BITCOIN REVISITED: THE FLAW IS REALLY SIMPLE !!

On September 5th of this year I wrote an article about Bitcoin, which you can access below: After you have read the previous article, you can return here for my new conclusion. Good luck, and HAPPY HOLIDAYS !!

SEMI-MONTHLY FISCAL/MONETARY UPDATE – GOLD VS. BITCOIN – ONE WILL BE UP, THE OTHER DOWN

The price of bitcoin is several times higher now, but I stand by this article. The FLAW in the whole cryptocurrency “bubble” is as follows. While the number of bitcoins that can be created is presumably limited, which would therefore provide the long term value as a currency ( just as with gold over the last four thousand years) the number of competing cryptocurrencies is not limited. Three months ago there were something like 800 competitors to bitcoin, combining to create a total worth of about $125 billion. Now there are more like 1100 “bitcoin like” alternatives, in total worth perhaps $400 billion. In the 1920s, during the Weimar inflation in Germany and Austria,  when a loaf of bread cost 1,000,000 German marks, a mark was therefore worth one millionth of a loaf of bread. If a Bitcoin is worth $20,000., for example, that means the dollar is worth one twenty thousandth of a Bitcoin. That doesn’t sound to me like the US Dollar is worth much, especially if a computer can issue thousands of similar currencies that dilute the Dollar even further.

When the books are written five or ten or twenty years from now about the financial follies of the early twenty first century, the Bitcoin (and competing cryptocurrency) mania will be viewed as one of the “ringing bells” before the bubble burst. One man’s opinion, FWIW.

Roger Lipton