The Briefing Room
General Category => Economy/Business => Topic started by: 240B on December 28, 2017, 06:33:32 am
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The Atlantic
ANNIE LOWREY
DEC 26, 2017
What is bitcoin? An investment? A technology? A bubble? What is even happening?
All of these questions seem like reasonable ones to ask, as its price has surged and plummeted. Bitcoin is many things: a proxy for more stable units like the dollar and the euro, a speculative investment, a payments mechanism, a means of hiding transactions from various governments and tax collectors, and a monetary innovation that might legitimately transform the world.
Yet cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, are also a bubbly, frothy, and overhyped phenomenon—a latter-day version of a penny stock, boosted by drug dealers, digital evangelists, Wall Street types, and a large twinset of Harvard rowers. Sure, sophisticated investors are pouring money in. But neophyte investors are charging bitcoins to their credit cards. A company called Long Island Iced Tea, purveyor of virgin lemonades and steeped drinks, added “blockchain†to its name and saw its stock price jump as much as 500 percent. Companies are raising vast sums on the public markets via initial coin offerings. The prices of various currencies are spiraling around like a loose tab of acid lost in a dust storm at Burning Man. It is getting weird out there.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/12/bitcoin-dotcom-bubble/549155/