I watched a live Q and A with James Altucher, and his Choose Yourself Publisher Doug Hill this evening and enjoyed James’ expert opinion backed up by facts. In the clip above he is on CNBC talking about bitcoin.
Early Adopters Phase
Cryptocurrency is still in the early adopter's phase, before the big money has entered the game, and before it is has been adopted by the general public and gone mainstream. I first heard of cryptocurrency while blogging on Steemit in 2016, and have recently exchanged Steem dollars for Bitcoin and Ethereum and am learning all I can. There have been a lot of changes in crypto since 2016, but I have been unable to keep up with the information flow on the vast topic.
Main points in James' Q and A:
Funny Money
100.000 New Bitcoin accounts each day
In September Bitcoin dipped below $4200 USD, and currently it is valued around $11,000 USD. Although it has had it’s dips and dives, James says there are 100,000 new Bitcoin accounts each day at the bitcoin exchange named Coinbase.
The 16,000 millionaires in the world are starting to take notice of that, as bitcoin is a good way to store their money and increase their revenue.
As James says, Amazon has been looking at Bitcoin for a long time and has registered domains related to cryptocurrency and could start accepting the currency soon.
The long game
It looks like the Bitcoin price will keep going up. $10,000 invested could turn into millions of dollars. There are 21,000,000 maximum bitcoins with the final coin release in 2140.
Where to Store Bitcoin?
In an online wallet of your choice. You can also store it in cold storage, in a hardrive wallet that is kept safe in a safety deposit box. Putting your money on a hard drive is one advantage crypto has.
How Does Bitcoin Affect The Stock Exchange
If the stock exchange crashes, it means something bad has happened, such as the dollar going down. A crash like this is good for crypto. The US Stock market is currently at an all time high, and Bitcoin’s value in unaffected, because in the early adopter phase new accounts are growing it’s value each day. There is a limited supply of bitcoin and unlimited demand. Paradoxically, bitcoin can be used to transfer illegal money, but can also be used and supported by governments. There is no way governments will crack down on it, because governments are looking for ways to use the benefits of crypto without their citizens knowing.
What if an EMP Happens?
In the case of an EMP (short burst of electromagnetic radiation) or a solar flare or nuclear explosion what happens to bitcoin? Well, what happens to paper money? Your money in the bank is gone with no trace of the paper. Except in the case of a nuclear explosion that wipes everyone out, your bitcoin can be safe in a hard drive on your computer. So, an advantage is it is a hedge against an EMP.
Sustainability of Bitcoin
There are 11,000 man years of science in Bitcoin programming. It has high functionality in contract law. It is not a fad and the hard work put into it by software developers, make it a viable asset class.
Guarantee That No More coin will be created
Unlike paper money, where the Federal Reserve in The US can print more unchecked, and devalue the dollar, you cannot make more bitcoin. Bitcoin is code and all the records of it are publicly available so you can see what’s going on.
The negatives of bitcoin
It has volatility and goes up and down.
Banks and Bitcoin
Banks don’t want bitcoin because they’re losing cash by people buying bitcoin. Eventually they will buy up bitcoin exchanges.
A fork is a split. A certain percentage of coin holders want a software change,etc, so what often happens is people holding the coin get free coins after the fork.
An Illusion
People say bitcoin isn’t backed by gold, but the US Dollar is also no longer backed by gold either.
200 trillion dollars worth of paper money is backed by nothing, it's an illusion.
With bitcoin you can have contracts for future in escrow, and Ethereum made it way easier to have a smart contract.
The world is abuzz about the bitcoin world with no geographical borders like the internet (of money)!
photos CNBC and Pixabay and giphy