Yes, this is a classic bubble. The junk here has zero intrinsic value. It is merely computer data. And as a human using computers all my life and meeting with the biggest IBM computer on earth when a child and making it go to infinity, I learned a lot about the dangers of using computers to play any infinity games, computers love infinity.
16000
16 f—ing thousand.
BC has zero intrinsic value.
It is merely computer data.
Thats what this blog is. Thats what much of the world is.
IMO, the bigger picture is the Government is behind ‘Satoshi.’
Lets see what happens in 2018.
SDR??? New currency?
Lou, that’s not the point. The whole universe is mostly nothing. Atoms are mostly empty space, since the particles that make them up are infinitely smaller.
So, there is a whole lot of nothing out there everywhere.
The point is that BTC is a human construct, related to money, another human construct, on computers which were built by humans.
And that’s where the failure happens — there is a very long list of dumb things that humans do. And this is a classic financial bubble. Other recent bubbles are poor analogies, because at least you’d have a shiny yellow bit of metal, or a pretty flower, or a cute stuffed animal or something. This is one of the more ponziesque bubbles to come along for a while…