Recent quotes:

Endnotes on 2020: Crypto and Beyond

The community split was chaotic, and one can see this in how the channels of communication were split up in the divorce: /r/bitcoin stayed under the control of supporters of Bitcoin (BTC). /r/btc was controlled by supporters of Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Bitcoin.org was controlled by supporters of Bitcoin (BTC). Bitcoin.com on the other hand was controlled by supporters of Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Each side claimed themselves to be the true Bitcoin. The result looked remarkably similar to one of those civil wars that happens from time to time that results in a country splitting in half, the two halves calling themselves almost identical names that differ only in which subset of the words "democratic", "people's" and "republic" appears on each side. Neither side had the ability to destroy the other, and of course there was no higher authority to adjudicate the dispute.

Small supply, wider adoption

Mark it down and write it down. We’re trading roughly $9,600 per Bitcoin right now. I think we’ll take out $10,000 soon and end the year closer to $20,000, the old highs. Once these store values start building momentum, there’s not a lot of supply. We’ve had this thing called the halvening, where there’s half the supply being mined than there was even a week ago. But mostly, the story’s finally catching broader adoption. And it’s not just hedge funds that are going to be able to buy it. You’re going to see wealth managers start selling it to their clients through products. We have a Bitcoin fund that’s targeted to the 50- to 80-year-olds in America that make their investment decisions through TD Ameritrade or Charles Schwab or Goldman Sachs, our registered investment advisors. Bitcoin has been a young man’s game. It’s been Gen Z and the millennials, it’s been bought on Coinbase app or Square or Robinhood, those things aren’t going away. Quite frankly, there are going to be more of them. Facebook’s Collibra is going to allow you buy Bitcoin. And that’ll be 2,000, 3,000 people using that wallet. And so there are so many more avenues of access. I always tell people if it was easy to buy, the price would be far higher already. Bitcoin’s been hard to buy and a year from now, it’s going to be that much easier.

Data Security Is Becoming the Sparkle in Bitcoin

Although companies focused on financial applications for the block chain far outnumber those experimenting with other uses, the gap is narrowing. For example, a start-up called BlockSign verifies signed documents on the block chain. Another company, Filecoin, is aiming to build a marketplace for storing data on the block chain. PeerNova — which said it was planning to announce financing that would bring its total to about $20 million — is developing a technology that will use the block chain to prove the authenticity of a document, like a patent. The company is also toying with registry applications for other records, including title deeds and financial data. “Our entire system of contracts is based on a trusted third party,” said Naveed Sherwani, the chief executive of PeerNova. But with the block chain, he added, “there is no third party anymore.”
Bitcoin is volatile for two basic reasons: it's currently difficult to purchase Bitcoins with dollars, and there's a lot of uncertainty about the Bitcoin network's long-term prospects. These are both issues that should get resolved in the coming years, making the cryptocurrency much less volatile. Liquid markets help to prevent price volatility. When the price of gold or pork bellies or shares of Microsoft stock starts to fall, bargain-hunting buyers jump into the market and push the price back up.
“It has to have intrinsic value,” Greenspan said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Washington on Dec. 4. “You have to really stretch your imagination to infer what the intrinsic value of Bitcoin is. I haven’t been able to do it. Maybe somebody else can.”
In the first camp are the folks attracted to ‘quick money’, they are excited for Bitcoin and hope to time the market, making a quick 5-10x. These are the folks that you see selling right now. You can’t blame them, these folks are making (in many cases) life changing money, paying down/off cars, houses, etc. The second camp are what I consider to be the true believers. Those of us that understand that Bitcoin has the potential to change money forever. If you believe that a decentralized digital currency, free from government corruption and controlled by the masses is the future – then you’re in this camp. This is no easy road, there are going to be sell-offs, attempted regulation, and major unforeseen disasters. It’s not for the faint of heart. We could and probably will lose everything, but IF we pull this off, the results will be unlike anything we’ve ever seen.