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The Almighty Buck

Bitcoin and Ethereum Prices Are Surging Again (cnbc.com) 116

An anonymous reader quotes CNBC: Bitcoin is getting a Black Friday boost. The digital currency climbed above $8,700 to a record high Saturday following increased investor interest around the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday and Black Friday shopping. Bitcoin rose more than 6 percent to a record high of $8,725.13, according to CoinDesk, trading around $8,674 midday on Saturday. [Bitcoin passed $8,000 for the first time just six days earlier]. Another digital currency, ethereum, also hit an all-time high of $485.18, according to CoinMarketCap [rising more than 50% from $300 as recently as mid-November]...

The largest bitcoin exchange in the U.S., Coinbase, added about 100,000 accounts between Wednesday and Friday -- just around Thursday's Thanksgiving holiday -- to a total of 13.1 million. That's according to public data available on Coinbase's website and historical records compiled by Alistair Milne, co-founder and chief investment officer of Altana Digital Currency Fund. Coinbase had about 4.9 million users last November, Milne's data showed... The world's largest futures exchange, CME, is planning to list bitcoin futures in the second week of December...another step in establishing bitcoin as a legitimate asset class.

UPDATE (9/26/17): Sunday the price of Bitcoin surged past $9,000 -- just one week after surging past $8,000.
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Bitcoin and Ethereum Prices Are Surging Again

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  • If this isn't a lack of confidence vote on the state of fiat currency, Time magazine will be revealed as offering Kim Jong-un its Man of the Year award, upon a conditional photo shoot.
    • If this isn't a lack of confidence vote on the state of fiat currency,

      Fiat currencies are doing just fine. Inflation for the US dollar is at 2%. The Euro is at 1.5%. The Yen is at 0.7%. It took years of QE to get inflation up to even those levels. That doesn't indicate any lack of confidence.

      • Re:Cheese and Rice (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Sunday November 26, 2017 @12:51AM (#55623387) Homepage

        What is happening is bigger money Vulture capitalists are playing, push it up, sell, crash it down, buy and push it up, sell, crash it down, etc etc etc. They will be monitoring the entire state of play, depth of buys and sells, plus of course playing with main stream media, you people have zero protection from law because not a properly recognised currency and they will be manipulating exchange rates for all they are worth, up to the destruction of currency. Those arseholes manipulate whole countries currencies, what chance do you people think you have, boom, bust, boom, bust, get used to it.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          It's a legal pyramid scheme on a global scale. I'd be profoundly surprised if Big Finance (for lack of a better term) didn't already have their hands at the helm. I'm not much for conspiracy theories, but I am very sceptical about these articles claiming that "banks and exchanges are starting to show an interest in cryptocurrency". That interest would have been at maximum the second their financial analysts had a brief look at the crypto market.
          • Banks and exchanges are barely starting to look at this because the whole Cryptocurrency market is still pocket change compared to "traditional" financial world.
            Crypto market cap hovers at around 200 billion dollars(*), while an article from 2016(**) lists 60 major stock exchanges worldwide totaling 69 trillion dollars. Rounded up, it means Crypto represents 0.29% of the overall market.
            As I was saying... pocket change. Banks didn't even give a shit. They start giving a shit because the blip on the radar sta

        • by Xyrus ( 755017 )

          I'm going to laugh my ass off when Coinbase vanishes and cashes in it's chips.

      • And if you want to invest in a bubble, there's always the economic miracle of the Australian housing market.

  • by Darth Technoid ( 83199 ) on Saturday November 25, 2017 @09:58PM (#55623013)

    Surely there's no cap to the price of one Bitcoin. Why would there be! Naturally, there's a relevant HitchHiker's quote:

    "The Triganic Pu is a unit of galactic currency, with an exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu. This is simple enough, but, since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Ningis are not negotiable currency, because the Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change."

  • by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Saturday November 25, 2017 @10:12PM (#55623043)

    Once it exceeds ten grand, won't every transaction have to be reported to the Feds?

    • by Kaenneth ( 82978 )

      a 'coin'/BTC is just at arbitrary name for 100 million 'satoshi' Bitcoin will total 2,100,000,000,000,000 'Satoshi's (indirectly named after Ash from Pokemon...)

    • Why would it be? BitCoin is NOT currency, it is private (digital) property.

      You don't report to the Feds when you sell 10,000 WoW gold. Bitcoin is no different.

      • by doug141 ( 863552 )

        Aren't sales of private property are reported on Schedule D?

      • by Anonymous Coward

        The IRS would strongly disagree with you.

        And in the future when people get nailed for this there will be epic pissing and moaning about it.

      • Re:10000 (Score:4, Informative)

        by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Sunday November 26, 2017 @12:00AM (#55623295) Homepage
        Look up the term 'capital gain'.
      • The IRS disagrees with you [irs.gov]. If you realize a gain on bitcoin or use it for payment (or redemption) it must be reported like any other currency. Given the IRS ruling, in fact, traveling overseas with a BC wallet on your phone would mean you have to declare that as a monetary item above $10K, or face fines and jail time...
    • by Anonymous Coward

      It already is required to be reported, same as with Las Vegas. Any gain from a transaction must be reported as Income; losses are itemized separately, and cannot exceed gains. The $10K limit kicks in when a Transfer in Cash occurs, whether there is profit or loss.
      Bitcoin and similar schemes walk a fine line here as declaring themselves "Virtual"; no actual money changes hands, and is thus exempt. This may work in theory... until somebody Cashes out. Instant Income. Instant Income Tax. (Like-For-Like Transac

    • Move to Canada! Bitcoin has been over $10K for a over a week and it's now over $11K!

  • by Anonymous Coward

    With regards to transaction costs.

    The spot price for BTC is $9000.
    The last block mined was #496206

    It contained 2192 blockchain transactions
    It touched 13,456 BTC or which 1951 BTC was guessed to be the actual transaction and the rest change.
    The transaction fee was 1.59 BTC direct to the users and 12.5 in block reward.
    For the users, the 12.5 BTC dilution is a very small dilution cost compared to the 1.59, so this leaves a simple transaction fee of $9000 * 1.59 / 2192 = $6.52.

    But this is only part of the story

    • You appear to be unfamiliar with bitcoin and not one who actually uses it. You can buy btc for 0 fee, withdraw it to a personal wallet for 0 fee, and than transact for 5-10 pennies usd per transaction if you use the right exchange and wallet. Fees will also dramatically drop sub penny in 2018 with lightning network wallets which we are testing right now.

According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally worthless.

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