10 March 2018

Bitcoin in the News : 2018-02 More++

Just as day follows night, a '2018-02 More++' post follows the previous post, Bitcoin in the News : 2018-02 Price. Or should it be 'as night follows day'? Last month's Bitcoin in the News : 2018-01 More++ (February 2018) was 100% bad news and I ended it with:-
Let's hope February brings better news for everyone.

First let's have some follow-ups. In January we had a couple of stories about 'Botnet/crypto hookups looking for miners', surreptitiously, of course -- otherwise it might almost be good news. Last month we had:-

In January we also had a couple of stories about 'Energy use'. Last month we had:-

  • 2018-02-13: How Iceland became the bitcoin miners' paradise (theguardian.com) • 'The island nation is the first to use more electricity on mining cryptocurriencies than on its households -- thanks in part to its magma-fuelled power plants.'

Granted, both of those February stories might be considered good news, depending on where you stand. How about this follow-up to January's '2018-01-13: Bitcoin Investors Are Using Credit Cards in Disturbing Numbers (fortune.com)'; is it good news or bad news?:-

The next two stories might also go either way: good news -or- bad news...

...until you read them. That first story, subtitled, 'The most memorable comments on the cryptocurrency from senior figures in world finance', was full of comments like:-

Yves Mersch, a member of the European Central Bank’s executive board: 'If you bought a bunch of tulips with bitcoin they may well have wilted by the time the transaction was confirmed.'

Agustín Carstens, the new head of the Bank for International Settlements: 'Cryptocurrencies could become more interconnected with the main financial system and become a threat to financial stability'.

Nouriel Roubini, the American economist credited with predicting the 2008 financial crash has called bitcoin "the mother of all bubbles" and "much worse" than tulip mania.

And the list of similar comments from financial movers & shakers went on and on. That second story had these bullets as section headers:-

The Cryptocurrency Bubble Has Only Started To Deflate
Bitcoin Has No Fundamental Price To Fall Back Upon
There Is Rampant Market Manipulation In Cryptocurrency
There Is Rampant Fraud In Cryptocurrency
Institutional Investors Are Staying Away

Now here a half-dozen stories that are strictly in the 'bad news' column:-

Unlike January, there were a couple of bright spots in February:-

The last two stories were from the end of the month, when the price of bitcoin was recovering. If this scenario continues, I might be able to test the hypothesis that bad news breeds bad news and good news breeds good news.

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03 March 2018

Bitcoin in the News : 2018-02 Price

If the first week of February looked like a continuation of January (as in Bitcoin in the News : 2018-01 Price; 'a steady downward trend during the course of the month'), then the rest of the month looked more like a typical month in 2017 (see BITN : 2017-12 More++; 'Exactly six of the 12 months showed a steady upward trend during the course of the month').


Bitcoin Price Index

I ended the '2018-01 Price' post with a link to a CoinTelegraph.com article from its Bitcoin Price Analysis (BPA) for February. Here it is again, with an extract of its section titles:-

It's not exactly revolutionary thinking, is it? Most BPA articles discuss technical analysis and I should look at those in depth in one of my posts. In the meantime, here's a selection of other BPA articles for February. The first two coincided with the steep slide during the first week of the month.

The rest are from the price recovery during the last three weeks of the month.

Note the two references to the $10K level. Is it a floor or a ceiling? I doubt that anyone really has any idea what a bitcoin is worth.

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