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Topic: 2013-01-30 seekingalpha.com - The ECB Worries About Competition From Bitcoins (Read 1777 times)

legendary
Activity: 2156
Merit: 1072
Crypto is the separation of Power and State.
SeekingAlpha is a top 500 US site.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/seekingalpha.com#

Every visitor there should be aware of Bitcoins, because they're overstuffed and bursting at the seams with alpha!
legendary
Activity: 4466
Merit: 3391
The slightly longer and more obnoxious answer to why this is sort of a Big-Fucking-Thing:
Quote from: Who Reads Seeking Alpha?
Seeking Alpha is widely read by ... [marketing material removed]
http://seekingalpha.com/page/who_reads_sa

I consider Seeking Alpha to be a step up from Motley Fool, but I certainly don't consider its marketing material to be a reliable measure of its influence.
legendary
Activity: 1458
Merit: 1006
The slightly longer and more obnoxious answer to why this is sort of a Big-Fucking-Thing:

Quote from: Who Reads Seeking Alpha?

Seeking Alpha is widely read by money managers, sell-side analysts, investment bankers, financial advisors, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and sophisticated retail investors. After conducting a detailed comparison of Seeking Alpha's audience to that of the other major finance sites (Bloomberg.com, Barrons, WSJ.com, MarketWatch, TheStreet.com, FT.com, CNN Money, BusinessWeek Online, Yahoo! Finance and Forbes.com), Nielsen found that SA has a remarkable readership:

Investment professionals and decision makers

Seeking Alpha has the highest percentage of financial professionals (13.9%) of any major finance website. A significantly higher percentage of SA readers are decision makers or "influencers" for the purchase of financial services (13.8%) than for any other major finance website. (The closest second is WSJ.com with 9.8%.) And SA has the highest proportion of readers who are purchasers of online financial services for their own business, at 9.2%. (The closest second is Barron's with 3.6%.) We think our non-professional readers also influence financial decisions: Nielsen found that over 50% of SA's readers provide frequent advice about financial information. (The closest second is Barron's, with 28.3%.)

Highly active investors

Over 52% of Seeking Alpha readers bought stocks in the trailing 30 days -- double the closest second (TheStreet.com, at just over 26%). Similarly, a higher percentage of SA readers are active purchasers of stock mutual funds, money market mutual funds and bond mutual funds than readers of any other site. That's not surprising, given that a higher proportion of Seeking Alpha readers have large portfolios: SA has the highest percentage of readers with portfolios over $50,000, $100,000, $250,000, $500,000 and $1,000,000. A higher proportion of Seeking Alpha readers own securities - 86.5%. (The closest second is TheStreet.com with 83.4%.) Seeking Alpha has the highest readership percentage owning stocks (excluding their own company's), mutual funds, corporate bonds, and US Treasurys. And SA has the highest readership percentage with a brokerage account - both the highest percentage with an online brokerage account and the highest percentage of readers with an offline brokerage account - and with a self-directed IRA.

Business leaders, senior managers and entrepreneurs

Seeking Alpha has the highest percentage of senior management (17.6%) of any major finance website. (The closest second is WSJ.com with 15.8%.) It has the highest percentage of C-Level executives. Seeking Alpha readers are highly entrepreneurial: Seeking Alpha has the highest percentage of business owners, and the highest percentage of readers who work in a small business, by any measure (fewer than 10, 50, 100, 500 or 1,000 in their organization).

Off-the-charts influential

Seeking Alpha's readers are highly influential in making business purchase decisions or influencing others. For example, Seeking Alpha has a higher proportion of Business Purchase Decision Makers or Influencers than any other major finance website for all of the following categories: ASPs, Internet access and site hosting; wireless/mobile; business consulting services; internet and e-business services; commercial real estate services; and software infrastructure.

Why do they read Seeking Alpha?

Money Managers and the Sell-Side. Seeking Alpha is an important research tool for money managers, sell-side sales professionals and research analysts. When you type a stock symbol into the search box at the top of any page on Seeking Alpha, we aim to provide: (1) a range of well-argued opinions about the stock by money managers, newsletters, industry experts and selected bloggers; (2) annotated summaries of important news stories about the stock ; (3) transcripts of the company's most recent conference calls; (4) coverage of competitors who may have filed IPOs recently; and (5) charts showing the stock's comparative performance and valuation to others in its sector.

Many money managers also subscribe to Seeking Alpha articles by email. By signing up for our free email service, you can get articles about stocks in your portfolio and on your watch list automatically sent to you. Our daily Wall Street Breakfast is also immensely popular with money managers.

Investment Bankers. Seeking Alpha provides deep and broad coverage of new IPO filings and has a section devoted to M&A. Many investement bankers also subscribe by email to articles about their clients' stocks and sectors.

Industry Executives. Because of the depth of our coverage and its arrangement by sector, Seeking Alpha is an important resource for managers and entrepreneurs to follow and analyze developments in their industry. Thousands of participants in the Internet industry, for example, follow our coverage of Internet stocks due to the richness of information including conference call transcripts of almost every publicly-traded Internet company, coverage of smaller companies, and comprehensiveness. Most of these readers access our industry-specific content in one of three ways: bookmarking the relevant industry section of the Seeking Alpha site, subscribing to the RSS feed for that sector, or signing up to receive sector-related articles by email.

Individual Investors. Seeking Alpha provides opinion and analysis, not just news. Many individual investors subscribe by email to articles about stocks in their portfolio, and regularly read our coverage of sectors they are interested in, such as gold or alternative energy. Two broader areas are also particularly popular with individual investors: our coverage of exchange-traded funds [ETFs] and our discussion of the overall market.



http://seekingalpha.com/page/who_reads_sa
legendary
Activity: 2156
Merit: 1072
Crypto is the separation of Power and State.
Bitcoin seems to be showing up in all the right places these days.

Bloomberg, ZeroHedge, Emirates, HackerNews, SeekingAlpha.

This unassuming blog-post here. It's huge. So, so, so huge. Why is it so huge, you might ask.

+over 9,000 interents

We couldn't ask for better coverage.  Besides Laura 'Litecoin' Lyster vs Erin 'Bitcoin' Burnett in a pudding-based tickle fight live on Pay-Per-View.

This rally is the first raincloud of the oncoming perfect storm.



legendary
Activity: 3920
Merit: 2349
Eadem mutata resurgo
I think you'll find the original source of this particular article is Pater Tenenbrarum http://www.acting-man.com/?p=21550 on his rather lightly read Acting-Man blog.

He posts and reads on another out of the way place where I've been whispering "bitcoins" in their ears for a couple of years ....  Wink

Acting-Man always has up-to-date and insightful commentary on state of markets generally. Of course seekingalpha is well known and more "mainstream" in a relative sense.
legendary
Activity: 1078
Merit: 1003
BTW anyone who read the full ECB report knows that what all these claims by reporters that the ECB is somehow worried about competition is nothing but an outright lie.



What the report actually said is that if Bitcoin became widely used they, as arrogantly self proclaimed guardians of economic stability, could face angry constituency if a problem with Bitcoin should lead to economics problems, a constituency that might blame them for inaction before those problems arose and that it is in this regard that Bitcoin potentially endangers their reputation.

Of course this is bullshit, but that's what they really said and not what all these reporters are saying while taking bits and pieces out of context just so they can conjure up some sensationalist title that will get more views.
legendary
Activity: 1458
Merit: 1006
This is starting to remember me the 2011 bubble. Only that back then we were at 1$, not 20

Yes. Making fast progress on the Optimism-Excitement-Thrill-Euphoria rollercoaster.

I've got that "I believe we are the new...dun-dun-dun...gentlemen!" feeling, and need to calm down.

But, this time is different. Right? Tongue Wink Smiley





legendary
Activity: 2408
Merit: 1121
Elux is correct, this is a big deal. If it wasn't on a wealth-manager's radar before, it sure is now.
legendary
Activity: 1148
Merit: 1008
If you want to walk on water, get out of the boat
This is starting to remember me the 2011 bubble. Only that back then we were at 1$, not 20  Smiley
legendary
Activity: 1458
Merit: 1006
Bitcoin seems to be showing up in all the right places these days.

Bloomberg, ZeroHedge, Emirates, HackerNews, SeekingAlpha.

This unassuming blog-post here. It's huge. So, so, so huge. Why is it so huge, you might ask.

Well, let's put one and two together. This will only take a minute.




One:

Quote
About this article:
Emailed to: 192,832 people who get Macro View daily.
Tagged: Macro View, Economy

Two:

Quote
Nielsen Analytics found its web site to be the most widely read among investors and financial professionals.
Seeking Alpha reports it has over 5 million unique users per month.

One and two. Put them together.

Nearly 200000 investors (small timers and professionals) got an email from a credible opt-in source stating:

"The ECB is apparently worried that the digital currency bitcoins could ruin the reputation of central banks. Seriously. At least that is what they are saying."

So huge. I'm all kinds of excited.



[1] http://seekingalpha.com/article/1144971-the-ecb-worries-about-competition-from-bitcoins
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeking_alpha
legendary
Activity: 1092
Merit: 1001
Stock market analysis website SeekingAlpha comments on the recent Bloomberg story re Bitcoin and the ECB.


Quote
The ECB Worries About Competition From Bitcoins

2013-01-30


http://seekingalpha.com/article/1144971-the-ecb-worries-about-competition-from-bitcoins

Here is another one from the "you couldn't make this up" department (the ECB is a rich fount of those). The ECB is apparently worried that the digital currency bitcoins could ruin the reputation of central banks. Seriously.
...

Professor Hanke is of course 100% correct. It has absolutely nothing to do with the reputation of central banks, it has everything to do with competition.
...


Bitcoins are probably less useful for the particular applications mentioned above (bribes, slush funds, etc.), but they do represent competition for central bank issued money and they definitely are a thorn in the establishment's side. Expect more attacks on the currency to emerge.

In the meantime, buying bitcoins has evidently been a very good idea so far -- the currency, although quite volatile, is one of the strongest in the world:
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