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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday May 07 2017, @05:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the everybody-like-bubbles-until-they-pop dept.

Something odd is going on in finance this week. One unit of BitCoin briefly exceeded the value of a troy ounce of gold before it fell back. However, this occurred during Ethereum rallying to its current peak above US$100. Perhaps this is like comparing apples, oranges, and dog-biscuits but — as of this week — we now have a situation where Ethereum is well above the US$1 credibility threshold of most alternative digital currencies and, to a simpleton, BitCoin was more valuable than gold.

What changed? Nothing obvious. Banks have teams of shirking resume builders working on trendy projects and they've been working on digital currencies for years. Likewise, tranches of investments funds have been going into technology for decades. However, after puffing and bursting a housing bubble and educational bubble, is this the next place to jub other people's money? Is it Charles Stross' Accelerando coming to life? I don't know but I'll be very concerned if there is a financial wobble within the next month.

(External hyperlinks via Vinay Gupta, an Ethereum contributor, Ethereum evangelist and all-around great guy who helps the homeless.)


[Ed Note: Asking what is Ethereum? Me too. Additional information on the above topic can be found at the IB Times]

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  • (Score: 1) by dbv on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:21AM (1 child)

    by dbv (6022) on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:21AM (#506699)

    Could, doesn't look like, may. LOL. Pretty thin.

  • (Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday May 09 2017, @02:27AM

    by tftp (806) on Tuesday May 09 2017, @02:27AM (#506714) Homepage
    Not just "could" - was [wikipedia.org]. Some numbers [wikipedia.org]:

    The complaint published when Ulbricht was arrested included information the FBI gained from a system image of the Silk Road server collected on 23 July 2013. It noted that, "From February 6, 2011 to July 23, 2013 there were approximately 1,229,465 transactions completed on the site. The total revenue generated from these sales was 9,519,664 Bitcoins, and the total commissions collected by Silk Road from the sales amounted to 614,305 Bitcoins. These figures are equivalent to roughly $1.2 billion in revenue and $79.8 million in commissions, at current Bitcoin exchange rates...", according to the September 2013 complaint, and involved 146,946 buyers and 3,877 vendors.[12]

    This one site generated at least $2M in revenue daily - and that was retail. Transaction-wise, if you look at the chart [wikipedia.org], it would be six times as high.