Bitcoin's 8th Anniversary: Important Milestones
Over the past 12 months, bitcoin has reached some significant milestones including reaching a three-year-high price, surpassing 15 million wallets in circulation and introduction of many on-chain and off-chain scaling solutions.
Jan. 3 marks Bitcoin’s 8th anniversary since its introduction in 2009. Over the past 12 months, Bitcoin has reached some significant milestones, including reaching a three-year high price, surpassing 15 mln wallets in circulation and the introduction of many on-chain and off-chain scaling solutions.
$1,000 milestone
On the first day of trading in 2017, Bitcoin reached a $1,000 milestone, surpassing $1,020 for the first time in three years. It is also very close to reaching its all-time high price of $1,160 and many experts, including Vinny Lingham, predict Bitcoin to surpass it in early 2017.
While there exist many reasons that have contributed to Bitcoin’s recent price rally, analysts lay out the three most important factors. The first is the global economic uncertainty, followed by the rising Fed rates and the devaluation of certain currencies and thirdly, the increase in demand in conjunction with a decrease in supply.
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ALTWARS: MONERO BEATS LITECOIN TO 4TH BIGGEST MARKET CAP
Monero (XMR) is challenging the top four cryptocurrencies by market cap, having beaten Litecoin January 3 to reach an all-time high of $227.1 billion.
MONERO TAUNTS LITECOIN
The privacy-centric altcoin is at press time hovering just below Litecoin’s $222.9 million cap again, making it the fifth-largest according to CoinCap.io.
The entry into the top four marks a continuation of an eye-wateringly successful six months for Monero, the value of which as recently as August stood at just $2 per coin. Now, it is almost $17.
While the market cap is certainly shy of the $1 billion predicted by Roger Ver in October, things show little sign of slowing down. Indeed, the move by major exchanges to begin trading Monero seems to have put an end to even the developers’ own conservatism, which that same month came in the form of shutting down its Monero Marketplace due to lack of usage.
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Financial Times Writer Says Bitcoin is Worth “Zero”. A Response.
It has now become a familiar ritual. As soon as bitcoin’s price rises, a Keynesian economist will take the microphone and tell us that bitcoin is actually worth nothing as New York Times blogger Paul Krugman did when he called bitcoin evil without any elaboration after bitcoin reached its all-time high in late 2013.
Krugman, still licking his wounds from the complete defeat of the left’s economic and wider policies in the recent historical election, can hardly have much to say, so passing the baton to Dan McCrum, a journalist for the highly respected Financial Times and a former equities trader at Citi.
Instead of informing and educating his audience, as is his duty, McCrum tells us that even though the market is valuing one bitcoin at $1,000, it is actually worth zero. The reason apparently is because bitcoin is tiny compared to world GDP and its $16 billion market cap or hundreds of million if not a billion in day trading can effectively be rounded to zero. Regurgitating a tired and old debate, he concludes that it’s a ponzi scheme because for it to grow new value must come in. Presumably, this is different from the stock price of equities which increase because of new money, in the process creating new value such as cost savings or efficiency gains, thus incentivizing more investors to invest, until eventually it is replaced by something better.
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