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Bitcoin Businesses The Almighty Buck

The Bitcoin Bubble (economist.com) 284

A reader shares an Economist article: More people will trade in Bitcoin and that means more demand, and thus the price should go up. But what is the appeal of Bitcoin? There are really three strands; the limited nature of supply; fears about the long-term value of fiat currencies in an era of quantitative easing; and the appeal of anonymity. The last factor makes Bitcoin appealing to criminals creating this ingenious valuation method for the currency of around $570. These three factors explain why there is some demand for Bitcoin but not the recent surge. The supply details have if anything deteriorated (rival cryptocurrencies are emerging); the criminal community hasn't suddenly risen in size; and there is no sign of general inflation. A possible explanation is the belief that blockchain, the technology that underlines Bitcoin, will be used across the finance industry. But you can create blockchains without having anything to do with Bitcoin; the success of the two aren't inextricably linked. A much more plausible reason for the demand for Bitcoin is that the price is going up rapidly. People are not buying Bitcoin because they intend to use it in their daily lives (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). People are buying Bitcoin because they expect other people to buy it from them at a higher price; the definition of the greater fool theory.
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The Bitcoin Bubble

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    Really? Dick move.

    Unshorten.it [unshorten.it] reveals that the actual link is: https://getpocket.com/redirect? [getpocket.com]

    Haha! a spam link to a product completely unrelated to the supposed story.

    Nice "work" there msmash...

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      *correction: full link: https://getpocket.com/redirect?&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Fblogs%2Fbuttonwood%2F2017%2F11%2Fgreater-fool-theory-0&h=f46558eae82843f2d97ae0f83b27d5c96431d25a77a4cce46b92217422addada&nt=b7fecU93gH942ym [getpocket.com]

      So it appears the story is actually on the Economist. So someone posted a link to goo.gl which redirects to getpocket.com which finally redirects to economist.com.

      Wasn't Chrome going to put a stop to this asshattery?

    • by msmash ( 4491995 ) Works for Slashdot on Thursday November 09, 2017 @09:20AM (#55518767)
      Yes, I really just link to goo.gl. Why? Because it's an Economist article, which sits behind a paywall. So I instead funnelled the article through Pocket service -- a common way to break paywall -- so that most readers see an unpaywalled version of the story. Now, getpocket [dot] com wouldn't make much sense to others, but goo [dot] gl will make it clear to people that the link has been shortened.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Well done and well said. You catch a lot of undue flack.

      • by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) *
        archive.is [archive.is] is, IME, a better way to break through paywalls. I use it all the time for WSJ links, and it looks like it'll also work for the Economist: https://archive.fo/4xW6A [archive.fo]. (They have multiple TLDs, any one of which might be the one used for any given article.)
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09, 2017 @09:06AM (#55518691)

    "7 cents? That's outrageous, the bubble will pop soon!"
    "70 cents? Such foolishness, who would ever pay that much for a single bitcoin?!"
    "7 dollars? Bitcoin is a scam, who's fool enough to fall for it? Stay away!"
    "70 dollars? Look, it's definitely a bubble, it will pop anytime now."
    "700 dollars? That's like the tulip mania! Don't ever touch bitcoin unless you want to lose a lot of money"
    "7000 dollars? Again, it's a bubble, only a true idiot would buy bitcoins, trust me!"

    When a single btc will be worth $70k, those idiots will still spew their usual nonsense.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by KHKw2k ( 5148547 )
      I was hoping there would be one of the many many "this bubble will go forever because it's totally not a bubble!" folk in here. Thank you for not disappointing. :) That said, I'll bet all my 0btc that btc will break 10k before it crashes, and if it ever stabilizes to behave like a currency it'll trade really favorably against the dollar.
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I don't think that the argument you replied to suggests it will go on forever, it is a fair critique of the "soon" crowd.

        That crowd always picks some subjective reason why bitcoin will fall apart. Some of them are hilarious....like that it isn't backed by a government. They also never set even a rough date when this falling apart will happen.

        Essentially they are making claims that can't be disproved, which alone is enough to ignore them regardless of how many bitcoin one owns.

        • It will be spectacular when it does go down.

          Bitcoin is different in that the global number of transactions per second is limited. Only about 7 people can sell per second, in the entire world.

          Wanna sell yours? Either you sell for cents on the dollar or you ain't selling at all.

          When that happens I'm gonna put in some _really_ low bids for bitcoins.

          • Only about 7 people can sell per second, in the entire world.

            Wrong. When your bitcoins are on an exchange, there's no limit to how fast you can trade.

            Besides, why would you want to sell ? Anybody who's been holding bitcoin over the last couple of years has already seen a crazy rollercoaster ride. People like that don't freak out easily.

            When that happens I'm gonna put in some _really_ low bids for bitcoins.

            And someone else will do the same, but with a slightly higher bid.

      • "Against the dollar" really is the key phrase. There's a scenario where bitcoin holders can basically take over the federal reserve functionality, if Fed keeps printing money and Wall st. keeps stashing it in bitcoin, inflationary signs will never appear because if they do it right they've created a parallel economy the Fed is pumping up. There's a seemingly absurd point where the valuation of bitcoin becomes higher than the valuation of the tech that supports it, but really you can't say where the ceiling

    • by jabberw0k ( 62554 ) on Thursday November 09, 2017 @09:33AM (#55518843) Homepage Journal
      Meinherr, tulips have risen to 3,000 guilders per bulb, and show no signs of a "bubble."
    • by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Thursday November 09, 2017 @09:51AM (#55518931)

      Actually I'm lately hearing this line of argument:

      "7 cents? That's outrageous, the bubble will pop soon!"
      "70 cents? Such foolishness, who would ever pay that much for a single bitcoin?!"
      "7 dollars? Bitcoin is a scam, who's fool enough to fall for it? Stay away!"
      "70 dollars? My barber recommends Bitcoin, and so does my dog walker..."
      "700 dollars? Okay, now I'm buying in."
      "7000 dollars? I'm riding this to the stars. Desert Rat Blog is calling for $100,000 BTC by 2020!"

    • by e_pluribus_funk ( 648835 ) on Thursday November 09, 2017 @10:14AM (#55519049)
      "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

      Just because the price of Bitcoin keeps rising does not mean it's not a bubble. Literally every other bubble has the same evangelists spouting off the various reasons why it's not a bubble and why this time it's different.

      The argument that the recent meteoric rise in Bitcoin is due to a herd speculators rather than demand for Bitcoin currency as a currency vehicle is probably the correct one. And if there's one thing that herds do is stampede. Sooner or later, they are going to stampede for the exit and your $7,000 bitcoin is going to plummet back to somewhere near what the true transactional and holding value of BC is.
    • When a single btc will be worth $70k, those idiots will still spew their usual nonsense.

      Why not just say $70 bazillion gillion trillion? Oh, because maybe then everyone would see how fucking ridiculous it is to think that a commodity can go on increasing in value ad infinitum.

    • There's a difference between "worth" and "price". Bitcoin has near zero worth and lots of price. Such a disparity cannot go on forever. With so much of the supply in the hands of so few, price manipulation aimed at robbing small players is a real possibility/probability.

      Tulip bulbs went through a similar price/worth mismatch.

    • Simple question, for you and for anyone who can answer it:

      What is the currency value of the BTC you have cashed out?

      I see tons of talk about holding or buying , but if you're not able to get it out, you're just financing speculators, not yourself.
  • by davidhorat ( 1198081 ) on Thursday November 09, 2017 @09:22AM (#55518769)
    If you really believe that, just short it instead of writing a slashdot article :)
    • by MangoCats ( 2757129 ) on Thursday November 09, 2017 @09:26AM (#55518797)

      It's not easy to short obvious bubbles, like the subprime mortgage market.

      Once somebody figures out how to, that's probably the end of the upward spiral.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09, 2017 @09:42AM (#55518895)

        It's not that you can't short a bubble, it's that you need huge reserves to do it. You'll constantly be making a loss until the bubble bursts and having to increase your investment to continue to both recover your previous investment and earn a profit. In a bubble markets are irrational so that can be a very long time. It'll eventually pay off (if it really was a bubble), but you'll go bankrupt first. On the other hand if you can spot the bubble really is about to burst and it actually does you can potentially profit from a much smaller investment (so 'obvious' bubbles are actually easier to short), but just because there's a Bitcoin bubble doesn't mean it's going to burst yet.

        • Also if you're really good at shorting you might put the institution you bet with in trouble. One of the issues that came up with traders that shorted the housing market was that they didn't get paid until longer after the housing market bubble had burst. The banks who wrote the shots were liable for billions that they didn't want to pay.
      • by Rolgar ( 556636 )

        Actually, shorting will actually drive up the price of an asset in an increasing market. Consider this:

        Investor one owns the stock, and intends to hold it for a long term, but would like to make some additional money, and loans it to the short seller, who pays him a usage fee (think rent) for the stock, when he then sells but is contractually obligated to return to the buyer after he has reacquired it at the market price when he buys it.

        The shorter, then sells the stock creating negligible downward pressure

    • by frank_adrian314159 ( 469671 ) on Thursday November 09, 2017 @09:41AM (#55518885) Homepage

      A short strategy might not work anyway... As a wise man once said, "The market can stay irrational much longer than a man can stay solvent."

  • by shaitand ( 626655 ) on Thursday November 09, 2017 @09:24AM (#55518781) Journal
    There are more than three reasons. The question begging here assumes the only legitimate usage of bitcoin is among criminals. This is patently false. There are nations with less than ideal currencies where bitcoin is commonly being used as exchange currency. Even a poor nation can support more currency than the total bitcoin economy and bitcoin is global. Bitcoin has a property that no other currency is proven to have (including alt cryptocurrencies) transactions are not reversible and bitcoin cannot be counterfeited.

    "People are buying Bitcoin because they expect other people to buy it from them at a higher price; the definition of the greater fool theory."

    False. Bitcoin circulates, it has underlying value, and it is deflationary. Every day bitcoin goes out of circulation as people lose access to wallets. I myself have lost access to at least 25 bitcoin over the years and nobody else has access either... that would be $187,500 at the $7500 per 1.0 btc I saw the other day. Bitcoin has had a number of bubbles and when those bubbles pop people panic and sell at a loss. When those buy in to the next bubble they buy at higher prices. This create a floor where people are generally invested at a higher price and their willingness to sell stops at a higher price. Also because bitcoin has been following that bubble, pop, bigger bubble cycle consistently since it's inception with first notable bubble being dollar parity the confidence in bitcoin is increasing over time, this too will slow the selloffs and when combined with the fact that genuinely new investors eventually slow to a trickle will mean smaller and smaller bubbles.

    There is no absolute reason for any particular price on bitcoin to be a ceiling so long as the market is fluid. In fact the 1.0 BTC mark needs to grow quite a bit more for price stability so that there aren't investors who can notably move the market. I believe I calculated something like $10,000 per 1.0 BTC back when SR1 was operating. If there is too great a disparity between where most people bought and the current price those people will cash out when the growth appears to slow.

    The recent bubble is largely because financial institution scale investors have begun investing. I don't know how safe it is to assume that can't continue to feed for quite awhile. Bitcoin is not open to the puny little wallstreet stock market type investor, it is open to global investment on a Forex level scale. It is not unreasonable at this point to think Bitcoin is only proven cryptocurrency or blockchain implementation at this point and will not go away in the forseeable future. That leaves room for a multi-trillion dollar market, not a few billion.
    • by MangoCats ( 2757129 ) on Thursday November 09, 2017 @09:28AM (#55518805)

      The thing I find hillarious is the belief in anonymity which, while effectively true for a short time, is actually counter to the whole concept of what is a blockchain.

      If you have a real blockchain, transactions are anti-anonymous.

    • by Luthair ( 847766 ) on Thursday November 09, 2017 @09:47AM (#55518915)

      underlying value,

      This is entirely false, bitcoin only has value because people think it does. Copper has an underlying value, even if markets aren't speculating on it there will always be a buyer with a use for it as a conductor willing to pay something for it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It is comforting to me that one of the pro-bubble arguments the author makes is:

      People aren't buying bitcoin to use in their daily lives

      Protip: we don't buy stocks to use in our daily lives either. Or gold, or bonds, foreign currencies, or futures of any sort, or shorts, or MBS, or mutual funds, or.....
      The author doesn't seem to have thought his whole argument through very well.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        None of those things you mention claim to be currency (except foreign currency, which literally its only value is that other people use it as a currency and as such is the most risky of all your examples for investments). A currency that you don't use in your daily life is pointless. But bitcoins only value is as a currency. Seriously, what is the point of a currency you don't use? Every one of your examples you don't buy to use as currency. You buy gold as an investment (a poor investment at that, but

    • There are more than three reasons. The question begging here assumes the only legitimate usage of bitcoin is among criminals. This is patently false. There are nations with less than ideal currencies where bitcoin is commonly being used as exchange currency.

      I'd like some real, verifiable examples of how bitcoin is even useful in an ordinary person's every day life in one of those countries rather than "It's true because I say so".

      False. Bitcoin circulates, it has underlying value, and it is deflationary. Every day bitcoin goes out of circulation as people lose access to wallets. I myself have lost access to at least 25 bitcoin over the years and nobody else has access either... that would be $187,500 at the $7500 per 1.0 btc I saw the other day.

      I'm sorry but this is going to be really mean spirited. What exactly does this say about both you and bitcoin that this even true? Should we even be paying attention to a person who basically admitted that through either his own incompetence or the insecurity of bitcoin that over $187,000 worth of bit coins went into the bit bucke

    • I think you've misread the article. The author doesn't assume the only legitimate usage among criminals. Rather, he posits three potential contributors to the high value- one of which is potential usefulness to criminals.

      The article also addresses the deflationary aspect. Yes, Bitcoin itself is deflationary by design, but nothing prevents other cryptocurrencies from being issued- and they are indeed being issued on a fast and furious pace. At the end of the day, the only thing that really distinguishes bitc

    • by jwymanm ( 627857 )
      Great comment. I agree. I think Bitcoin will be worth 100k and then 1 million each eventually assuming it stays on top and another alt coin doesn't chew it up. It has a continues to have a great majority of this new market and like you said it is a global market so 7500$ is puny for a coin value with 8 decimal points.
    • False. Bitcoin circulates, it has underlying value, and it is deflationary

      Um, no. While Bitcoin does circulate - it's has precisely no underlying value. It's completely hypothetical.

      And what Bitcoin shills fail to grasp is that deflationary is a bug, not a feature. Being deflationary limits the maximum size of the economy that can be built on it. Being deflationary encourages people to buy in and hold with the intent of recouping that investment at a higher price. (This removes currency from ci

  • by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) on Thursday November 09, 2017 @09:24AM (#55518785) Homepage

    When cryptocurrency ultimately gains traction, it'll be because some major institution or government decides to implement it on scale. The world is never going to trust their money to the good folks who brought us Magic The Gathering The Online Currency Exchange, Dogecoin, and "oh, that's bad--well let's just try to get everyone to agree to fork the entire danged currency." They just won't. There's a fundamental, irreparable lack of gravity, responsibility, and accountability in the cryptocurrency world today.

    People on the outside see cryptocurrency as one part hobby, one part religion, one part social experiment, one part speculation, and one part black market. Frankly, they're right--and they're right not to touch it with a ten-foot pole.

  • by GeekWithAKnife ( 2717871 ) on Thursday November 09, 2017 @09:32AM (#55518835)

    Firstly Bitcoin is NOT anonymous and all payments CAN be tracked. The tools to do so are not terribly accessible and when they are then they are not sophisticated enough.

    The WizTec team have found the Mt Gox stolen funds and that has lead to Alexander Vinnik's arrest. So No, it is not anonymous.

    Gold and BTC has some commonalities. There is no particular reason to buy gold beyond a store of value. That in itself is a utility.

    Yes, gold is used in other application but those are not the main reason for its price. There is a limited availability, supply rate and a finite amount of resources. That is very similar to BTC. BTC has an advantage because it's so much easier to transfer. Try moving 100kg of gold between borders as a method of payment...

    As BTC demand grows because of its utility to store and transfervalue easily without a centralised authority to control flow so will its usefulness grow. More tools and methods to handle BTC will reach every day people.

    BTC IS A BUBBLE. There is no doubt it is a bubble. Stocks are a bubble, bonds, the housing market and in deed the economy is a bubble too. Should we simply not invest in anything because its a bubble?

    The greater fool is a classic example of the Tulip bubble mania and the psychology behind it. This does not fully apply to BTC because BTC has a utility that utility gives intrinsic value. There may be much better ways to do the same exact thing that BTC does today, indeed from a technological perspective there are except they are not as well know and are not as widely endorsed.

    History is riddled with superior failed products. So BTC has the advantage, has an amazing Dev team. They are in the lead in multiple fronts and recent shakedowns with BCH and SegwitX2 etc are passed.

    We know BTC is resilient, we know large financial bodies cannot crash it and we know its growing in adoption.

    I recommend that each person evaluate and do their own research as to the utility of Bitcoin. You may find that buying $1000 worth of it today can make for a very nice retirement bonus.

    It is unclear which currency or token will come to dominate but we all know the blockchain and by extension distributed ledgers will replace fiat money.

    One parting comparison to tulips. In the tulip mania you had to buy 1 whole tulip at outrageous price without any utility. You do not have to buy a whole Bitcoin. You can buy fractions. If buying a fraction of something to sell at a greater cost, like stocks, houses etc, is only for fools then investors anywhere are fools.
    • by Khyber ( 864651 )

      "There is no particular reason to buy gold beyond a store of value."

      Spoken like someone that doesn't work in the lapidary industry. Meanwhile, I'll continue my solder work on this $100 22k hand-hammered chunk of gold shank, put in a nice little 2 carat imperial-grade fire agate, and sell it for about $1,500 in a week or two.


      • Exactly. Practically no use for it. It's a utility in some boards perhaps.

        You can coat a phone in gold and sell it for $20k too. Still just a phone. If it came with 2 BTC in a "cold wallet" it too would sell for as much in a week or two.

        What about pearls? Do they have value? - they didn't until they were MARKETED next to expensive social status items.

        Social status items give a status "utility" but it's mostly a fashion. It has no true utility. BTC does.

        In some way your work and BTC are very vulnerab
        • by Khyber ( 864651 )

          "Exactly. Practically no use for it. It's a utility in some boards perhaps."

          Or as a dental agent, or as a binding agent for vaccines or antibiotics or other medications, used in makeup (so you can get laid and reproduce) and much more than your narrow viewpoint demonstrates.

          "What about pearls? Do they have value? - they didn't until they were MARKETED next to expensive social status items. "

          Wow your lapidary history knowledge is highly lacking. The pearl trade was quite alive and well for a very, VERY long

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by ravrazor ( 69324 )
      I've been going back on forth on this for years. Bought at $1000 and sold 90% of everything last week. Nice gain, but I'm very concerned about the logic of everything...

      The problem I see is where all the bitcoins are currently - as I can tell by research, China has been mining them for years, and their computational capacity sure outweighs the solar-powered PC in some guy's backyard. This MUST preclude the US government introducing any federal acceptance of bitcoins as legal tender, simply because the US
  • by Martin S. ( 98249 ) on Thursday November 09, 2017 @09:35AM (#55518849) Journal

    The very same characteristics are displayed by bitcoin. The most important one is increasing artificial scarcity fuelled by late comers and secondly there is no intrinsic value.

    Blockchain has a future, just like the concept of joint stock companies survived the Southsea bubble.

    http://www.historic-uk.com/His... [historic-uk.com]

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09, 2017 @09:37AM (#55518861)

    Not sure why people think Bitcoin is anonymous, but the blockchain is necessarily completely public and it's not that hard connecting transactions with real people and organizations.

  • by JoeyRox ( 2711699 ) on Thursday November 09, 2017 @09:48AM (#55518919)
    The best way to determine whether a market is in a bubble is when the "dumb" money has not only entered the market but believes they are qualified to advise others as well. There is ample evidence of this on YouTube. Same exact thing happened during the most recent stock market and real estate bubbles. Cab drivers, hair dressers, even strippers, all talking about their investment and telling others why they can't lose.
  • Purchasers of Bitcoin have surplus earnings and are looking to diversify savings, same as CDs, bonds, stocks, gold coins, REITs and other investments. The argument that it's a bubble "because people don't intend to use/consume it" is just speculating on speculation. Bitcoin bubbles will probably occur, as do stock, REIT, bonds, gold coins, etc., but the summary reads like a mod 1 opinion. Even if you put surplus cash under your mattress, you taking an action not to use it, and that does not define a "bub
  • Its a well known phenomena that investors will often buy in high and sell low. When prices are high people feel they need to get in on the action so they don't miss out.

  • Just like cash, but you can ship it between continents in less than a second. If this use of bitcoin rises as more people try out cryptocurrency, exchange rate against dollar will also rise. It's true that pure speculators holding lots of bitcoin passively can inflate the value further, just like with any currency. Also, bitcoin could concievably fade to obscurity because another cryptocurrency wins people over. But we can expect cryptocurrencies as a whole to appreciate as they gain adoption in the coming

  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday November 09, 2017 @10:13AM (#55519043)

    It's actually pretty easy when you ponder for a moment.

    We're currently in a situation not unlike that of the late 1920s. There is an enormous amount of money pooled on the investment side that is sorely lacking anything to invest in, pretty much for the same reasons: WAY more supply than demand. With a lack of demand, there is nothing "normal" you can sensibly invest your money in, it is simply not very lucrative to open a business or to finance one if said business cannot make any business for a lack of demand.

    Investors back then simply parked their money in shares which drove the price for shares up. That in turn caused the middle class to turn their head. Their motivation to invest was a vastly different one. They were usually not the ones to invest in shares, their form of wealth accumulation was traditionally more one of savings and maybe bonds, but with those pretty much being destroyed by a low interest policy (and back then also the fallout with war bonds that suddenly turned out to be worthless and thus destroying faith in that form of investment), they were now looking for an alternative too, and found one in shares that looked like it wasn't that risky because, hey, they keep rising and rising! And at worst, I'll lose what I put in, and I don't get any money for savings anyway.

    This is basically where bitcoins are now. My hope now is that the third act isn't repeated. Because back then people thought "Hey. Interest rates are at an all time low, share revenue is between five and ten times the loan interest, the more I take out, the higher my profit!"

    We know the rest.

  • And once people realize this (ACTUALLY realize it, not the soft acknowledgement "but I can still make money right now"), it's going to course-correct SO hard.

  • But what is the appeal of Bitcoin? There are really three strands; the limited nature of supply; fears about the long-term value of fiat currencies in an era of quantitative easing; and the appeal of anonymity.

    And the fourth: veto-proof reliability. IMHO that totally overwhelms the relatively weak reasons listed above.

    If you sell a product or service over the Internet, you need some way for people to pay you. Every single one of those, except cryptocurrencies, are unreliable, because it requires a third pa

  • and I've been wrong for many years. it could crash pretty hard and still be far above where it was back when I started predicting imminent disaster. Still wouldn't touch it though.
  • ..there might be a supporting reason. With gold being manipulated by China and the U.S. to allow China to accumulate gold reserves as a hedge against the devaluation of their dollar denominated reserves, the store-of-value perception of gold may be damaged. Some may be going to Bitcoin as an alternative store-of-value that actually follows a market.
  • by mysidia ( 191772 ) on Thursday November 09, 2017 @01:35PM (#55520441)

    More people will trade in Bitcoin and that means more demand, and thus the price should go up. But what is the appeal of Bitcoin? There are really three strands; the limited nature of supply; fears about the long-term value of fiat currencies in an era of quantitative easing; and the appeal of anonymity.

    These are NOT factual statements; Bitcoin could have other appeals to people than acknowledge, AND this might be in error, and yet Slashdot is writing as if these are established facts, rather than stating what person's opinion this is. As a matter of fact, the "appeal of anonymity" might be even more bogus, since Bitcoin transactions are recorded and public forever.

    These three factors explain why there is some demand for Bitcoin but not the recent surge. The supply details have if anything deteriorated

    Because the author doesn't even bring in significant happenings and events related to the technology.
    It's like "find reason to reject X other things I constructed, therefore this other theory I have must be true"

    People are buying Bitcoin because they expect other people to buy it from them at a higher price; the definition of the greater fool theory.

    Well, that might be true for some or not, maybe the expect to transact in it, and for it to gain in value as they transact in BTC.

  • What an obvious hit piece.

    A much more plausible reason for the demand for Bitcoin is that the price is going up rapidly

    Plausible WHY?

    It's a brand new thing maybe there are brand new forces at work here....there is just zero reasoning in this article. "Bubble....speculation" repeated again and again.
    This is just the establishment shitting its pants and trying to smear some on Bitcoin.

    anonymity is good....for criminals

    This is literally what it says.
    "The only people who want to use Bitcoin and/or cash are criminals"
    Yes, everyone who doesn't want to be a slave is a "criminal".
    And as They try to codify this conception through their boug

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