Bitcoin in the News : 2017-07 More++

Bitcoin price movement was the main story in my previous post, Bitcoin in the News : 2017-07 Price, and speculation about the cause of the movement was the secondary story. Several sources mentioned 'civil war', as in

• 2017-07-20: Bitcoin swings as civil war looms (bbc.com) • 'The value of the virtual currency Bitcoin has always been volatile. Even so, there has been particular turbulence in recent days as fears of a "civil war" among its adherents first grew and then subsided, although they have not gone away altogether.'

I could give many examples of related stories, but one article was more comprehensive than the others (NB: needs Flash).

• 2017-07-18: Behind on Bitcoin Drama? A (Short) History of Scaling (coindesk.com) • The article is undated, with one story from 2014, one from 2015, and the other 15 from 2017, half of those from July. I used the date of the last event mentioned.

Since no 'Bitcoin in the News' would be complete without mainstream press reports on the dark side of bitcoin, here are three:-

• 2017-07-01: UK dealer charged in US over multimillion-dollar fake Bitcoin site scam (theguardian.com) • 'Renwick Haddow created ‘trendy’ companies and duped investors into thinking they were big successes, authorities in New York allege.'
• 2017-07-24: Pennsylvania police, hunting for stolen laptops, say they stumbled on $40 million bitcoin scam (washingtonpost.com) • 'Law enforcement in Pennsylvania’s Bucks County likely didn’t think they were dealing with a dark Web criminal pro when Theodore [Ted] Price’s name first popped on their radar.'
• 2017-07-27: 'Criminal mastermind' of $4bn bitcoin laundering scheme arrested (theguardian.com) • 'Russian operator of long-standing bitcoin exchange BTC-e indicted for laundering money including high-profile hack of funds from Mt Gox exchange'; [Alexander Vinnik]

I could again give other stories, many of geographical interest, but I'll stop to document a personal experience. At the end of last year, I wrote a post about Buying Ethereum (December 2016). While writing this current post, I checked on the status of that trade and was surprised to see that the value of the Coinbase account had increased twenty times. I exchanged some of the ethereum for cash and used part of that to buy a small amount of litecoin, a cryptocurrency introduced by Coinbase since I last looked at the account.

Why mention this? First, because bitcoin++ is more than an arbitrary collection of news stories. Second, because cryptocurrencies are part virtual, part real. Third, because it introduces the last story.

• 2017-07-29: Howard Marks says bitcoin isn’t real -- and we can all blame millennials for its rise (marketwatch.com) • 'Howard Marks has some harsh words for the bitcoin community and the rise of digital currencies, which have become all the rage lately. “Digital currencies are nothing but an unfounded fad,” said the co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Management, who was among the first to sound the alarm on the 2008 financial crisis.'

Will Howard Marks be massively right a second time? Time will tell, but it brings to mind the old saying, 'You don't make any money until you sell.'