The Daily Telegraph (sadly) takes itself seriously publishing such articles. This is, frankly, hilarious.
The reason why Bitcoin is experiencing such explosive price growth is because people are free to trade it in something that's as close to a free market as the current banking system allied with the internet allows. It's difficult to understand that when controlled markets dominate.
Daily Telegraph financial journalists live in a genuine bubble (although not a price bubble): the markets they typically report on are excessively controlled by a financial and legislative elite, and guess what, the rules are written in a way that benefits the writers. This is not free-market capitalism, as the Daily Telegraph and their cohort might extoll, but essentially privatised communism. Assets are traded on these so-called markets, but with such an excess and combination of limits set on that trade that it is reduced to a form of glorified price-fixing, little different in practice to the way the Soviet Union handled pricing (except far more deceptive, of course). But the genuinely economically competent players in the financial markets know that the rigging cannot continue forever. Secondary price trends can be suppressed with a million different tricks, but one day, the primary trend finally takes hold to remind the blissfully unaware masses that infinity doesn't really exist, and "shock" market crashes happen.
Bitcoin is just the start of a new paradigm in the financial world, where corruptible humans can't so easily force their self-serving rules on the participants. So or course, the professional echo-chamber at the Daily Telegraph serving the Independent Ministry of Fair Pricing doesn't get it. They will.
Topic: [2017-11-07] Four reasons why maybe, just maybe, this isn't a bitcoin bubble (Read 1738 times)
November 08, 2017, 10:48:25 AM
November 08, 2017, 08:28:16 AM
This is right bitcoin is not a bubble, it will never burst for me bitcoin is a balloon sometimes it will lose it's air but people will blow it back until it goes big. Hopefully the balloons rubber is too thick for it to handle a very high price.
November 08, 2017, 08:12:11 AM
People don't realize that there so many 'real life currencies' out there that are much more unstable than BTC. Time will change this perception as well as when people realize they can benefit from it. The generation gap is widening and BTC in on the rise. 
November 08, 2017, 06:59:23 AM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/11/07/four-reasons-maybe-just-maybe-isnt-bitcoin-bubble/
Paywalled so here's the text.
OK, we can all see it: bitcoin looks a lot like a bubble. It stinks of irrational exuberance: it is incredibly volatile, and not only does its price continue to increase, but it is doing so at ever accelerating rates.
It took 1,789 days for bitcoin to go from $0 to $1,000, 1,271 days for $1,000 to $2,000, and just 13 days between $6,000 and $7,000, its latest milestone.
Individuals are selling their houses and giving up their life savings to put everything into bitcoin, seemingly more out of speculation that its price will continue to rise rather than because of any serious belief in its intrinsic value.
Many of the characteristics of a classic bubble - the fact that everybody is talking about it, extreme predictions about its future price, and the parabolic price curve - appear to apply to bitcoin.
For the record, I have no idea where bitcoin’s price is going to go, and in no way do I endorse it. It is very possible -likely, even - to believe this craze won't last. But is the only way down? There are reasons to think not.
Everybody thinks it’s a bubble
When a lot of bubbles pop - the real estate crash of 2007, or the dotcom crisis of 2000 - the aftermath is often characterised by complaints that nobody saw it coming. But there is a cacophony of senior figures in the finance industry - Jamie Dimon, Tidjane Thiam, Warren Buffett - warning that bitcoin is a “fraud”, “the very definition of a bubble” and “doesn’t make sense”.
This isn’t a situation where there are no safety warnings - almost everybody who people would usually listen to on this stuff say bitcoin’s out of control. And yet, people are willing to ignore them. If nothing else, it suggests that the market is not easily spooked.
It's all a matter of timing
Bitcoin has been called a bubble for most of its lifetime. In 2011, when it dropped from a measly $33 to $2.51, The Economist noted that “the currency’s rise was the result of a speculative bubble”. The arguments advanced against it were eerily similar to those now. The same happened in 2013, when it peaked at slightly over $1,000 - a seventh of where it is today.
Bitcoin has crashed before - in 2011 and 2013 - but on both occasions, its price rapidly rose again. Looking back, you can hardly say now that it was a case of the bubble bursting. One can argue it’s only a matter of time, but on a long enough timescale, so is everything. Kodak had a long and illustrious run before it went bust in 2012, was it in a century-long camera bubble?
The total value of bitcoin - around $100bn - is tiny compared to other assets, so it might run for some time yet. Indeed, the floodgates are only just opening to institutional cash.
There is some - some - value to it
Critics of bitcoin say that apart from wild price swings and speculation, there’s nothing to it: it’s not a great way to pay for things, for example. But it isn’t exactly useless. The blockchain technology that underpins it is (at least in theory) useful for all kinds of things. Its decentralised nature makes the currency itself nearly unhackable.
And “initial coin offerings”, a way for companies to raise funds using cryptocurrencies, do have some benefits (albeit a series of scams, hacks and raised eyebrows have not enhanced their reputations).
Admittedly these are uses for blockchain and cryptocurrency in general - not bitcoin - but as the best known and original implementation of the tech, it has the position of being a barometer for the rest of the industry.
Believe it or not, it is more stable than other assets
Bitcoin might look like nonsense compared to the (relative) stability of the dollar or the pound. But this isn’t the case everywhere. Google suggests the most countries with some of the most interest in bitcoin are Bolivia, Columbia, Nigeria, Slovenia and South Africa, countries that have been hit by inflation, falling currency values or expensive money transfer services.
For many people in these countries, bitcoin may represent a safer, more stable and more convenient store of value than local currencies.
Paywalled so here's the text.
OK, we can all see it: bitcoin looks a lot like a bubble. It stinks of irrational exuberance: it is incredibly volatile, and not only does its price continue to increase, but it is doing so at ever accelerating rates.
It took 1,789 days for bitcoin to go from $0 to $1,000, 1,271 days for $1,000 to $2,000, and just 13 days between $6,000 and $7,000, its latest milestone.
Individuals are selling their houses and giving up their life savings to put everything into bitcoin, seemingly more out of speculation that its price will continue to rise rather than because of any serious belief in its intrinsic value.
Many of the characteristics of a classic bubble - the fact that everybody is talking about it, extreme predictions about its future price, and the parabolic price curve - appear to apply to bitcoin.
For the record, I have no idea where bitcoin’s price is going to go, and in no way do I endorse it. It is very possible -likely, even - to believe this craze won't last. But is the only way down? There are reasons to think not.
Everybody thinks it’s a bubble
When a lot of bubbles pop - the real estate crash of 2007, or the dotcom crisis of 2000 - the aftermath is often characterised by complaints that nobody saw it coming. But there is a cacophony of senior figures in the finance industry - Jamie Dimon, Tidjane Thiam, Warren Buffett - warning that bitcoin is a “fraud”, “the very definition of a bubble” and “doesn’t make sense”.
This isn’t a situation where there are no safety warnings - almost everybody who people would usually listen to on this stuff say bitcoin’s out of control. And yet, people are willing to ignore them. If nothing else, it suggests that the market is not easily spooked.
It's all a matter of timing
Bitcoin has been called a bubble for most of its lifetime. In 2011, when it dropped from a measly $33 to $2.51, The Economist noted that “the currency’s rise was the result of a speculative bubble”. The arguments advanced against it were eerily similar to those now. The same happened in 2013, when it peaked at slightly over $1,000 - a seventh of where it is today.
Bitcoin has crashed before - in 2011 and 2013 - but on both occasions, its price rapidly rose again. Looking back, you can hardly say now that it was a case of the bubble bursting. One can argue it’s only a matter of time, but on a long enough timescale, so is everything. Kodak had a long and illustrious run before it went bust in 2012, was it in a century-long camera bubble?
The total value of bitcoin - around $100bn - is tiny compared to other assets, so it might run for some time yet. Indeed, the floodgates are only just opening to institutional cash.
There is some - some - value to it
Critics of bitcoin say that apart from wild price swings and speculation, there’s nothing to it: it’s not a great way to pay for things, for example. But it isn’t exactly useless. The blockchain technology that underpins it is (at least in theory) useful for all kinds of things. Its decentralised nature makes the currency itself nearly unhackable.
And “initial coin offerings”, a way for companies to raise funds using cryptocurrencies, do have some benefits (albeit a series of scams, hacks and raised eyebrows have not enhanced their reputations).
Admittedly these are uses for blockchain and cryptocurrency in general - not bitcoin - but as the best known and original implementation of the tech, it has the position of being a barometer for the rest of the industry.
Believe it or not, it is more stable than other assets
Bitcoin might look like nonsense compared to the (relative) stability of the dollar or the pound. But this isn’t the case everywhere. Google suggests the most countries with some of the most interest in bitcoin are Bolivia, Columbia, Nigeria, Slovenia and South Africa, countries that have been hit by inflation, falling currency values or expensive money transfer services.
For many people in these countries, bitcoin may represent a safer, more stable and more convenient store of value than local currencies.
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