Читать книгу Digital Gold: Earn Money on the Web - Alex Greench - Страница 14

Perhaps, after reading a little bit, you will have your own, independent opinion about Bitcoin. I really hope that you will see the advantages of Bitcoin over ordinary fiat (paper) money. I want you to also realize what benefits you can get from it. Of course, you should not invest all your savings in Bitcoin. But, as it seems to me, this asset should appear in each of our investment portfolios.

If you want to learn a little more about Bitcoin, I recommend that you watch the documentary “Ascent of Bitcoin” (2014), as well as the movie “State VS Bitcoin” from BitNovosti. A lot of useful information can be found also on the website Bitcoin.org. And if you don’t have much time, I’ll briefly tell you about its appearance. So, the author and developer of Bitcoin is a kind of mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto (perhaps this is even a group of people). Until now, virtually nothing is known about him, and the creator has never appeared to the world.

In 2008, a file was published in the network with a description of the protocol and the principle of the payment system in the form of a peer-to-peer network. According to Satoshi, the development began in 2007. In 2009, he completed the development of the protocol and published the code of the client program.

On January 3, 2009, the first block and the first 50 Bitcoins were generated. The first Bitcoin transfer transaction took place on January 12, 2009 – Satoshi Nakamoto sent 10 Bitcoins to Hal Finney. The first exchange of Bitcoins for national money occurred in September 2009 – Martti Malmi sent to the user with the alias NewLibertyStandard 5050 Bitcoins, for which he received about $5 in his PayPal account.

The first exchange of Bitcoins for real goods occurred in May 2010 – the American Laszlo Hanyecz received 10 pizzas from delivery for 10,000 Bitcoins. ¹⁰

On May 22, the Bitcoin community around the world celebrated the so-called Pizza Day, which can also be fairly called the most expensive pizza in the world during the day. It was on this day, May 22, 2010, that a Las Vegas programmer, Laszlo Hanyecz, with the help of the Bitcoin Talk forum, paid for two Papa John’s pizzas, not with traditional money, but with a little-known cryptocurrency at that time called Bitcoin. Buying two pizzas cost him 10,000 BTC, which at that time, was about $25. At the moment, at the current rate, it would be about $34 million.

In this book, I want to pay more attention to recent events, when interest in Bitcoin has grown dozens, if not hundreds of times.

So, at the beginning of September 2017, the Chinese documentary film “Bitcoin: Shape the Future,“created by the Bitkan cryptocurrency exchange, was shown at the BTC & Blockchain Summit in Beijing. You can get acquainted with it on YouTube. The Bitkan film tells the revolutionary story of Bitcoin through the eyes of the Chinese community. The film also presents the work of manufacturers of ASIC, large mining pools and the largest international Bitcoin exchanges. The company reported that they managed to make the film informative, going into details about the emerging cryptocurrency economy, using a unique video series and interviews with China’s most famous Bitcoiners. ¹⁹

On October 12, 2017, the Bitcoin rate reached $5,216.2 for 1 BTC (according to the Bitfinex exchange). Cryptocurrency capitalization was $84.7 billion.

On November 20, 2017, the Bitcoin course broke all existing records, rising to the level of $8,082. On November 20, 2016, Bitcoin showed a maximum of $760. It turns out that the price increase in percentage was 1063% in one year. There were several reasons for this: On April 1, 2017, Japan officially recognized Bitcoin as a means of payment. In addition, options on futures and ETFs became the main topics in the news (CBOE expected to start trading in Bitcoin futures on December 10, 2017). Investments in Bitcoin became available to everyone: from banks and insurance companies to governments. ²⁰ I think this is just incredible growth. No asset is capable of such growth.

In early December 2017, the US Futures Trading Association requested the regulator to cancel the start of Bitcoin futures, since the use of a self-certification scheme for such new products “does not correspond to the potential risks that underlie such trading.” It is believed that the US Futures Trading Association lobbies the interests of large banks and brokers, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Citigroup.²¹ And yet, I doubt that the leaders of these financial organizations did not know what effect the start of Bitcoin futures trading would have on the Bitcoin price.

On December 10, 2017, the largest US options exchange, CBOE Global Markets (it accounts for more than 51% of option trading in the United States and 91% of all index options) launched trading in Bitcoin futures. After 10 minutes, the site of the exchange “fell” under the onslaught of an incredible number of visitors. The leaders of many of the largest banks were seriously concerned about such a loud arrival of Bitcoin on Wall Street. As you know, some bank leaders and industry leaders have publicly ridiculed Bitcoin in recent months, calling it a bubble, a pyramid, banal fraud, and a “money laundering index.” Now imagine that these same investment banks start helping clients to invest in cryptocurrencies – this could be a serious blow to the reputation of the bank.

Bankers are frightened by Bitcoin’s volatility, which is a serious danger for the bank – its price can change dramatically in a few minutes, and there is no accepted model to account for it on the balance sheet.

The letter from the Futures Industry Association, which appeared in early December, said that the CBOE and the CME Group begantrading in Bitcoin futures without proper consideration of risks. ²²

Earlier, analysts noted that the launch of Bitcoin futures could lead to the collapse of the cryptocurrency rate as large institutional investors (banks, insurance, investment funds, etc., that is, financial giants who have many years of investment experience) can start playing on lowering. However, the Bitcoin rate for the morning of the next day was $16,231 at the Bitfinex exchange. The first day of trading on CBOE Global Markets for Bitcoin futures went well. By the end of the day, 3969 contracts were sold and purchased. During the day, futures went up by $3,545 to $18,545. The price of Bitcoin also increased. ²³ Everything seems to be going well.

But after a few days, Stephen Gandel (Bloomberg columnist) noted: there are already some signs that not everything is going smoothly. There was a decrease in the price of the January contract by $815, and the trading volume decreased several times. It was a constant and unusually large gap between the price of Bitcoin and futures contract. ²⁴

On December 17, 2017, the weighted average rate of the most popular cryptocurrency in the world, Bitcoin, reached a new psychological mark of $20,000 with a capitalization of $334.5 billion. But at 5:00 pm on the same day, the first trading in Bitcoin futures at CME began. Already on December 19, the price of Bitcoin began to plummet.

Many people believe that Bitcoin futures were created in order to keep the price and prevent ordinary people from getting rich, as well as to keep stocks and bond markets at a high level. Fiat currency should not lose its value. In addition, all conditions must be created so that large investors can buy at a low price.