Bitcoin Price Continues Rising – Surpasses $14,000 Mark
The price of Bitcoin continued rising to unheard of levels yesterday and today and is now trading at well over $14,000 on some exchanges. It seems that institutional investors are looking at the crypto currency as a safe bet and there is also talk that the price could reach $19,000 by the end of the year. The imminent launch of Bitcoin futures traded by CME is also propelling Bitcoin to new highs. Negative comments from other financial analysts do not appear to have dented the crypto currency’s potential to continue rising.
Bitcoin’s rise however has not translated into any positive movements for the other crypto currencies that were all in the red yesterday. Amongst these was Ripple which continued dropping by at least 10% while Dash retreated to the high 600’s from its previous record levels of well over 800 – an almost 20% drop. Ethereum and Ethereum Classic also made substantial losses, going down by around 10% with Bitcoin Cash also disappointing.
Bitcoin price continues to rapid upward strides, gaining over $1,000 on Wednesday to firmly shatter the $12,000 milestone with a new all-time high of $12,947 (Coinbase).
The world’s first and largest cryptocurrency struck $12,000 earlier and, in doing so, expanded to a market cap of $200 billion for the first time in history. That dollar figure represents an 1100% gain since the turn of the year, when bitcoin began trading at $1,000 on January 1st.
Not content with dizzying heights, bitcoin’s momentum stuck and continued to gather pace as the records keep on tumbling.
At 06:30 (UTC), bitcoin price rose above $12,500 as continued optimism in global markets saw price peak to a new all-time high of $12,947 (Coinbase), a gain of nearly 10% on the day.
Market data on CoinmarketCap, which accounts trading in global markets and factors in price premiums, shows bitcoin price peaking above $13,000.
Legendary trader Mark Fisher sees similarities between the dramatic ascent of the bitcoin price and the trajectory that the silver price took during the 1970s.
Fisher, founder and CEO of futures clearing merchant MBF Clearing, told CNBC’s “Fast Money: Halftime Report” that he believes bitcoin’s dramatic year-to-date run-up is the modern-day equivalent of the silver run in the late 1970s following the collapse of the Bretton Woods system.
In January 1970, an ounce of silver was traded at an average of $6.08 Over the course of the decade, the silver price doubled, an understandable phenomenon considering that the U.S. dollar decoupled from the price of gold in 1971. However, in 1979, the price of silver began to explode, and by the end of the year, it had more than quadrupled. In January 1980, silver reached an all-time high of $49.45 — $111.84 in today’s dollars — after which it began a prolonged decline that ultimately saw it bottom out at $4.05 in 2001.
Bitcoin, meanwhile, has risen approximately 1,500% in the past year, and on Tuesday it pierced $12,000 for the first time.
Fisher chalks both price movements — including the implicit assumption that bitcoin will crash just as hard as silver did — up to the same phenomenon, namely that assets that at least appear to be disconnected from Wall Street capture the imaginations of retail investors.
“The reason people are so attracted to bitcoin is because people want something that’s actually moved dramatically, that there’s no Wall Street to it,” said Fisher. “The thing that every cab driver is talking about all day long.”
Of course, bitcoin is about to make its first foray into the Wall Street markets, because bitcoin futures are set to launch on derivatives exchange Cboe on Sunday — and Fisher is excited, even if he is not bullish on the “current iteration” of cryptocurrency.
“It’s going to be great volatility,” he said. “And for someone like me, who cares what it is, as long as it moves, right?”
A poll of former Texas congressman Ron Paul participated by more than 43,000 social media users has shown that the majority of respondents would rather have bitcoin over gold, US Treasury Bond, and the US dollar.
Survey shows Bitcoin popular among long term investors
On December 6, Paul ran a survey on Twitter to evaluate the preference of the market and general consumers on various stores of value. Paul provided four choices–Federal Reserve Notes (USD), Gold, Bitcoin, 10 Year US Treasury Bond–to a question which read:
“A wealthy person wants to gift you $10,000. You get to choose in which form you’ll take the gift. But there’s a catch: You must keep the gift in the form that you choose, and you can’t touch it for 10 years. In which form would you take the gift?”
More than 21,900 respondents chose bitcoin over the US dollar, gold, and US Treasury Bond as a better store of value and safe haven asset.
Is Bitcoin the Most Legitimate and Robust Store of Value?
On October 22, at the Money20/20 conference held in Las Vegas, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak stated that bitcoin as a stable store of value is better than gold and the US dollar. He emphasized the finite supply of bitcoin capped at 21 million and the decentralized structure of the cryptocurrencies as the two attributes that enable bitcoin to be the best store of value in the global market.
Wozniak also noted that while the US dollar and gold can be printed or mined indefinitely, there exists a supply of bitcoin which provides a maximum amount of bitcoin that can be produced.
“Gold gets mined and mined and mined. Maybe there’s a finite amount of gold in the world, but Bitcoin is even more mathematical and regulated and nobody can change mathematics,” said Wozniak, commenting on the transparent and peer-to-peer protocol of bitcoin.
In an interview with Fox Business, major US-based electronics retailer Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne also noted that in the long-term, general consumers will switch from the fiat currency system to real money like bitcoin and gold.
Byrne’s prediction of the shift in trend from fiat currencies to bitcoin and gold was accurately depicted by the poll conducted by former Texas congressman Ron Paul, which demonstrated that 90 percent of the 43,000 respondents would rather have bitcoin and gold over the US dollar and 10 Year US Treasury Bond.
“You think that’s a bubble? What do you think that fiat currency you carry around in your purse is? This dollar stuff, it’s just some fiat currency based on the surplus taxing authority of the U.S. Treasury of which I assert there is zero … It’s about time the world switches to real money. Either gold or bitcoin,” said Byrne, noting that fiat currencies have been declining over the past few years.
General consumers, especially millennials, have started to shift away from the global banking system to fintech applications and cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. As the fraudulent activities and deceptive operations of financial institutions become unravelled in the next few years, the value of decentralized and trustless financial systems will surge rapidly.
