Bitcoin is well off its all-time high, due in large part to moves by China to shut down domestic Bitcoin exchanges.
Also putting pressure on Bitcoin: The People's Bank of China recently banned initial coin offerings (ICO), thus outlawing the practice of creating and selling cryptocurrency to investors to finance startup projects in the country.
Bitcoin-watchers take solace, however, in Bitcoin’s price resilience around the $4,000 mark – and hopes that China will see the light and ease its newly-minted restrictions.
And then there are skeptics like myself who see China’s moves as the first few dominos to fall, heralding a complete collapse of the Bitcoin speculative bubble.
I’m not going to use this article to argue that Bitcoin is in a speculative bubble, however. That fact is too obvious to warrant such an argument.
Instead, I’m going to gaze into my crystal ball and predict what secondary effects such a crash will cause – in other words, the collateral damage.
