Very intriguing, very confusing, seems illegal but actually is not, are all common descriptions of Bitcoin. This “cryptocurrency,” or digital asset, is catching a lot of buzz lately as it continues to skyrocket in value. Crazy statistics have surfaced saying that if you had put $100 in Bitcoin seven years ago, you’d have over $140 million today.
How could anyone have known though? It seemed like such a scam back then. At first, half the websites taking Bitcoin were fake and they would just take your credit card info. Now they have Bitcoin machines like ATMs.
Bitcoin is anonymous so anyone can put in money. A lot of students don’t know what it is, but some have even invested.
“I originally had 17 dollars worth of Bitcoin and now I have 33,” an anonymous sophomore said.
Like some ATMs, there is an entry fee that initially subtracts from your balance. This can make some weary because at first it seems like you are at a loss, but if you watch the market you can quickly gain money if you’re lucky.
Bitcoin is like the stock market because it fluctuates in value so often. It’s been on the rise for so long, some think it could keep breaking records but others suspect it could “crash” at any time.
Vice Principal David Cassady has even said he wished he had bought some bitcoin back in the day.
To give some perspective, in 2010 a bitcoin was worth close to $0.08 and now it’s worth $11,327.59, which is insane. This could mean it’s near the end or we could look back and see there could still be much money to be made.
The Winklevoss twins used their Facebook money from suing Zuckerberg to become confirmed Bitcoin Billionaires.
“I don’t know enough about it to know if it’s a sham or not, but it’s interesting how it’s taken off,” sophomore Ben Kochman said
This is not the first of its kind though. In the 90’s there was a whole subculture of “cyberpunks” doing stuff like this. In fact, the creator of Bitcoin sold the company and basically dropped off the face of the earth. He went under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, and worked with others online with Bitcoin and sold it.
Now no one knows who he or she was, and old cyberpunks have been asked to see if they were behind it all. No one has fessed up yet and it’s likely Nakamoto will never be found out.
Bitcoin is a bubble that will pop, like the housing market in 2008. The key is to be like Ryan Gosling in The Big Short: be above it all and know what’s going to happen before it happens.
An article on MarketWatch warns that there is an 80% chance that Bitcoin is about to crash, and other websites and articles will oppose that opinion thoroughly. There really is no way to know for sure.
“It’s been going up for so long, it’s definitely about to crash,” sophomore Turner Barefoot said.