the blockbuster that is bitcoin
The rollercoaster ride for bitcoin investors continues unabated as they’ve seen its value recently fall by 40% from a high of $5000 to below £3000. The tumble came after Beijing-based Chinese authorities ordered a halt to trading in the crypto-currency amid fears that the increasing numbers of traders and investors could spark wider problems within traditional markets. Never one to miss an opportunity to put the knife in was Jamie Dimon, CEO of the largest US bank, JP Morgan, who immediately described the currency as ‘a fraud, a bubble, and the emperor with no clothes’. Way to go, Jamie, especially as bitcoin was devised directly as a result of Jamie’s actions.
During 2008 world governments were busy printing QE money, suppressing interest rates and bailing out the banks, JP Morgan included. Bitcoin was initiated to create an egalitarian monetary system outside of this control and manipulation, allowing individuals to bypass established payment processes and institutions. With its supply pre-determined from the onset and with every single transaction visibly recorded on a fully accessible ledger known as the blockchain, bitcoin represents the most transparent and anti-fraudulent of all monetary systems. It’s a publically accessible distributed and decentralised network. Dimon’s belligerent and aggressive stance comes across as no more than Kodak railing against the digital camera, Phillips arguing for the CD in the face of iTunes and HMV fighting its corner against Amazon.
No stranger to excessively fraudulent, corrupt and illegal product offerings, Dimon states he will sack ‘in a second’ any JP Morgan trader who deals in bitcoin, a product that has delivered a growth rate, in just two years, of over 1000%. Anyone who has seen the film ‘The Big Short’ and who regards these once-feted masters of the universe as little more than well-dressed charlatans will be shaking their heads in disbelief at his words. He is however completely correct in his belief that crypto-currencies do represent something of a bubble but so were tulips in the seventeenth century, railways in the nineteenth and the internet just a few short years ago. Furthermore, the value has suffered peaks and troughs but who’s to say it’s peaked at $5000 and troughed at $3000, certainly not I and certainly not Jamie Dimon.
If bitcoin was going to fail, it would have failed by now. The simple truth is that the bigger it gets, the greater the threat to traditional (and highly profitable) mechanisms it poses and the more difficult it becomes to shut-down. Yes, ultimately it needs to be adopted by both governments and financial institutions and yes, it needs to be regulated, but let’s not be fooled again by those with their snouts in the trough, bitcoin, and many others of the thousand-plus crypto-currencies that exist today, are here to stay.
Everyone should be putting a few % of their net worth into Crypto. I can see market cap increasing to trillions in the next 10years. The winners so far are going to be Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Zcash, Monero, NEO(the Chinese ETH) and Dash- these ones are in my opinion the best and safest bets. Safest is BTC amd ETH.