Bitcoin has been everywhere for the past six months – it even had a Big Bang Theory episode dedicated to it. That isn’t an insignificant fact either if you consider B.B.T. is the most-watched and top-rated scripted show on air. The problem is, now that everyone is watching, it seems that bitcoin’s bubble may have burst.
Why have I taken such a hard-nosed (and granted unpopular) stance? Well, every bubble has a prick that bursts it – and at the moment, bitcoin seems to be snuggling up to a porcupine. The biggest prick (I’m not even going to make a joke about Zuckerberg) is Facebook banning Bitcoin including all ads for ICOs and other Cryptos. Why is this the biggest prick? A lot of bitcoin’s meteoric rise was chalked up to the public’s increasing interest in investing in Bitcoin. Some analysts say that a third of all millennials will be invested in bitcoin this year. It was everywhere and some of the more sensationalist media reports of overnight bitcoin billionaires and people becoming independently wealthy because they were early crypto-adopters further fueled the hype. This caused a rush of speculative bitcoin purchasing and trading – that is the bell which tolls before the epic fall of most market bubbles. But we still haven’t seen the catalytic event that will bring the burst of the bubble – is Facebook’s ban on ads the prick?
What does Facebook’s ban on bitcoin and cryptocurrencies involve?
And this is an umbrella policy, this prohibits…everything in the aforementioned section according to Facebook’s “New Ads Policy: Improving Integrity and Security of Financial Product and Services Ads”. Ironically this is one in the same Facebook that allowed dozens of U.S. voters to be misled by political advertisements funded by Russian accounts. Just sayin’.
Facebook mentions that the policy is “intentionally broad” until they work on vetting misleading and deceptive better *cough*fakenews*cough*.
In the grand scale – The Prick that burst bitcoin bubble?
But that is a micro view of the prohibition, the macro view is that less exposure to the everyday Joe and Jane may pull down the price of Bitcoin – which has been slipping lower and lower since the beginning of the year. Out of sight out of mind, they say. In combination with today’s news of a Japanese crack-down on cryptos – after it was revealed that one of Asia’s largest exchange was hacked out of $534 million. Although Korea reassured crypto traders that it will not prohibit trading and exchanges (like rumors said earlier this month) they said $596.02 million of currency exchange crimes have been found – meaning that although allowed, cryptos are still being scrutinized.
These news items create quite a hostile environment for bitcoin, with potential regulation and continuing fear mongering. Another sign of a potential bubble bursting. Oh and of course the most worrisome trend – speculative trading being the bubble bursting cherry on top.
Don’t believe me? Here are some bubbles that burst after an unfathomable rush of speculative trading:
- The US Housing Bubble – markets reeled after the Dot-com bubble burst, rushing to the safety of real estate. This cause a stampede of people investing in real estate, mortgage scams and sub-prime borrowers. Prices reached their peak and plummeted – ultimately causing the “Great Recession” we are still recovering from in 2018.
- Dot-com Bubble – The internet was touted to be the technology that changed the world and it definitely did. But when it was the Mad Max equivalent of an industry, people boot-strapping (that’s a programming quip for those paying attention) businesses together, rebels and rat-scallions became moguls – capitalizing on the thing that initially marginalized them. There was a high-school kid that made 1 million dollars by selling 1 million pixels on his website – uncreatively called “the Million Dollar Homepage” and it still exists. Everyone joined the party with both substantial world-changing ideas, dumb ideas and complete scams. None the less investors flocked and were burned when the market imploded – taking thousands of companies under with it.
- The 1980-90s Stock Bubble – as seen in the “Wolf of Wall Street” the preceding half decade was one of economic flourish and excess. Stockbrokers were rock stars and everyone had a little bit of disposable income on the markets. Then suddenly global stock markets started to crumble one after the other, due to traders “baiting” the system with programmed strategies, probably.
The problem seems to be when the public jumps onto the speculation bandwagon – usually as a result of the underlying market product entering the main-stream or collective consciousness – the Internet, Mortgages, Stocks and now Bitcoin. This pushes the market into over-evaluation (into over-bought region in trading lingo.
Now that Facebook is banning Bitcoin ads, this means that it will essentially evaporate from the aforementioned collective consciousness. Which will make speculative trading evaporate right?
The Riding of the Bros
Finally, another big red neon sign pointing towards the demise of the bitcoin bubble is – the Riding of the Bros. We all know them, some of us are them. Intolerable, hyper-masculine, aggressive, over tanned and under developed sense of decency and appropriateness – these are the people that become poster boys of the impending doom of their market. People like Jordan Belfort (the real Wolf of Wall St.), Kim Dotcom (a teenage hacker that created Megaupload as an adult and then was jailed for it) and the tech or bitcoin bros like the Winklevoss Twins (seen in the Social Network movie and known for suing Mr. Facebook himself).
If we accept that these are all signs of the bitcoin bubble apocalypse the outcome is duplicitous. One bitcoin settles at its intrinsic value as a decentralized currency and alternatively, it evaporates under the pressure of more appearing competing cryptos.
Sources:
http://time.com/money/5002207/richest-people-with-bitcoin/
http://www.thecrimson.com/column/femme-fatale/article/2017/9/28/hu-bitcoin-bro/
http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/10/the-50-worst-internet-startup-fails-of-all-time/drkoop
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