BITCOIN: THE FIRST DIGITAL PONZI SCHEME IN HISTORY



If you had invested $100 in Bitcoin in 2011, two years after it was invented, and if you had held onto it through the 2014 crash, when Mt. Gox, the biggest Bitcoin exchange, collapsed, today you’d have (almost) $4 million in your pocket.

That’s what the Winklevoss twins of Facebook fame and founders of the Gemini exchange did: They are, historically, the first believers and biggest investors in Bitcoin and today, now that they’ve turned bitcoin billionaires in 2017 (the only ones so far), they continue to believe in it, saying they won’t give it up, that “long-term, directionally, it’s a multi-trillion dollar asset”.

2017 was a special year. By December, the valuation of Bitcoin and the 700+ digital currencies that it has spawned had grown explosively, from less than $1,000 per bitcoin to over $15,000. 2018 is not looking so good, market cap is falling, but still high:



ON FOCUS: BY END 2017, TOTAL MARKET CAPITALIZATION (VALUE) OF ALL DIGITAL CURRENCIES EXCEEDED $ 750 BILLION, THOUGH IT IS NOW FALLING FAST AND STANDS WELL BELOW THAT VALUE (520 BILLION ON JANUARY 17, 2018) BUT STILL AT AN EXTRAORDINARY MULTIPLE (16 TIMES) OF WHERE IT WAS A YEAR AGO SOURCE: GLOBAL MARKET CAPITALIZATION CHART 28 APRIL 2013 TO 17 JANUARY 2018 


On 17 January, Bloomberg spoke of a 26% slump noting that “traders brave the volatility” though some (rightly) worry about the growing threat from government regulations.


SO WHERE ARE WE GOING WITH BITCOIN?


To find out, read the rest on Impakter, click here.

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