13 April 2019

Bitcoin in the News : 2019-03 More++

Once again, the main news around bitcoin in March was its price. At the start of the month we saw stories like:-

Remembering that the story was for the month of February, the full title was 'Bitcoin's First Monthly Gain Since July May Not Mean Too Much'. The month of March ended with reports like:-

Similar stories started appearing mid-month in other publications, documenting the struggle for the price to stay above the symbolic $4000 level. Looking at the chart from the previous post on this blog, Bitcoin in the News : 2019-03 Price, we know that the struggle was ultimately successful.

If the stories around bitcoin were only about price, the subject in itself would not be especially interesting. We might as well be discussing the price of gold or house prices in Seattle (to pick a random city). Since there is much more to bitcoin than its price, let's look at some other stories. After price, the most frequent bitcoin story in March concerned Facebook. What was that about?

  • 2019-02-28: Facebook and Telegram Are Hoping to Succeed Where Bitcoin Failed (nytimes.com; Nathaniel Popper and Mike Isaac) • 'Some of the world’s biggest internet messaging companies are hoping to succeed where cryptocurrency start-ups have failed by introducing mainstream consumers to the alternative world of digital coins. The internet outfits, including Facebook, Telegram and Signal, are planning to roll out new cryptocurrencies over the next year that are meant to allow users to send money to contacts on their messaging systems, like a Venmo or PayPal that can move across international borders. The most anticipated but secretive project is underway at Facebook.'

  • 2019-03-07: Blow To Bitcoin As Mark Zuckerberg Warns Facebook Payments Are Coming (forbes.com; Billy Bambrough) • 'Bitcoin, which has recently attracted the attention of some of the world's biggest technology entrepreneurs, is likely to soon get a major competitor: Mark Zuckerberg's social networking giant Facebook. Facebook, which was last week revealed to be working on its own cryptocurrency to rival bitcoin for the Facebook-owned WhatsApp messaging app, is trying to figure out how it can reposition itself in what Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg called a "privacy-focused" future that will likely weigh on his company's bottom line.'

Great! That's just what Facebook users need: having the non-"privacy-focused" company tracking our spending habits. The bitcoin mantra 'anonymous' might be exaggerated, but Facebook is the opposite of anonymous.

I once wrote a post about Bitcoin Futures (December 2017). Note the date; it coincided with the peak of the bitcoin boom.

If the introduction of bitcoin futures signalled a market top, does the withdrawal of those futures signal a bottom? The contrarian in me says, 'Yes, of course!' Moving on -- and skipping the ever-present reports about bitcoin horrors, mainly involving criminal activity -- one more story caught my attention:-

The massive use of electricity to drive bitcoin mining at the expense of more productive uses of the same energy might be considered another horror. Using waste to mine the same bitcoin is a genuinely good idea that should have other applications. Does anyone have an idea how to use the mountains of plastic waste that threaten the planet?

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