Perhaps the most obvious difference between Gold and Bitcoin is this: Gold is a tangible physical Precious Metal, whereas Bitcoin is digital. Yet the distinctions between the two run much deeper. Today, APMEX accepts Bitcoin as a form of payment.

The short answer will be YES, but let me try to explain my view on what part is too complicated compared to FIAT currencies.

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While many people are still trying to grasp the concept of “what exactly is a bitcoin?”, even more businesses are starting to ask the question “do we need to care?” With any new technology there are going to be advantages and disadvantages, risks and rewards. Bitcoin is no exception.

The value of bitcoin continues to hover above $8,000 after last week's dramatic price surge, which saw the world's most valuable cryptocurrency gain more than $1,000 in the space of an hour.

The volatile cryptocurrency’s price has shifted wildly ever since mid-December - when it hit a record high of more than $19,850 (£14,214) - with frequent heavy drops and speedy recoveries. Its price plummet back to earth in January and February, as governments and central banks around the world raised the spectre of future regulation.

Bitcoin, like gold has value because people believe it has value. If people value something, it is “valuable” to them. Often we attribute value to things simple because we can do something with it that cannot be done otherwise.

While many crypto investors have coined Bitcoin as the world’s “digital gold,” others are growing uncertain of Bitcoin’s value.

Howard Wang of New York-based Convoy Investments LLC and Jeremy Grantham of GMO LLC have analyzed Bitcoin’s advance relative to past frenzies and concluded that it’s unsustainable, which was noted in a recent Bloomberg article.



In a letter to investors sent out on January 3, Grantham summed up his concerns over Bitcoin saying, “Having no clear fundamental value and largely unregulated markets, coupled with a storyline conducive to delusions of grandeur, makes this more than anything we can find in the history books the very essence of a bubble.”

However, it is still too soon to tell if the “Bitcoin bubble” will indeed burst. What has become clear though, is that Bitcoin should not be considered a safe-haven asset.



I say this as I examine a chart complied by the data visualization site HowMuch, which displays an illustrative table of all the “horrific Bitcoin crashes” that have occurred since 2012.

Looking at this chart, it appears that Bitcoin lost 83% of its value in just three days between April 10, 2013 to April 21, 2013. Bitcoin’s next biggest crash occurred just recently, losing 70% of its value from December 2017 to February 6, 2018.



Now, compare this with the price of gold. According to data from the London Bullion Market Association, the price of gold appears fairly steady from day-to-day.

Considering this, Bitcoin investors and holders might find it interesting to know that major precious metal retailers have started accepting Bitcoin payments for gold, silver, platinum and other products from various mints. For example, APMEX Inc., one of the largest online retailers of precious metals, recently began accepting Bitcoin payments through the Bitcoin payment processor, BitPay.

Ken Lewis, CEO of APMEX, told me,

“As we are probably all aware, Bitcoin prices have surged in the last year, seeing an overall increase of nearly 1,200% in 2017. Investors started getting excited about Bitcoin and many casual traders even got involved with the cryptocurrency. Relative to Bitcoin, precious metals prices are far more stable, with Gold seeing just over a 12% increase in 2017 (Silver up roughly 5%). While people are obviously still highly interested in Bitcoin, many are turning to precious metals for a more, in a sense, secure investment.”

New Year, New Me" has been Bitcoin's mantra to start 2018. It's just that 'new' Bitcoin is the worst version of 2017 Bitcoin. After taking a huge tumble in value over the past few months, prospective buyers are now weighing up their options - is it a good time to buy Bitcoin? Should you 'buy the dip'?

Here's what the near-future looks like for Bitcoin and some of the things you need to weigh up if you're considering buying bitcoin now.

I should preface this piece by repeating the adage: 'only invest what you're willing to lose'. That's the best place to start. If you're thinking about investing serious money into Bitcoin, then there are hundreds of resources to choose from that can educate you on the subject.

Some of those resources are dense, so we've broken down what you should look at in the near-future to keep ahead of the next wave of developments in Bitcoin.

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Within what many experts see as a classic market bubble, however, lies a potentially revolutionary innovation. That technology, saddled with the unfaddish name "blockchain," could change everything from how people make payments online, to how countries fight corruption, to the very relationship between government and citizens.

The upshot: If the price of bitcoin were to crash to earth tomorrow, blockchain would likely outlive it -- and continue to reshape the world in myriad other ways.

"Blockchain is the technology, and bitcoin is one application of the technology," said Jen Schwartz, a senior features editor at Scientific American.

A framework for data
At its simplest, blockchain is a way of structuring data -- a framework. The creator of blockchain, a person calling themselves "Satoshi Nakamoto" whose identity remains anonymous, invented blockchain in order to create a currency that is independent from a central authority. But in the process, Nakamoto invented a way to securely transmit data in a way that it is indelibly recorded.

"Blockchain technology can be used to keep track of and transact any data beyond bitcoin," said Schwartz, who edited the magazine's recent issue on the future of money. "The idea is that instead of intermediaries deciding if something is valid and keeping it secure, math and machines are taking on that role."

Harvard professor and renowned economist Kenneth Rogoff, who’s in the past argued for a reduction in the amount of physical cash, has recently stated that bitcoin is likelier to hit $100 than $100,000 a decade from now.

Speaking at CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” the former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) argued that if the cryptocurrency stops being used to launder money and evade taxes, its “actual uses as a transaction vehicle are very small.”

He said:

“I think bitcoin will be worth a tiny fraction of what it is now if we’re headed out 10 years from now … I would see $100 as being a lot more likely than $100,000 ten years from now.”

Bitcoin has indeed been associated with illicit activities such as money laundering and tax evasion. Expert estimates on the cryptocurrency’s use in these activities vary. As reported by CCN, a 2016 Europol report found no evidence of terrorists using bitcoin.

Moreover, a report from the European Commission to the European Parliament and Council found that terrorists and criminals are barely using bitcoin or ethereum. The report labeled the risk of digital currencies being used to finance terrorism as “moderately significant.”

Nevertheless, according to Rogoff, government regulations would be a trigger for bitcoin’s demise. The economist stressed that developing a global framework of regulations would take time

China has enacted a major clampdown on how citizens can legally access and trade cryptocurrency in the past six months.

September saw the second exchange shutdown of 2017 become a permanent moratorium on crypto-to-fiat platforms, with lawmakers signaling earlier this month they would seek to end “centralized” exchange activities altogether.

September also saw a sudden halt on ICOs, with projects which had already accrued funds but not launched tokens being obliged to return investments.

Against the current backdrop of additional clampdowns on mining activity in China, Yang’s words thus appear surprising.

While confirming over-the-counter and overseas exchanges “would be strictly regulated,” local news outlet 8btc reports that Yang added that the remedial regulatory climate in China was ostensibly meant to weed out “bad” ICO projects to allow bonafide offerings to flourish.

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This is a very complex question, and it’s next to impossible to give a definite answer. The reason being all of these have their pros and cons and virtually no one can give you more than a speculation. Here are the main points about all of these currencies:

Bitcoin - even though it’s not the very first currency out there, it certainly is the most popular and successful as of now. The market cap is way above all the other ones. It is often referenced to as digital gold, sort of an asset that gained enough momentum that it will remain valuable for time to come.

Having said that, this does mean that the network is overloaded leading to major delays in transfers, it has many major governments trying to regulate (and often limit) its use, it became next to impossible to mine and the price of coins as well as the transaction fees are way up there, so much so that it hardly makes sense to invest if you don’t have rather hefty amounts to throw at it.

Ether - Made using Ethereum, this currency has seen more than impressive growth. As of the beginning of 2018 it successfully surpassed 4 digits USD value for a single coin. The main advantage is the use of Ethereum on the backend, which is now used by many others to build blockchain based decentralized applications. It is way easier to understand and learn than the code behind bitcoin. For this reason, Ethereum has relevancy like no other and is being used by many institutions for all sorts of things.

However, since the code is very young and decentralized, it is prone to bugs that can be pretty detrimental when they occur on big transactions. Also, the main thing that gives Ether the advantage that it currently has, which is the fact that it’s build on Ethereum, might be taken away from it if another, even more user friendly platforms occurs.

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Ще одна велика криптовалютна біржа заявила про відкриття свого відділення на Мальті. За цим середземноморським островом поступово закріплюється статус центру для криптовалютних стартапів.

OKEx, друга в світі за величиною криптовалютна біржа за щоденним обсягом торгівлі, заявила у четвер, 12 квітня, про відкриття офісу на Мальті та створення основи для подальшого зростання OKEx.

Закон про віртуальні фінансові активи Мальти є міцним фундаментом уряду для співпраці у сприянні розвитку блокчейну та цифрової галузі. Більш конкретно, поміркований підхід Мальти, що ґрунтується на правильному розумінні, допоможе розвинути відповідальну, відповідну і здорову екосистему,

 - пояснив Тім Б'юн (Tim Byun), головний співробітник з ризиків та керівник зі зв’язків у OKEx.

Ми з нетерпінням чекаємо співпраці з урядом Мальти, оскільки їхнє передове мислення співпадає з нашим і ми маємо багато однакових цінностей: найважливіші з них - захист торговців та широкої громадськості, дотримання стандартів боротьби з відмиванням грошей та принципів KYC, а також визнання інновацій та важливість подальшого розвитку екосистеми блокчейну,

 - додав Кріс Лі (Chris Lee), генеральний директор OKEx.

В даний час гонконгська  OKEx одна з бірж, раніше відома своїм дружнім ставленням до бізнесу, зайняла більш жорстку позицію відносно обміну криптовалют та первинних пропозицій монет (ICO).

З іншого боку, Мальта почала активно займатися криптовалютними компаніями. Уряд заявив, що хоче перетворити державу-члена ЄС на "блокчейн-острів" через прийняття сприятливих до блокчейну законодавчих актів.

Минулого місяця влада побачила перші серйозні плоди цих зусиль, оскільки одна з найбільших в світі  криптовалютних бірж, Binance, що має офіси у Брюсселі, та Гонконзі, оголосила, що переведе штаб-квартиру на Мальту, а не Японію, як це колись планувалося.

Прем'єр-міністр Мальти особисто вітав компанію в цьому регіоні, а виконавчий директор Binance, Чанпен Чжао (Changpeng Zhao), заявив, що в нього є понад 20 проектів з криптовалютами, які розглядають можливість переїзду до Мальти.

OKEx та Binance - це не єдині криптовалютні біржі Гонконгу, які планують перемістити свої головні офіси. Як повідомлялося, Bitfinex, шоста за величиною  криптовалютна біржа,  планує перенести штаб-квартиру в Швейцарію.

Засновник Tetras Capital та колишній економіст Goldman Sachs Брендан Бернштейн (Brendan Bernstein) став останнім джерелом, яке заявило, що біткойн буде тим, що проколе “бульбашку традиційних фінансів”.