A single Bitcoin is now worth an astonishing $85,000:
In case you're curious, yes, the recent surge started on Election Day.
Why? Since it's Bitcoin I suppose there not much point in asking. But there are two competing explanations. First, Donald Trump is going to be very crypto friendly, building a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and appointing lax true believers to loosen regulations on crypto trading.
But this involves believing what Trump said on the campaign trail, which is an iffy proposition indeed.
The other explanation is that crypto fans believe Bitcoin is a hedge against recessions. That makes it a good investment since Trump is likely to tank the economy.
Take your pick. They both make about as much sense.
Or perhaps it is because the criminal class needs its currency of choice. With the new administration I expect more grifting and criming and thus more bitcoin.
Sigh. You don't understand crypto but you still bloviate about it displaying your ignorance to the world.
Bitcoin is not a stable store of value. It is a vehicle for stupid speculation based on the assumption that there will be more bigger fools to sell it to in the future.
The currencies of choice for criminals are the various stable coins.
Wow you are first class moron. My comment was in jest (though it is a fact that many ransomware attacks want to be paid in crypto).
It's neither of those, although they're certainly non-zero factors.
Bitcoin is essentially a meme stock. It has minimal real value and exists only to be pumped and dumped, repeatedly.
I also take the crypto surges to be essentially the market's anticipation that Trump will do as much as he can to bring back easy money/cheap financing - whether on purpose by destroying the Fed's independence or because he triggers a recession and the Fed has to drop rates back down so low that all the cash in the system goes off in search of any ROI that isn't 2% or less.
It's why crypto was such a thing in 2020-2022, and it's part of why home prices are so fucking insane. They're both symptoms of too much cheap money for too long, and I say that as someone who benefited greatly from that cheap debt for the last 15 years of my life. However, I see now what the long term cost of all of that is.
I'd go with this explanation. Financial markets are all about pump and dump at this point.
The only rational play in my book is index funds and let them be, even when things go south. Otherwise you're just the mark sitting at the table.
Smart investors can still do well.
For example, GEO and CXW (private prisons) were pretty flat last year despite the clear political pressure to deport more aliens (who have to be detained first). I figured they worried be stable if Biden won and up is Trump won. I sold on Monday. Doubled my money. That's my alpha for the year.
Nothing in the world is cheap. There's always a cost, eventually.
Crypto- comes from the Greek kryptós, meaning “hidden.” Yeah, a perfect name for a currency that can be used for committing crimes and hiding assets.
The first explanation. Trump is going to establish a strategic bitcoin reserve. It will buy your bitcoin, even if nobody else will. So it's now a safe investment.
My gut instinct about crypto is that it's a scam. The fact that Trump wants to get his grubby tan stained hands on some reinforces that belief.
The actual explanation is that Bitcoin price is dependent on the ability to bamboozle people to buy it. Trump winning both make it clear that the public in the US is easier to bamboozle than people thought and actually makes it easier to bamboozle them (because of the flood of bulshit from him and his administartion).
They elected him twice. He knows an easy mark when he sees one.
What strategic purpose could the US government buying Bitcoin or any other Crypto currency possibly have? Having oil means ships can steam and planes can fly and tanks and trucks can drive. The only reason some voices are calling for the government to buy crypto is to pump up the price so they can sell to the ... lollipops.
+1
Crypto is essentially a vibes currency, with the vibes focused on how much the currency will increase in value due to...whatever.
The key is if you're buying at the all time high, you're about to lose your money to the people who bought low and know how to make money off people buying at the all time high.
Rinse, repeat.
"The other explanation is that crypto fans believe Bitcoin is a hedge against recessions."
From Keynes' digging and burying cash, through Bernanke's dropping money from helicopters, to Bitcoin as a hedge against recessions. We're evolving!
I think crypto is a long-term play closely connected to DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) and the concept of machines eventually owning themselves. If machines can one day own and manage themselves, then the need for something like crypto becomes inevitable. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/JURI-PR-582443_EN.pdf?redirect
This is what Thiel and Musk paid for. Trump of course once described crypto as a scam but after a 100 mill or so from Elon he realised he’d been saying that like it was a bad thing. His grifter’s spidey sense will look at that graph and think it’s party time.I shouldn’t be surprised if he and his tragic sons are already heavily invested.