This doesn't surprise me. My Facebook feed has three kinds of people on it: family, people I went to grade school and high school with, and security industry people I've met at conferences.<p>Over the last few months, it's gotten to the point where I can't snark about Bitcoin (to my security industry friends) without getting aggressive pushback from the people I went to grade school with, none of whom are in the technology industry, many of whom are cheerleading their social circles into investing in Bitcoin.<p>None of them are <i>transacting</i> in Bitcoin (to a first approximation: nobody is transacting in Bitcoin). They're buying for the same reason people bought into Pets.com.<p>Here's an example:<p><i>November 29 at 11:03am:</i> Bitcoin just topped 11k! That's a 77% gain in just the last 30 days. Who wants in??? <i>[21 likes, 19 comments]</i>.<p>This is from a home mortgage loan officer I went to grade school with. The comments are all variants of "Me, I want in."<p>I don't know what weird threshold we crossed in the middle of this year, but cross it we did.
Bubbly bubble.<p>Seriously, some time ago you could debate if you're an early adopter (winning from a raise in the bubble even if it pops later) or a laggard who'll only lose in it; but if you're investing <i>after</i> a random taxi driver has taken a mortgage to do so, then (hint-hint) you're not one of the early ones.
Not that this is going to stop anyone, but those who are considering investing a lot of their net worth in something so speculative should do themselves a favor and read up on the so-called Tulip Craze (aka Tulip Mania) in the 17th century.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_craze" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_craze</a>
What is curious is that it seems like there's a growing consensus with everyone with a real clue about it that this is a bubble, while the price keeps rising anyway.<p>We're already past the point where bitcoin could have any value as a currency, as the higher and higher transaction fees ensure the only remaining users are traders. I mean I can hardly see anyone using bitcoin today as anything but a store of value for speculative reasons. Any real users (which treat it as a currency) should have already left for cheaper currencies. It's going to fall, and fall hard, and it will be painful. When it will crash, it's going to take similar protocols (who can use the same setups / hardware / asics) down with it as miners try to reuse their hardware on more effective currency.
Oh people COME ON!<p>I love Bitcoin and other crypto currencies but driving yourself into debt to buy in is <i>grossly</i> irresponsible. Worst of all these will be the same people clamoring for regulation when they lose all their things.
Interesting that everyone seems to be in consensus that this is a bubble. If you're so sure, why not short it? That's free money you're leaving on the table.
How do you take out a mortgage and spend it on something other than a property? That has to be fraud regardless of what you purchase, right? This worthless article didn't explain much.
Do these people know cryptocurrencies are reliant on unsolved mathematics?<p>This information needs to be the first thing people learn about cryptocurrency.. long before putting any money in
Isn’t this exactly what made the stock market crash of 1929 so devastating to the US? And which lead to the Great Depression our grandparents tell us about?