Bitcoin is the chart of the day on the Economist

[bubblesort]

They think this spike is a bubble, and cite usability as the major reason for the instability of the currency.

Daily Chart:  A Bit Expensive | The Economist

Thoughts?

[Tirapon]

Sounds like something written last year...

[Melbustus]

They should post a 15yr gold chart, and call it a massive bubble* for exactly the same reasons. They could make the same arguments; very few people using it for transactions compared to how many people hold it (probably far more exaggerated than bitcoin in this regard, I'd guess). The core point being missed: bitcoin actually doesn't need a robust consumer retail transactional economy in order to be highly successful. Like gold.


* If gold's a bubble, it's because demand for gold will transition to bitcoin. I'm coming around the Cypherdoc's assertion that there's only room for one dominant gold-like medium in this world, and bitcoin quite simply does gold better.

[Mike Christ]

Every time BTC goes up in price, someone calls it a bubble.

And then it isn't.  Unless we're supposed to be falling down to single digits anytime soon

[NABiT]

MSM have been saying it about gold for years, no doubt they'll take the same approach with bitcoin.
Something you just have to ignore or get used to, I think they just do it for attention.

[freespirit]

They should have looked at "buy bitcoin" trend instead: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%22buy+bitcoin%22

[Spaceman_Spiff]

They should have looked at "buy bitcoin" trend instead: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%22buy+bitcoin%22

screw 'buy bitcoin', check out 'blockchain' !

[Adrian-x]

They should post a 15yr gold chart, and call it a massive bubble* for exactly the same reasons. They could make the same arguments; very few people using it for transactions compared to how many people hold it (probably far more exaggerated than bitcoin in this regard, I'd guess). The core point being missed: bitcoin actually doesn't need a robust consumer retail transactional economy in order to be highly successful. Like gold.


* If gold's a bubble, it's because demand for gold will transition to bitcoin. I'm coming around the Cypherdoc's assertion that there's only room for one dominant gold-like medium in this world, and bitcoin quite simply does gold better.

+1

[bubblesort]

Gold has always been a bubble.  I'll never understand why people seem to fetishise it as the substance that is the basis for all value everywhere.  I mean, I understand the history and all that, but it's not the greatest currency ever.  Now that we aren't on the gold standard any more we should be trading it based on it's use value, but it's exchange value has very little to do with it's use value.  People seem to think that when the zombie apocalypse happens gold will be the only thing worth having, rather than, say, weapons or clean drinking water.

That said, in the event of a horrible apocalypse style disaster gold seems more stable than bitcoin to me (although potable water would be better than gold or bitcoins).  Bitcoin is only usable if you have the internet, right?  I mean, there is no physical Bitcoin protocol like the IP over avian carriers protocol, right?  (AKA RFC 2549)  In an apocalyptic breakdown of society the infrastructure will be one of the first modern conveniences to crumble.  Bitcoin seems ideal for protection from financial sector meltdowns and protecting you from statist thievery like what is happening on Cyprus, but not for serious breakdowns like, "shit, my government is harboring Bin Laden, we're about to get bombed into the stone age!"

[Spaceman_Spiff]

Gold has always been a bubble.  I'll never understand why people seem to fetishise it as the substance that is the basis for all value everywhere.  I mean, I understand the history and all that, but it's not the greatest currency ever.  Now that we aren't on the gold standard any more we should be trading it based on it's use value, but it's exchange value has very little to do with it's use value.  People seem to think that when the zombie apocalypse happens gold will be the only thing worth having, rather than, say, weapons or clean drinking water.

 

Zombie apocalypse: no.  Financial repression and monetary dilution: yes (or replaced by bitcoin).

[Melbustus]

Gold has always been a bubble.  I'll never understand why people seem to fetishise it as the substance that is the basis for all value everywhere.  I mean, I understand the history and all that, but it's not the greatest currency ever.  Now that we aren't on the gold standard any more we should be trading it based on it's use value, but it's exchange value has very little to do with it's use value.  People seem to think that when the zombie apocalypse happens gold will be the only thing worth having, rather than, say, weapons or clean drinking water.

That said, in the event of a horrible apocalypse style disaster gold seems more stable than bitcoin to me (although potable water would be better than gold or bitcoins).  Bitcoin is only usable if you have the internet, right?  I mean, there is no physical Bitcoin protocol like the IP over avian carriers protocol, right?  (AKA RFC 2549)  In an apocalyptic breakdown of society the infrastructure will be one of the first modern conveniences to crumble.  Bitcoin seems ideal for protection from financial sector meltdowns and protecting you from statist thievery like what is happening on Cyprus, but not for serious breakdowns like, "shit, my government is harboring Bin Laden, we're about to get bombed into the stone age!"

Gold was money pre-electronics because it has great properties as a unit of exchange/account in such an environment (all the "ideal money" stuff; eg, durable, scarce, recognizable, divisible, fungible, etc). And even until 2009, nothing existed that bested those properties of gold. It's just that in the electronic era, humans developed a strong need to transact at a distance, so we developed surrogates acting on top of gold (eg, representatively pegged to gold) that were exchanged in its stead. All's well so long as the peg is preserved (else you can lose the "scarce" quality).

Turns out humans like to mess with the peg because changing it can generate short-term wealth (and votes). So the peg ultimately has to go, and we end up with a grand experiment in pure global fiat in the vacuum left by gold. Interesting times.

Nothing that has gold's properties while providing transactional utility in the modern world existed between 1971 (gold un-peg) and 2009, and look what happened... Global debt of completely unprecedented proportions. Now that we have the ideal solution for modern times, it will be interesting to see to what degree it can unseat the fiat surrogates that are currently in use as money.

No matter what, bitcoin is almost completely a monetary superset of gold (eg, gold has few good properties that bitcoin doesn't, but bitcoin has many good properties that gold lacks).

So gold eventually melts into bitcoin.

[Canaanite]

I'm a believer of the Bitcoin,
but this chart shows something interesting, the bitcoin/dollar has grown by 3 times while the awareness of the coin risen only by 1 time.
although both of the graph don't have linear relationship, I'm afraid the price is a bit too high.

On the other hand I don't really care as I see my self as a long timer and not trying to make money out of speculations

[warpio]

I'm a believer of the Bitcoin,
but this chart shows something interesting, the bitcoin/dollar has grown by 3 times while the awareness of the coin risen only by 1 time.
although both of the graph don't have linear relationship, I'm afraid the price is a bit too high.

On the other hand I don't really care as I see my self as a long timer and not trying to make money out of speculations

I think it's not only the awareness of bitcoin causing the price to rise, it's also people's trust in its security and reliability that has grown. Even a few months ago, I was still a bit hesitant about BTC's future. But now, after seeing it recover so easily from a forked upgrade, and seeing in comparison the problems that national currencies like the Euro are facing, I see the current price rise as being fully justified.

[Prattler]

I'm a believer of the Bitcoin,
but this chart shows something interesting, the bitcoin/dollar has grown by 3 times while the awareness of the coin risen only by 1 time.
although both of the graph don't have linear relationship, I'm afraid the price is a bit too high.

On the other hand I don't really care as I see my self as a long timer and not trying to make money out of speculations

I think it's not only the awareness of bitcoin causing the price to rise, it's also people's trust in its security and reliability that has grown. Even a few months ago, I was still a bit hesitant about BTC's future. But now, after seeing it recover so easily from a forked upgrade, and seeing in comparison the problems that national currencies like the Euro are facing, I see the current price rise as being fully justified.

Exactly this! People google up bitcoin and dismiss it quickly. Some of those people will come back to bitcoin in a few years, intrigued why it hadn't died yet.

What may be happening is that we are growing in number of people who actually trust the bitcoin idea. Google trends doesn't show that.

[Canaanite]

I'm a believer of the Bitcoin,
but this chart shows something interesting, the bitcoin/dollar has grown by 3 times while the awareness of the coin risen only by 1 time.
although both of the graph don't have linear relationship, I'm afraid the price is a bit too high.

On the other hand I don't really care as I see my self as a long timer and not trying to make money out of speculations

I think it's not only the awareness of bitcoin causing the price to rise, it's also people's trust in its security and reliability that has grown. Even a few months ago, I was still a bit hesitant about BTC's future. But now, after seeing it recover so easily from a forked upgrade, and seeing in comparison the problems that national currencies like the Euro are facing, I see the current price rise as being fully justified.

I sure hope you are right.

I do not think the bitcoin should be measured by is value (although most of us enjoy doing so these days:) ) but by the number of business who accept it and the number of transactions. I hope I'll find a graph of that one day.

[Canaanite]

I'm a believer of the Bitcoin,
but this chart shows something interesting, the bitcoin/dollar has grown by 3 times while the awareness of the coin risen only by 1 time.
although both of the graph don't have linear relationship, I'm afraid the price is a bit too high.

On the other hand I don't really care as I see my self as a long timer and not trying to make money out of speculations

I don't see why you would expect a linear relationship, how many times have you googled bitcoin since first finding out about it and digging for info? Most folks will bookmark the stuff they find useful and follow links from there so they're unlikely to do general searches for long (or end up in this cesspit of freaks and scammers and run away screaming).

I dont see or expect linear relationship,
and your argument does not have basis because we are talking about the total numbers then and now.
I just want to see the bitcoin price goes up because of higher awareness, more transactions, better security rather then speculations and investors.

these two graphs are showing something, I suggest you to observe it a bit more, there is clearly some connection between the two and something has changed there in the past month

[Minor Miner]

This is actually quite bullish.   Remember when the economist put on the front cover that oil was going to $5 back when it was in the teens???

[bb113]

I'm a believer of the Bitcoin,
but this chart shows something interesting, the bitcoin/dollar has grown by 3 times while the awareness of the coin risen only by 1 time.
although both of the graph don't have linear relationship, I'm afraid the price is a bit too high.

On the other hand I don't really care as I see my self as a long timer and not trying to make money out of speculations

I don't see why you would expect a linear relationship, how many times have you googled bitcoin since first finding out about it and digging for info? Most folks will bookmark the stuff they find useful and follow links from there so they're unlikely to do general searches for long (or end up in this cesspit of freaks and scammers and run away screaming).

I dont see or expect linear relationship,
and your argument does not have basis because we are talking about the total numbers then and now.
I just want to see the bitcoin price goes up because of higher awareness, more transactions, better security rather then speculations and investors.

these two graphs are showing something, I suggest you to observe it a bit more, there is clearly some connection between the two and something has changed there in the past month

[Minor Miner]

I'm a believer of the Bitcoin,
but this chart shows something interesting, the bitcoin/dollar has grown by 3 times while the awareness of the coin risen only by 1 time.
although both of the graph don't have linear relationship, I'm afraid the price is a bit too high.

On the other hand I don't really care as I see my self as a long timer and not trying to make money out of speculations

Can you think of ANY reason why there may have been an unnatural amount of demand for BTC in the last month?   Ignore the world crisis because not enough people know about BTC.   What about gold dropping?   seems like btc and gold interest a similar group of people.   what about the gold rush machines that you need BTC to buy?

[notme]

I'm a believer of the Bitcoin,
but this chart shows something interesting, the bitcoin/dollar has grown by 3 times while the awareness of the coin risen only by 1 time.
although both of the graph don't have linear relationship, I'm afraid the price is a bit too high.

On the other hand I don't really care as I see my self as a long timer and not trying to make money out of speculations

Can you think of ANY reason why there may have been an unnatural amount of demand for BTC in the last month?

Coinbase, coinlab, reddit, namecheap, etc.

Ignore the world crisis because not enough people know about BTC.

No, I will not ignore that because it has influenced my trading decisions.

What about gold dropping?   seems like btc and gold interest a similar group of people.   what about the gold rush machines that you need BTC to buy?

What about it?  Gold bubbled in response to the 2008 crisis.  It is merely retracing a bit.  I don't understand what your last question means.