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Bitcoin Businesses The Almighty Buck

A Small Fintech Stock Surged 2,600 Percent in a Week After Announcing It's a Crypto Company (bloomberg.com) 64

An anonymous reader shares a report: Fintech plus cryptocurrency equals about $7 billion. That's how much the value of LongFin surged to after the microcap's stock rocketed by as much as 2,600 percent since debuting Wednesday. Most of the gains came since Friday, when the company issued a press release saying it bought Ziddu.com, "a blockchain-empowered global micro-lending solutions provider" that transacts only in cryptocurrencies. LongFin joins a growing list of little-known companies that have seen their values soar after simply announcing plans to join the digital currency craze that's pushed the value of bitcoin past $300 billion. The microcap rallies are reminiscent of the height of the dot.com bubble, when virtually any company that put tech in its name found favor on the public markets.
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A Small Fintech Stock Surged 2,600 Percent in a Week After Announcing It's a Crypto Company

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    Yes. But it's not a proven bubble until we see on the cover of TIME magazine, or if that guy Mr. Allen starts pitching a book called "Multiple Streams of Cryptocurrency Income with No Money Down."

  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2017 @11:24AM (#55768905)

    Same shit as back then. A lot of people with more money than brains find something where they think for some odd reason that will generate money. How? They don't know. They don't understand it. But somehow that's gonna make money.

    Everyone who DOES know also knows that this can't work. At least not in the long run. But there's idiots with money throwing it at me, should I really tell them?

    I may be honest. But I'm not stupid.

    • You keep saying that and I keep making money... Litecoin is going to break $500 by the end of the week.

      • Go for it, find some MBA patsy and con him!

      • by Timothy2.0 ( 4610515 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2017 @11:44AM (#55769069)
        You keep making money? You must be selling before you hit the peak of the bubble and missing out on even better returns. But, like all bubbles, most will try to eek out a few more percent and eat it when this pump-and-dump finally bursts.
        • If I buy at $100, it goes up to $900 and then plummets, I might sell it at $400-500. Not at the peak, but I'd still make plenty of $$$.

          • by Anonymous Coward

            If I buy at $100, it goes up to $900 and then plummets, I might sell it at $400-500. Not at the peak, but I'd still make plenty of $$$.

            Sell it to who? The problem with a sudden crash is that the majority of people also trying to sell off in a panic. At the rate it takes transactions to clear now it will be even worse in such a rush so by the time it sells it might be down to $80.

            • It sells pretty much immediately. Hell you could have bought in when it was $80 a few weeks ago and cashed out today while its holding at around $320. Pretty nice return there for no work.

      • You keep saying that and I keep making money..

        Sure you do. We'll all pretend we believe you are getting rich.

        Litecoin is going to break $500 by the end of the week.

        You sound like all the fanbois on yahoo finance message boards shouting "to the moon!" trying to pump up their investment.

      • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

        You keep saying that and I keep making money... Litecoin is going to break $500 by the end of the week.

        So...how much have you actually cashed out, and how much of your "wealth" is stuck propping up the value like in Bitcoin?

    • Same shit as back then. A lot of people with more money than brains find something where they think for some odd reason that will generate money. How? They don't know. They don't understand it. But somehow that's gonna make money.

      Everyone who DOES know also knows that this can't work. At least not in the long run. But there's idiots with money throwing it at me, should I really tell them?

      I may be honest. But I'm not stupid.

      It doesn't have to make money in the long run if you are psychic enough, or lucky enough to predict when it starts to lose money and get out before then. Short term money gains are good enough if you're lucky enough or know something no one else does.

    • by slazzy ( 864185 )
      This is how things get flushed out. Right now there's thousands of crypto currencies, money flowing like crazy. In the end it will sort itself out, and the internet will have a nice simple, stable way to make micro payments finally. Ripple might either become adopted by more banks or force them to lower wire transfer fees. Steem might become a good alternative for publishers with dropping advertising revenue. Humanity will win in the end, in the mean time fortunes will be made and lost during this crazy tim
      • With the time it takes to clear, this is definitely unsuitable for micropayments where I want to be able to easily and quickly transfer very small amounts of money. Given the fees and the clearing literally taking longer and costing more than international money orders, this isn't what you're looking for.

    • by mysidia ( 191772 )

      This is people who are clueless about cryptocurrency and don't even know how to buy BTC most likely but they WANT to invest in it through their broker,
      AND they don't have the $$$$ or the ability to trade in futures ---- thus there's likely a huge demand for Cryptocoin-related stocks, but scant choices on the market to get the exposure.

    • As long as pensions, 401ks, corporate insurance budgets, hedge funds, and similar regulated money piles do not get direct or indirect exposure to this, I do not care.

      Let the monies reallocate to the lucky and smart ones. They clearly will do much better investing with it than the losers.

      In my short time on earth, I have seen a few bubbles and what I learned is that people NEVER learn. They have too much âoeIt will not be me.â Or âoeIt is different this time.â.

      Honestly it is a cheap lesso

    • by ranton ( 36917 )

      Same shit as back then. A lot of people with more money than brains find something where they think for some odd reason that will generate money. How? They don't know. They don't understand it. But somehow that's gonna make money.

      That is part of it, but mostly it is because they cannot find anything more worthwhile to invest in. Profits are way up but consumer income is not, so there isn't enough demand for investment in traditional sectors. So significant money gets thrown at anything which could be the next big thing, such as AI or crypto-currency. The only other substantive options are to buy back a greater percentage of ownership through stock buy backs or real estate investment.

    • by eepok ( 545733 )
      When you accept that they're not investors, but speculators, it all make sense. They're complicit in the pump-and-dump plan of this particular bubble.
      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        It is called "Greater fool Theory": The fools buying now hope that there are even greater fools around that will later buy from them. And it works for a while, because there are a lot of fools in the human race.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      It is close to organized religion in the benefits the participants actually get (read: next to nothing), but organized religion usually takes a long-term, strategic approach. As religion is still doing fine in this supposed age of enlightenment, is it any surprise that other scams also find plenty of victims? Humans are, as a general rule, stupid. About 10-15% are an exception to the rule, but the rest just cannot help it. They do understand _nothing_, but they are unaware of that.

  • by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2017 @11:26AM (#55768925)

    Fintech plus cryptocurrency equals about $7 billion. That's how much the value of LongFin surged to after the microcap's stock rocketed by as much as 2,600 percent since debuting Wednesday.

    Wow, it feels like the dotcom boom all over again. Companies with shitty business models getting astronomical valuations because they put .com after the name of the company. Too many greedy people chasing too few real businesses. If you need evidence that there is a bubble, here you have it. Only question is when will it pop.

    • by mysidia ( 191772 )

      Wow, it feels like the dotcom boom all over again.

      Early dotCom, like 1993-ish. The first applications of cryptocoins have been emerging..... we still don't have our equivalent to Windows '95 yet that brought internet into the operating system as a default feature and launched a million ecommerce companies, many destined to fail.

      Although it could start to get a bit wild: if Coinbase starts adds some of these altcoins.

    • Time to start looking for the last greater fool so you can cash out on all those tulips.
    • Only the magnitude is much higher.

      During the dotcom, it was the pump and dumps getting dozens of millions of dollars, or in a few semi-legit cases that eventually went bust, hundreds of millions of dollars. It wasn't all that long ago...

      This company that no one heard of before today is suddenly work 7,000 million dollars (7 Billion)? Of what? How? Crazy. There are whole established industries that aren't worth that.

      This whole thing is blowing my mind. I have a feeling it is going to get bigger, maybe even m

  • by Hal_Porter ( 817932 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2017 @11:34AM (#55768979)

    Porter Industries will henceforth be known as Porter Blockchain Bitcoin Cryptocurrency Litecoin Dogecoin Much Crypto Hype Very Wow Industries.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Pump and Dump (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2017 @11:42AM (#55769049)

    This is probably nothing more than a pump and dump [wikipedia.org] scheme in action. They happen all the time and they tend to happen a lot during bubbles. The dotcom bubble was positively loaded with them.

    • by eepok ( 545733 )
      Absolutely. I'm glad someone else sees it. If it's not an explicit pump-and-dump strat with this one particular company, then it's, at the very least, part of the greater pump-and-dump speculators plan for the entirety of crypto/blockchain. They're willing to partake because they know they have the massive amounts of small money investors in now and when some of the bigger money panics and pulls out, the rest of the big money will be able to sell quicker than the small investors who will be left with severe
    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      As long as the supply of idiots with some way to get cash does not dry up, "Pump and Dump" will continue to work.

  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2017 @12:56PM (#55769519)

    And that is it. Unless you are stupid and desperately tying to sound "hip". Using the already well defined short form "crypto" for "cryptographic currency" is an utter fail.

  • It's possible that Fintech holds patents in the field of cryptocurrency. Just to name a few companies: Goldman Sachs, Mastercard, Bank of America, and Coinbase. I think it's time we all take this cryptocurrency seriously and stop comparing it to tulips and dot.com bust. Thousands of public companies are valued in the hundreds of billions. Fact is, people are fed up with rising costs and falling incomes. It doesn't help when the money that people depend on is own by a cartel of banks who honestly have no

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