...Is Good?
Maybe?
Alright, I think I'm going to jump in. I gotta at least "dabble."
The cryptocurrencies are going cray cray through the roof!
I watched closely over the weekend as Bitcoin shot up yet some more and hit well over $18,500 at my last count (an article on Coindesk says it hit over 20K at one point). As it was trending up from $16,500 just a few hours before, I scrambled to put at least something into the mix. I downloaded my digital wallet (I chose Exodus) and grabbed a Key (Fuck if I know the actual terms for these things yet, this whole shit is new to me) and went on to their (and others') recommended exchange site Coinbase. I clicked through the simple user-friendly steps but got stuck because I was on my home desktop and, presumably in accordance with the Patriot Act, they needed a picture of my Driver's Licence. Okay, hmm, how the fuck do I do that. When I clicked on the NEXT button, it said the step failed.
It was trying to access my computer's webcam in order for me to hold my licence up to it and capture an image (BTW, yes, if it weren't for the apparent professional layout of this site and the third-party positive reviews, I'd be more than a bit freaked out by giving up so much sensitive information about myself). Well, I never bothered to buy a webcam for this computer so I'm SOL for the moment. But, once I get in tonight to work, I'll be able to settle down around 1:30 am or so with my laptop, log into my account on this site and continue the process with that 'puter which, like any laptop these days has a built in camera. I can only imagine what Windy will think when she sees me holding up my license to my computer's cam.
But, I may want to wait a bit. Bitcoin has dropped over the past 24 hours and is right now...clicking on Google's exchange rate calculator in realtime...$17,800. Oh fuck! Now it's going up again! It was just $17,455 about 15 minutes ago. Yes folks, it's THAT volatile. So you know I'm not going to throw more money in than I can easily afford to lose since, with this shit, if you fucking sneeze you could loose it all...or, make mad stacks! That's the fun, I guess. The action is at this table. Like a hot craps table at a casino with several whales piling up chips to the mad cheers of the ensuing crowd, this is what it's all about!
Of course, that analogy is kinda spot on. This cryptocurrency craze IS gambling. There's no "investment" here.
Even the corporate raiding for the sake of speedy, pure profit reaping, ignoring traditional gains through providing growth capital for tangible businesses, was more of a real world investment than this. If you remember, the '80s movie "Wall Street" was all about the then-trendy "new" way of making money for the sake of making money as outlined above.
This rush to riches reminds me of the Great Tulip Bulb Fever in 17th century Europe. The tulip bulb commodities market in Holland rose sharply in November of 1636, peaked in February of 1637 but then proceeded to nosedive. It apparently wasn't spurred on buy a sudden shortage or crop failures like most agricultural commodities. It wasn't a brand-new super bulb strain which made them rare and special. It was just the ordinary supply of the bulbs, like any season before. It seems that, for whatever reason, investors chose to follow the rise blindly, on the backs of previous trades, in order to get in the game while the gettin' was good.
But, being the artificial bubble it was, the market crashed by the end of that short month. No bulbs actually got exchanged, let alone got planted that spring. The planting that year was made with the suddenly near-worthless commodity.
I can only imagine the pain a tulip farmer must have felt to place each bulb into the earth, any one of them valued, just a mere couple of weeks before, at (in today's prices) about $50,000. Yes, for one bulb!
Investors weren't interested in the bulbs, of course. It was described that people of all sorts of trades and occupations (likely mostly wealthy merchants though, of course) got into the Tulip Mania. They just wanted a quick and easy profit. Many of them lost their entire net worth in the doomed speculation. But some made fortunes, not from the crop propagated from the bulbs they "bought," just simply from the sales of their share of the "market values" (futures) when the price was much higher than what they paid for them. At least that's my understanding of it, accurately worded or not. Like the Bitcoin mania we're currently in, it's just risking your money, not to buy Bitcoins, not because you're a hippy anti-establishment believer in the power of fiat-less currency, not because you're a technophile geek who understands the concept behind bitcoins and how they function (that was the typical bitcoin holder, who made their bitcoin mostly though mining (using powerful GPU-rich PCs to crunch the complex mathematical formula earning fractions of bitcoins a day). Now it's the get-rich-quickers. The guys who dream of making a killing.
And as long as that dream continues to push for more and more investment into it, Bitcoins will rise. And that's the crux of it, in my opinion. If the greed is good mentality prevails, the market will rise in a growing frenzy of "how high can it go?" mentality. And I figure these greedy bastards are going to weather the stormy seas of a volatile market. They know it'll be many peaks and scary, scary valleys for a while. But, sometime in the perhaps near future, the faith will shatter. Maybe not all at once, but probably like an avalanche, building more and more as the inevitable crash unfolds.
So watch for a new post updating what I decide and, if I go ahead with it, what I lose, errr, I mean MAKE in this fantastic folly.
EDIT: Oh Nelly! Just checked now, about half an hour after I began this post...Bitcoin is now $16,635 losing more than $1,000 in that span of time. GULP...hmmm.