If bitcoin is in a bubble, it is one of the few in the history of finance – if not the first – that expanded with negligible use of credit.
That's just one of the unique takeaways from CoinDesk's State of Blockchain 2018 report, the latest in the quarterly series setting out our in-depth research on the rapidly evolving world of cryptocurrencies and the technologies they've inspired.
Released Wednesday, the report provides a 160-plus slide analysis of some of the data points propelling this story forward.
The report covers public blockchains, DLT, consortium chains, initial coin offerings (ICOs), trading and investments, and regulation, and also features the results of our 70-plus question sentiment survey, which provides insight from over 3,000 CoinDesk readers.
Here are five of the most significant trends that defined both Q4 and 2017:
1. This is not your father's investment bubble
Bitcoin went on a super run in 2017 with returns for the year at 1,278 percent. Along with all the mainstream attention came discussion of whether the original and still largest cryptocurrency was in a bubble.
Our own readers were split on this, with about 49 percent answering "yes," 39 percent saying "no" and 11 percent who were neutral. Deeper than this split of opinion, our survey provided a much needed data point around the whole speculative bubble conversation.
Only 19 percent of our respondents went into debt to buy crypto, and of those who did, over half paid back their loans. The important and historic takeaway is that if bitcoin is indeed a bubble, it is the rare kind that has inflated with little leverage or borrowed money. (Margin trading on the exchanges was recently introduced, but it is limited and typically offered on a peer-to-peer basis.)
In short, bitcoin has made it this far without help from Wall Street or banks (unless you count the wholesale closing of accounts to certain industries and geographies by risk-averse financial institutions, which may inadvertently drive those de-banked users to use a permissionless system).
This marks the first time in recent memory average people have been ahead of the so-called "smart money" – another chapter in the ongoing narrative that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are the most interesting story worldwide in finance and economics.
Read more at...:
https://www.coindesk.com/coindesk-releases-2018-bitcoin-blockchain-industry-report
