As usual, it was all hype. The market does not care how much Bitcoin you bought in advance of the halving (or halvening) – you were a victim of the same hype bubble as everyone else. Bitcoin’s price has actually taken a mild dive (although catastrophic by many metrics) before rebounding, but it’s still struggling to set its sights on $10,000 again.
Where’s The Beef?
More to the point, the belief that miners can’t simply keep selling at the market price, instead of hold off and demand a better rate, has been blown to smithereens. Like Saudi oil drillers, miners are going to mine. Unsurprisingly, the hashrate on Bitcoin hasn’t seen a drop yet. It’s still a better deal than mining Bitcoin Cash, and it was certainly the destination of a lot of that cryptocurrency’s vanishing miners.
The past year and more has been a lesson in patience with Bitcoin markets. It’s clear that $10,000 is the target, but no one is yet very comfortable paying it. Bitcoin can’t sail on hype alone. What’s needed is a better infrastructure – a more usable BTC, rather than a more valuable one. You can’t have one without the other, whatever certain parties say. A thing is not valuable simply because you say it is, it must have utility. And the ability to sell it later on being its primary draw doesn’t make it very unique. You can do the same thing (perhaps with better results, in these times) with, for example, real estate. That’s deflationary too. There’s only so much of it.
The Bad Guys Are Winning
It’s not going to happen on its own, and unfortunately the current crop of Bitcoin companies simply aren’t motivated to grow the adoption curve in the way that’s needed. Coinbase is just as happy with things the way they are today as they were ten years ago. They might launch an educational program or too, but in the end they’re probably never going to be the “base.”
I’ve written before about how Bitcoin Cash benefits so greatly from its de facto “CEO” (Roger Ver) and his companies. Blockstream doesn’t seem to be getting Bitcoin to the same level of “togetherness.” Plagued by an influential contingent that believes, literally, that Bitcoin is simply gold that should sit unused, Bitcoin just can’t get out of its own way.
Yet, people are making money.
Not people like you and me.
No. We’d rather have some new way to use Bitcoin beyond gambling and trading, and moreover we may never get it.
The people making money are on the margins of the market. This week they’re long, next week they’re short.
There’s never been more reason to be suspicious of the Bitcoin market. If the inflation rate is cut in half, shouldn’t the usefulness of the token increase just a little?
Apparently not – in fact let’s say it’s worth less.
