Dear Steemitians
How much is Cryptocurrencies scaries? "Is it a poison that will end the bubble of tulips", as the American tycoon Warrent Buffett claims? Or "the beginning of something big: the currency without a government, something necessary and imperative", as Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal, maintains? On 5 October 2009, the day of its first listing, the Bitcoin was worth 0.00076 dollars. Today, to buy one they need just over 6,300 dollars but at the end of last year they needed almost 19 thousand. The euphoria of late 2017 has been paid dearly by many investors. The few daredevils who have invested in the beginnings on the cryptocurrency are still sleeping more than quiet, but most of those who have today in the Bitcoin portfolio have been dazzled by the bull of 2017 and in many cases suffered heavy losses. From the historical peak of 18 December 2017, Bitcoin loses almost 70% and it still weak in this time.
The lows this year were touched on 28 June, 24 July earned 44% from the lows and today maintains an increase of less than 10 percentage points. Despite this little reassuring scenario, the focus on Bitcoin continues to increase. Ing International has just published a study that highlights the vision of savers in March, just in the worst period of the collapse of Bitcoin. 15 thousand people were heard in Europe, the United States and Australia and the data that emerges is surprising. Instead of finding disappointment and fear compared to the world of cryptocurrencies, a discreet welcome emerged.
9% of respondents in Europe said they had cryptocurrencies even in low quantities and 25%, despite the collapses, thought in March to buy them in the future. Also the perception of the level of danger is rather low. Only 46% in Europe consider the less risky shares of digital currencies like Bitcoin. And only three out of 10 respondents think they never invest in cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin does not yet have all the features necessary to be considered a currency in effect. Money is something that is used as a medium of exchange, which should be widely accepted as a means of payment. The acceptance of Bitcoin is still very limited, also because price stability, which is an important aspect in exchanges in traditional currencies, is today a concept very far from the world of cryptocurrencies. As a recent UBS analysis recalls, the structure of Bitcoin and high volatility are the main limitations.
The offer is fixed while the demand is mainly driven by speculative interests and this makes the system highly unstable. Bitcoin still maintains its objective of being a new tool to diversify the payment process in the increasingly technological world, with the characteristic of being completely decorrelated by the performance of the real economy. In reality, the highly speculative approach of these early years and the lack of clear regulatory support or guarantees for investors are slowing down this goal. Meanwhile, although it is still a deeply unstable asset, more and more banks and financial operators are offering it to their customers. Not only.
Even the Sec, the Authority of the American markets, struggles to say other "no" to the many operators who ask for it with increasing insistence to authorize the launch of ETF with underlying cryptocurrency. They has already rejected twice the proposals of a first ETF. This time, however, the US commission did not see a unanimous vote and postponed its decision to September 30th. On the other hand, many analogies with Bitcoin were seen with the bursting of the Internet bubble of 2001, from which ashes have emerged companies such as Facebook, Google or Amazon, today the international giants of the web and become champions of capitalization among the listed companies in the world.