Well, never a dull moment in the cryptosphere.
As usual, there was notable Bitcoin news overnight, although not as it relates to prices. Everyone’s favorite digital currency is still off its post-holiday lows thanks to the remnants of the sugar high that accompanied yesterday’s WSJ article revealing a “monster” stake held by none other than Peter Thiel.
According to QQ, the PBoC recently held a closed-door meeting where the discussion centered on regulating power use in Bitcoin mining. You can read the translated article for yourself here, but suffice to say that miners themselves are shrugging it off. “The recent news is all about fried rice,” one told QQ, adding that “the old news is put after the false news, in order to shorten the bitcoin.” Obviously, something was lost in translation there.
Speaking of lost in translation, the People’s Daily (so, the Politburo) was out with a scathing critique of the digital currency which, when you Google translate it, is fall-in-the-floor funny.
For example, here’s Beijing telling you that it’s all a bubble – not just the price, but all the “so-called advantages” too:
Bubble price of bitcoin is already an issue that need not be discussed. Whether it is from the rise or from the currency itself, bitcoin is full of bubbles. Its so-called advantages: scarcity, fidelity, strong liquidity, transparency and decentralization are all speculations. It is simply impossible to support the same rally as roller coasters. The recent plunge has already explained the issue very well.
But it gets funnier than that – much funnier. To wit:
One of the sources of bitcoin’s bubble is the speculation that tricks it up. On the one hand, it is the mystery of bitcoin speculation, including but not limited to the mystery of inventor’s life experience, encryption of currency aura, total inflation control, etc. On the other hand, it is a “decenterization” Any country, government and financial institutions control, with security and “unrestrained” attributes. In addition, bitcoin itself has neither price fluctuation limit nor trading platform in a complete trading mechanism, giving speculators a night of riches in imagination, coupled with bitcoin branching and token issuance, Once promoted its price rise.
That’s right. Bitcoin “branching” and ICOs are “giving speculators a night of riches in imagination.” In other words, these gains are ephemeral. They’re not real. They’re a figment of your imagination. If you were smart, you might consider that a warning.
The piece goes on to cite Bloomberg’s “whale” article on the way to suggesting that there’s collusion in the market. Ultimately, the gist of it is as follows:
Bitcoin bubble in the end: How big?
Is it a replica of a tulip bubble?
Well, no. Because a “replica” implies that one looks like the other. And as you might recall, Bitcoin has run so far, so fast, that it has now eclipsed the tulip mania to become the most egregious bubble in the history of speculative finance…
