Part of the reason these companies have to fund acquisitions through share issuance is because they are cut off from a lot of traditional loans and funding by virtue of their business. In the US, for example, none of these companies would be able to get a line of credit or even a bank account because any bank that deals with them would be violating federal law. So they fund acquisitions through the only currency they have available to them: their own stock. It makes sense logically, but it's not something you want to see as a stockholder because your ownership is being rapidly diluted.

As for the market potential, Canada is a very limited market (where these companies are based) but Tilray and Canopy have deals with European countries to export and Canopy is setting up overseas operations for a time when these countries would rather have domestic production over imports, so they are expanding their addressable markets. The US is a major untapped market but I feel like these prices already factor in full federal legalization and a mature market. The valuations are quite lofty.

Nobody really cares if the market grows if the price doesn't grow. 90% of people aren't into Bitcoin for the market abilities or the adoption, they only care about the price. And constantly retreading the same $6000 to $7000 path isn't helping those people who are sitting on 60% losses from last year. I think the crash brought a tiny amount of sanity back to the market. I'm not a buyer at these prices myself, I think there's still far too much risk for the potential reward, and the uncertainty of meaningful adoption and/or price appreciation is anything but a foregone conclusion.

Many pot stocks are OTC, however these four are all on major exchanges. None of these companies even service the US though due to federal drug laws, and to my knowledge, no domestic supplier is able to list their stock on an exchange for the same reason. Right now, you have Canopy and Aurora with the two largest production capacities, and CGC received a $4 billion investment from Constellation Brands (a very large liquor maker) earlier this year. Adding to the mania is that Coca-Cola has said they are "watching" this space and a couple other large alcohol companies are said to be weighing the benefits of acquiring one of these marijuana companies after the Constellation deal. (I believe Diageo is confirmed to be actively considering.)

All of that together has made this the new bubble as investors desperately try to FOMO their way into profits.

It wouldn't be a stretch to assume they are as Asia has more than 50% of the world's population with 4.4 billion out of the total population of 7.4 billion. So a proportional share would also find them having a majority of the crypto holdings. Whether or not this is actually true is another question, as the western world is far richer than Asia as a whole, although finding it to be true just shouldn't be surprising. What makes you say that Bitcoin was born is Asia though? Is it just the name Satoshi Nakamoto, because that's not necessarily a good reason to assume that person was actually Asian.

The newest fad volatile industry: marijuana stocks.

Gains over the last 5 days:

• Tilray, Inc. 88.14% (112.65 to 211.95)
• Canopy Growth Corporation 8.15% (50.075 to 54.16)
• Aurora Cannabis Inc. 54.47% (6.189 to 9.56)
• Aphira Inc.  7.64% (15.1608 to 16.32)

Gains over the last 30 days:

• Tilray, Inc. 532.69% (33.50 to 211.95)
• Canopy Growth Corporation 50.40% (36.01 to 54.16)
• Aurora Cannabis Inc. 76.42% (5.419 to 9.56)
• Aphira Inc.  94.75% (8.38 to 16.32)

Gains over the last 6 months:

• Tilray, Inc. 846.63% (22.39 to 211.95)
• Canopy Growth Corporation 109.92% (25.80 to 54.16)
• Aurora Cannabis Inc. 15.46% (8.28 to 9.56)
• Aphira Inc. 44.17% (11.32 to 16.32)

Yes, legal weed is currently in a bubble. People are being just as stupid here as they were with Bitcoin. Canopy currently has a market cap of $12.3 billion on sales TTM sales of just under $88 million. Tilray is far worse with a market cap of $19.7 billion on TTM sales of $27.6 million. Anyone buying Tilray at these prices is making an astoundingly risky bet for what I consider to be very limited upside. The other two companies, Aurora and Aphira, fund their operations by printing shares and devaluing current investors. I consider them to be the spam coin equivalent of the two larger companies. There are dozens of others, these are just four of the largest I consider to be the biggest players.

There's absolutely zero reason to expect that simply switching to bitcoin would solve any economic problem. It's not a silver bullet. It doesn't change anything about the economy. That's like saying the US switches to the Peso and suddenly poverty is solved. It makes no sense. Switching the underlying currency doesn't solve anything, it just means all the economic problems are denominated in the new currency now. Literally nothing changes. Bitcoin will not help pay off the national debt, will not increase the economy, and will not decrease the poverty level.

Debt that is used to create future economic growth is how total overall wealth grows. Money is just a representation of wealth, and wealth is a function of all the goods and services an economy produces. If someone can create new products or services that the market will support by borrowing excess capital that has been saved by someone else through their own economic production, the economy as a whole grows and is better off.

Yeah, that's pretty much the whole point of my post. Being greedy to be a contrarian isn't actually sound advice, but people interpret the advice from Buffet superficially and don't actually grasp what he's saying. Inherent in his direction is the underlying concept that you have a sound and rationale decision for investing at the time other people are actively fleeing a particular investment; simply buying because everyone else is selling is a terrible idea without a fundamental analysis of the underlying value of the investment, which in crypto is nearly impossible because it's a unproductive asset with no inherent value and the value is arbitrarily determined by consensus. Being a contrarian under those circumstances is actually the worst thing you can be, because being outside of the consensus is going to lose money by definition.

Panic selling is the just the other side of hype buying. I would expect that those who are subject to buy solely on hype and wild price swings are just as likely to panic sell solely on price swings in the other direction. In both cases, their actions add momentum to the direction of the price movements and exacerbate what is already happening, making it more likely for that direction to continue. Truth is that hype buying is just as damaging to bitcoin long term as panic selling because it makes the resultant crash all the more likely.

I don't believe the instability comes from regulation but the lack of regulation. There is a lot of manipulation that goes on in the exchanges with fake orders or posturing to make buy or sell walls appear in the hopes of moving the price one way or another. This is illegal on stock exchanges, as fraudulent market manipulation is not allowed. In crypto, it's not, so large price swings tied to this are the result. I would expect with regulation there would come more price stability than less.

You're not going to get anywhere if you're trying to avoid paying taxes by transacting in bitcoin. The fiat exchange points are increasingly coming under scrutiny and the government we eventually be able to compel these companies to turn over transaction records. Anyone caught evading taxes is going to have back taxes, penalties, and possibly jail time to answer for. In the US, tax evasion has no statute of limitations, so the government can wait you out until they can eventually get the records. They're not going to go away, and it's just not worth the risk of the penalties you'll face when they eventually catch up to you.

Certainly there is a connection between bitcoin search queries and price, but it is undoubtedly price that affects the search queries, not the other way around. When the price is rising and the hype cycle keeps constant attention on bitcoin, there is going to be more interest and more searches for it. As the price decreases, interest wanes. People love getting rich, not losing money. Price appreciation drives engagement and price depreciation suppresses it. The author doesn't offer any evidence to support the notion that the price crash was because of the introduction of futures however, only noting that they happened at the same time. That's hardly evidence one caused the other.

It's hard to make the argument that the fall from $19000 to $6000 was not a bubble bursting. Anytime something loses 70% of its value and does not recover it, it's a pretty good indication it was a bubble. But that doesn't mean it's not still a bubble, it's just that it has found consistent support around the low $6000s after continually trying and failing to gain momentum from here. It is conceivable that if people continue to fail to make progress, they could grow tired of holding at this price and sell out, putting new pressure on the price.

CME futures don't affect the price of bitcoin, bitcoin prices affect the CME markets. It's the inverse of how futures markets are supposed to work. In traditional futures markets, you are trading actual contracts that link directly to the price of the commodity. So if you buy a contract for 100 barrels of oil at $100 each that expires on December 1, on December first you are obligated to take delivery of the 100 barrels of oil. Ultimately what happens as a trader is you sell that contract to someone who actually wants to take the delivery of the oil because they're going to refine it. If the price of oil is below $100 on that date, you're going to be selling that contract at a loss. If it's above $100, you'll be selling that contract at a gain. But in either case, the contract is literally for 100 barrels of oil, and it is settled in the commodity itself (in this case oil), so the price of the futures market directly impacts the price of oil because oil supply is affected through buying selling of the futures contracts.

In bitcoin futures, the future is not linked to bitcoin. You never settle in bitcoin, you always settle in cash. So if you buy a contract for $6000 and the price closes at $7000 on the settlement date, you just get paid the $7000 and make $1000 profit and no bitcoin moves anywhere. If it settles at $5000, the you get the $5000 back but you're down $1000 because you paid $6000 for the contract. But because no bitcoin moves, the price the future contract settles at has zero impact on the price of bitcoin.

It's entirely unlikely that crypto will be the dominant method of payment in a cashless or digital cash society. The traditional digital payment companies are far superior to anything crytpo has come up with so far. Decentralization just isn't a large concern for the vast majority of the population. It's too technical and too slow. Settlement times may be faster, but actual transaction times are thousands of times slower. You have to wait a minimum of 10 minutes and up to 60 minutes for depending on the level of confidence you want in your transaction. On the plus side, the transaction and settlement time is the same, but in traditional digital payments, the transaction times takes a few seconds. And most people trust the centralized payment processors enough for decentralization not to matter, so the faster transaction time wins. The future of digital payments is PayPal, Zelle, Square, Venmo; not crypto.

Prices are stagnated because everyone learned a lesson from the bubble last year. When the price does enter a temporary breakout, nobody can be sure they're not going to be caught holding the bag when the bubble burst like happened at the end of 2017. So all upward price movements are limited and quickly reverse to the low $6000 level where people feel there is safe support and it's not likely to fall farther. By comparison, last year when there was a little momentum, people piled on and everyone was convinced that any setbacks were temporary and the price was going to continue higher over the long term. Nobody thinks that anymore.

What's your country? It's almost impossible to speculate on why prices are rising without knowing where your'e talking about. Oil prices are subject to geopolitical considerations, but often times instability in a local market could cause oil prices to rise regionally where the larger market is unaffected. Is it that oil prices are rising in your country while not rising worldwide, or are they rising in your country at the same time as they are rising internationally?

Venezuela is a dictatorship. Blockchain doesn't work well in a dictatorship because autocrats want control and decentralized systems cannot be controlled. Venezuela isn't going to adopt blockchain in any official capacity and the government will repress any attempts to adopt any type of crytpo currency. Control is far more important to them than lifting the country out of poverty because even when the country is poor the dictator is rich.

You forgot the crypto bubble of 2017.



It's hard to make a case for it not being a bubble with that massive 70% drop persisting for months now.  Essentially, bubbles don't reveal themselves until after they pop. You may suspect a price is unsustainable, but if people could reliably predict where bubbles were going to form or what was already a bubble, they would be able to avoid them. By nature, you don't know something is a bubble until after it bursts. The fact that something crashes and has great difficulty recovering helps to inform whether it was a bubble. Exactly like Bitcoin in 2018.

There are far too many bitcoins still being produced for any type of hoarding to constrain supply in any meaningful or measurable way. And you can't artificially create demand for bitcoin. The hype drove the insane demand we saw at the end of 2017 which in turn pushed the price up to the insane levels we saw around $19,000. That was a natural occurrence of the hype driving the awareness and causing people to FOMO into crypto. That's not sustainable, so even if you could replicate that (which I don't believe is possible), it wouldn't do anything but create bubbles. The bubble bursting is why the price is currently languishing. Everybody remembers the hype and that those prices couldn't be trusted to last, so who would want to be buying now without any trust that the price will hold? There's very little spending of bitcoins going on. People are speculating to get rich in USD. There's actually very little comparative interest in crypto as a usable currency.