Bitcoin Too Volatile to be Considered Digital Asset Safehaven
For a while it looked like crypto might become a safe haven in times of stock market volatility.
On Thursday, Aug. 29, 2019, bitcoin was changing hands at roughly $9,500, which is down markedly from nearly $12,000 seen at the beginning of the month.
Unfortunately for investors in China or elsewhere, that’s way too volatile to be a useful kind of digital gold.
The top cryptocurrency by market value fell recently to more or less July levels. When a crypto isn’t tethered to anything tangible, volatility becomes a bit of a guessing game. Again that’s not what you hope out of a legit digital asset.
$9,500 from a recent high on Aug. 6 of $12,325, that’s quite a drop. That’s nearly a 30% drop.
It’s time to stop trying to analyze BTC and it’s constant yo-yo conditions. In an age of stablecoins and Libra, it’s hard to even remember sometimes who the other altcoins are or how they are still relevant. With ICOs out of favor, even Bitcoin has marched out of the mainstream eye.
I’m having some trouble of late caring about cryptocurrency trading. Telegram, the messaging app with an audience of 300 million users, will allow bitcoin and crypto trading across Button Wallet.
I expect Bitcoin this time to keep retreating to perhaps around the $7,500 level. Ether is trading now at $168. Crypto is not the thriving ecosystem of innovation it felt like even a couple of years ago. Though I think once the next global economic recession hits, it could see a renaissance.
Bitcoin’s price, however, tells a story of a digital asset that’s too prone to market manipulation by major players and demand in places like China. It’s too volatile to trust and too tied to sentiment to take seriously unless you have crazy resources to play with.
10 years later, it doesn’t look like Bitcoin will be the open-source peer-to-peer computer money it was thought to be. Lighting Network or hundreds of new cases, a regulated Libra has a better chance of becoming the payment tool of choice for centralized blockchain tech to touch our wallets.
It’s a sad world where Facebook’s Libra could become more practical than Bitcoin. It’s a less decentralized world where Tech companies continue to grow in power pretending to be something they are not.
Published at Thu, 29 Aug 2019 23:39:06 +0000
{flickr|100|campaign}
