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posted by
cmn32480
on Wednesday June 07 2017, @12:31PM
from the where-it-is-all-made-up-and-the-dollar-value-does-matter dept.
from the where-it-is-all-made-up-and-the-dollar-value-does-matter dept.
Cryptocurrencies, as a whole, now hold over $100 billion in market cap for the first time. While bitcoin (BTC) leads the pack at just over $46.6 billion, or 47.9 percent of all cryptocurrencies, the recent surge in these other coins has helped to push the total cap over the top.
Since the Bitfinex hack low on August 2, bitcoin has traded better than JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Tesla, Apple, Google and gold. One of the few stocks to match the frenetic pace of bitcoin has been Nvidia, which is up over 200 percent since July of last year.
[...] Although China, Japan and South Korea are trading at a ~$100-plus premium compared to the exchanges in the United States, most of the volume [on June 5th] has been driven by USD.
Source: Bitcoin Magazine
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Cryptocurrencies Hit $100 Billion Market Cap
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @02:15PM (7 children)
Bitcoins are an easy political target given their perceived link to cyber crime, terrorism, speculation, and CO2 emissions. It is like gold, but with an extra level of stink. If the value grows too big, there will be a government crackdown restricting this to a black market activity. How much will your bitcoins be worth then?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @02:34PM (4 children)
Bitcoin will still function; it will still be a way to measure and record the value of transactions across the Internet in a fashion that nobody can disrupt. That's still a useful ability.
More concretely: People like drugs and blowjobs and all manner of "illicit" stuff. Let's say governments the world over decide to outlaw the use of Bitcoin, just like they have outlawed drugs and sex-for-hire and all the other "illicit" stuff that people do anyway. Well, those same people will still do those illicit things, and using Bitcoin to account for their activity in a safe, well-defined manner will just be one more illicit thing that they do, because it makes doing the other illicit things so much easier.
Let's say you've accumulated a lot of bitcoin and have only ever used it for legal purposes, and then the U.S. Government outlaws bitcoin just like it outlawed people's hard-won gold. Well, you can choose to break that law and continue to use it for otherwise legal purposes: Pay people across the Internet to perform digital work, bet on sports, donate to political movements, etc. You know why this will still work? Because people like drugs and blowjobs and all manner of "illicit" stuff; that web-developer in Russia whom you paid in bitcoin to develop your website will then use his newly acquired bitcoin to snort cocaine off a hooker's thigh, and that hooker will exchange the bitcoin for cash from her pimp, who will in turn use it to organize the distribution of his network of weed dealers, etc.
The genie is out of the bottle.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @03:30PM (1 child)
The drug dealers, in fact any recipient, will want to eventually convert their bitty box-top stamps to some real currency that they can use to buy a cup of coffee. If nobody is willing to trade any green for them, either because of illegality or futility, the "cryptocurrencies" may be less useful than Flooz.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @04:28PM
The exchange will occur in the black market, because people with dollars also want to do illicit stuff. Bitcoin can simply facilitates a huge portion of the black market—perhaps even in a closed-loop fashion that doesn't require converting to dollars, anyway!
Money means nothing; it's the human activity that matters—as long as people are getting blowjobs, it'll work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @04:02PM (1 child)
Don't be so confident. Speculative bubbles are a part of human nature, and with bitcoins, nobody would step in if the market panics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @04:35PM
How can you not perceive the irrelevance of your comment?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @04:59PM
yeah cuz government(the biggest criminals of all) have really killed the price of drugs over the years with their "war on drugs". you bankster/government apologists are ridiculous slaves.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Thursday June 08 2017, @06:23PM
1702845791×2