cryptonomics

There are a few things that we need to look at when comparing cryptocurrencies to bubbles. First, supply and demand. Second, the market. Third, value of money. The cryptocurrency bubble and the tulip bubble have some similarities, as well as some differences. When farmers see the price of crop A increasing dramatically, they have some choices. Ignore the price rise and continue to grow crop B, losing out on the potential gain in income, which some will do. This has no affect on crop A. If they are already growing crop A, then they will be able reinvest excess profits and grow more of their cash crop, crop A. This increases supply of crop A. If they are growing any other crop, and see a price rise in crop A, they will have an incentive to shift from their current crop at the end of the season, and grow a crop that will bring in more revenue (crop A). Increasing supply of crop A. However, increasing the supply of crop A won't happen over night, as crops take months to grow. As c...

A world that uses Bitcoin (or another scarce  cryptocurrency) as a base currency could create a better, more innovative one. One could argue that the velocity of money is driven by the demand for luxury goods and services. On top of that, an economy is only as good as the labour within it. The money hoarder will exchange the hoarded currency if there is a good or service that he/she desires. If there is no desired good or service, then there is no reason that the money hoarder should put his/her money back into circulation. This will give the markets a reason to innovate and create demand for luxury goods and services. There will be less complacency in the markets as companies and industries compete for your money. A historical example of complacency is the Spaniards post colonization of America. After the Spaniards colonized the Americas, they inherited vast amounts of gold. What was once a scarce commodity was less scarce. Instead of boosting exports to create more wealth, S...

If you think cryptos are worthless the scary reality is that your dollar is also worthless. You should become a gold bug. The reason for your dollar being worthless is because it isn’t backed by anything aside from a government that is set on devaluing your dollar by setting an inflation target of two percent. Does anyone remember when you could pick up a candy bar for ~$0.50? Better days, right? Now a candy bar is ~$0.89. Prices are increasing while quality is flatlining. Shouldn't the cost of a candy bar decrease over time as innovation/competition enters the market? @chriscanno The answer is: yes. Innovation and competition should lower prices, but the central bank is set the hold the cost of goods at a certain price with their inflation target. What is happening is that The Federal Reserve is digitally pumping money into the system to keep prices lower. What gives precious metals value is scarcity. If we all have ten ounces of gold because someone can just 3D pri...

The philosophical thought process behind currency has been around for centuries, and has continually evolved. Aristotle gave three functions of money: a means of exchange, measure of value, and a store of value for future transactions. Cryptocurrencies meet Aristotle's three functions of money, but there is still a link missing from this cryptocurrency chain. Averroes added a fourth: a reserve of purchasing power. Not only does money serve as a store of value, but money could be spent at any time without having the need to be sold. This is where cryptocurrencies fall short, and it seems that this could be one of the reasons that we see such sell offs in the cryptoverse. Cryptocurrencies have come a long way since their conception, and have done well (so far) under the 2017 lime light. In order for cryptocurrencies to reach the end goal of a being a true form of money, we will need to see adoption for payments receivable (such as retail) sector. Until then we will continue to ...

Most of us are familiar with our country's currency (insert your countries form of currency: USD CAD, JPY, GBP, CNY) wether it is physical or digital we are willing to exchange goods and services for it. For centuries, people of earth have relied, and trusted a third party to hold, and transfer, their currency. From the ancient templars escorting precious metals across the globe on behalf of others, or exchanging them for ancient bank notes; to bankers as we know them today holding our money. As society has advanced, so has the banking system. In the digital world, we have become use to instant access. Instant access to whatever news organization happened to get their hands on a story first followed by a flood of other sources, even if the original is incorrect. Instant access to photos, and status updates. Technology is wild. Hell, last year I was watching kids enter the augmented reality of Pokemon Go on their phone as my girlfriend and I walked the streets of Burlingame, C...

As we all know, Bitcoin has had a glorious 2017 despite receiving heavy criticism from Jamie Dimon  ( cnbc ),  Warren Buffet  ( fox biz ), and even Saudi Prince Alwaleed  ( fortune ). Its most recent tailwinds: CME Group. First to the scene of Bitcoin Derivatives trading was  LedgerX , and now CME Group start  Bitcoin derivatives  ( bloomberg ) by the end of year. The entrance of CME Group pushed the price of BTC (Bitcoin) from ~$6,000  to ~$7,400. follow me on twitter   @postmattern  and   @bitfuturist

Hello again. It has been a while. Cryptocurrencies dealt blow with Ban in China in September sparking a sell off. However, Bitcoin quickly rebounded from a low of ~2,800 shortly after. Ethereum undergoes Byzantium hard fork, but struggles to advance against USD. Continues to trade ~$300. Bitcoin owners received a nice forking dividend from Bitcoin Cash  (BCC) (soon to have Bitcoin Gold and two others coming later this year). Don't worry about BTC Forks, just sit back and enjoy the dividend, but not with Coinbase .  It is true that Coinbase simplifies owning digital currencies, but Bitcoin forks, they hold the forking Currency. If you have any questions about BTC Forks, you may tweet me  @bitfuturist IBM teams up with Stellar. AMD crushes Q2 ER (earnings report), continues to stay humble on its GPU sales (despite the cryptocurrency mining boom), and moderately lowers guidance. When asked about AMD's reasoning behind lowing guidance, AMD's response was ...

Bitcoin was highlighted on CNBC where the Bitcoin enthusiast set a target of 25,000 to 50,000 USD per coin, see it here BTC is trading around 3,575 USD and has had a steady ascent over the past week of 26% *BTC chart here BCH (Bitcoin Cash) seems to be continuing its wild ride, investers/traders still are uncertain of its future, as it has become another spinoff of Bitcoin. Current price is around .09 BTC. It is down 5% on the week, but up 12.8% on the day. It's intraday high peaked at .1 BTC *BCH chart here ETH (Ethereum) had a boost with other altcoins, which saw it peak at .094 BTC, since then it has had a pull back and is currently trading around .084 BTC or 300 USD. On the day it is down about 5% *ETH chart here ZEC (Zcash) had a nice little bump from ~.062 BTC ON 08.07, surged up to .075 BTC (08.08), but has erased almost all of its gains leaving it at a current level of .064 BTC *ZEC chart here LTC (Litecoin) although a one week chart has LTC down 13% against B...

Market analysts seem to be seeing only what they want to see when it comes to cryptocurrency mining and GPU demand. When the GPU mining craze started to boom in May, causing a shortage in AMD and NVDA GPUs, analysts were quick to say that it is just a short term craze. When the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum started to fall, they said that there would be a mass selling of GPUs on the second hand market. Ethereum fell about 50% in a few months from a high of .14 BTC ($400) to a low of .069 BTC ($163). Since May, there has been and continues to be a shortage of AMD Radeon RX 470/480/570/580. Even RX 460s and 560s are some what hard to find. The AMD Radeon RX 580 is the best for mining Ethereum. The higher end GPUs (of AMD, since they are better for Ethereum) can work at 25-35 MH/s 1,000 MH/s equals 1 GH/s 1,000 GH/s equals 1 TH/s On June 16, 2017, Ethereum's network was 45.7 TH/s. Today, its network hashrate is 81.9 TH/s One analyst mentioned that trans...

Cryptocurrencies will provide a missing piece in the global economy by providing a borderless currency. There is no currency that is accepted globally. If you take a US dollar to a different country, it is hard to use it at any given location. Instead, you need to swap them out for the local currency. As an individual, this can make traveling abroad a little painful; especially after paying currency exchange fees (not to mention having to carry around cash). This is also painful for global business as well. If a firm wants to send a payment outside their home market they need to go through a bank. Which then takes their home market's currency, exchanges it for the accepted currency in the other market, and then lets the payment process. This process can take days, and this is the most painless method of transferring payments. Payments through cryptocurrencies break the barrier, and remove the middle man. Firms can easily find where they need to send the payment, select how ...

There are copious amounts of websites that offer ways to exchange cryptos. A few that will be discussed are Coinbase, Bitstamp, Poloniex, Bittrex, Gatehub, and Bitfinex. These exchanges never close; so you can buy/sell anytime/any day. I also added Circle, just cause. *refer to end for abbreviation Coinbase Simple and clean user interface Buy and Sell BTC/ETH/LTC with local currency Instant credit card purchases, bank accounts take 3-5 days high fees Bitstamp.net Exchange BTC, XRP, USD or EUR 98% of digital funds stored offline If you want to try trading cryptos: Poloniex Exchange/Lending 2.5x leverage Chatbox (trollbox) which can be entertaining Two Factore Id *Sometimes Poloniex has issues, and their customer service seems inexistent  Kraken Offers 5x leverage trading tools *seems sluggish at times Bittrex Offers 190+ cryptos US Based (if you are into that, deals with US regulations Gatehub.net Trade multiple currencies...

If Bitcoin's destination is the moon, it hasn't started its launch sequence. Cryptocurrencies are not in a bubble. There are just over 16 million bitcoins in circulation today with a market cap of just under $40 billion (Crypto Currency Market Capitalizations). The US currently has over $1.2 trillion dollars in circulation today (How Currency...). Bitcoin can be used in the global market, while USD is mainly used in the US. 16 million bitcoins to help assist a global economy. Supply is there, and demand is slowly ticking up. Retailers and Banks haven't decided to accept cryptocurrencies yet. As cryptocurrencies assimilate into the global economy, the value for Bitcoins will continue to all time highs. Image from coinbase *You do not need to buy a full bitcoin/alt-coin. Exchanges let you buy less that .01 of a crypto.

If you haven't exchanged a form of fiat currency for bitcoin/alt-coin, then you basically have managed to sit on the sidelines during the coolest innovation of our times. The altcoin movement will be bigger than the change from horse pulled carriages to automobiles, mail to e-mail, dial-up to broadband... you get the point. Altcoins are a fabulous innovation that can cut transaction time from days to seconds.  These future currencies don't come without problems, the biggest being how unstable they can be, but that will change as people have less and less reasons to sell. Until then, this is true. At times, altcoins can seem to be driven by pump-and-dump traders; not investors or users. The volatility of these markets could make the strongest human bipolar. For now, take a long position  Diversify Then only throw as much money as you are willing to lose