Five days ago the make-believe currency Bitcoin hit $20,000. Today it crashed to $10,000, a plunge of 50%, before recovering to $12,000 (that's a 20% rise). Bitcoin has gone through repeated bouts of bubbles and bursting bubbles over its existence. A chart of its history looks like a roller-coaster.
Bitcoin is fetishized by Libertarian types who are into digital technology. They have fantasies of liberation from government control through technology and a neo-laissez-faire capitalism. This is magical thinking.
With every sharp rise in the price (NOT the value- it has no value) of Bitcoin, speculators pile in, driving the price up more. As in every market mania, there are shills who confidently assert the price will go much higher. (Some jackass insisted a few days ago that Bitcoin would go to $300,000.)
It's the same in other markets. A capitalist polemicist and a pseudo-economist came out with a book in 1999, "Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market." That would have been a fourfold increase, and they predicted it would be by 2002 or 2004. Guess what? Shortly thereafter stocks went into a major decline. And that was followed by the 2008 financial crisis, which caused the stock market to collapse.
Another fool, a "certified financial advisor," pushed a book, "Dow, 30,000 by 2008- Why It's Different This Time."
Yet another shill came out with a tome in 1999, "Dow 40,000: Strategies for Profiting from the Greatest Bull Market in History."
You can still buy this crap on Amazon, amazingly enough. Why anyone would want to buy very wrong, very bad predictions from the past is a puzzle.
For an explanation of what is genuinely destructive about Bitcoin, see "The Great Bitcoin Con Game and How It's Harming Everyone On Earth." (It contributes to global warming.)
https://taboo-truths.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-great-bitcoin-con-game-and-how-its.html
Bitcoin is fetishized by Libertarian types who are into digital technology. They have fantasies of liberation from government control through technology and a neo-laissez-faire capitalism. This is magical thinking.
With every sharp rise in the price (NOT the value- it has no value) of Bitcoin, speculators pile in, driving the price up more. As in every market mania, there are shills who confidently assert the price will go much higher. (Some jackass insisted a few days ago that Bitcoin would go to $300,000.)
It's the same in other markets. A capitalist polemicist and a pseudo-economist came out with a book in 1999, "Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market." That would have been a fourfold increase, and they predicted it would be by 2002 or 2004. Guess what? Shortly thereafter stocks went into a major decline. And that was followed by the 2008 financial crisis, which caused the stock market to collapse.
Another fool, a "certified financial advisor," pushed a book, "Dow, 30,000 by 2008- Why It's Different This Time."
Yet another shill came out with a tome in 1999, "Dow 40,000: Strategies for Profiting from the Greatest Bull Market in History."
You can still buy this crap on Amazon, amazingly enough. Why anyone would want to buy very wrong, very bad predictions from the past is a puzzle.
For an explanation of what is genuinely destructive about Bitcoin, see "The Great Bitcoin Con Game and How It's Harming Everyone On Earth." (It contributes to global warming.)
https://taboo-truths.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-great-bitcoin-con-game-and-how-its.html
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