What the heck is Cryptocurrency, anyway?! - KING5.com

What the heck is Cryptocurrency, anyway?! - KING5.com
Bitcoin passed $50,000—here's what you need to know about the popular cryptocurrency - CNBC
Should I buy bitcoin? Why the cryptocurrency is on the verge of a bear market - MarketWatch

Posted: 24 Feb 2021 10:00 AM PST

SEATTLE — Everyone is talking about Crypto and some people appear to be making money by investing in this relatively new type of digital cash. But what is it? Is it real money? Why does have value and who says it does? What is the risk of investing our money in it? We have a LOT of questions about Cryptocurrency, so we asked UW Foster School of Business' Professor of Finance, Jarrad Harford, to break it down for us.

Bitcoin passed $50,000—here's what you need to know about the popular cryptocurrency - CNBC

Posted: 18 Feb 2021 11:05 AM PST

The price of a bitcoin surpassed the $50,000 mark for the first time on Tuesday, surging even higher on Wednesday.

The digital token's surge — it broke through the $20,000 mark for the first time in mid-December and hit an all-time high of $52,340 on Wednesday — has renewed consumer interest in cryptocurrencies, with tokens like Ethereum and the infamous Dogecoin riding the wave of support.

With mainstream firms such as PayPal and JPMorgan also lending legitimacy to the cryptocurrency by investing it it and adding it to their platforms, industry experts say that this time bitcoin might be here to say.

Here's what you need to know about bitcoin and how to get in on the action.

What is bitcoin?

At its most basic level, bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency. Invented in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto — a pseudonym for an unknown person or group of people — bitcoin's appeal has long been its decentralized platform. That means that it's not under the purview of any national government, and can be resistant to the effects inflation has on traditional currency.

Why is it valuable?

Unlike ordinary money, which can be printed by a country's government, bitcoin can only be created by powerful computers through a process called "mining." Because the creation of new bitcoin is complex and power-intensive, and because there is a hard cap — 21 million — on the amount of bitcoin that will ever exist, there is a built-in level of scarcity.

This scarcity, combined with increased demand from institutional and retail investors alike, has helped turn bitcoin into a household name whose value has grown from less than a penny in 2009 to more than $50,000 today. Unlike traditional currencies which are backed by things like gold and silver, bitcoin's value comes from the trust that investors have in the blockchain network it is built on.

In recent months, bitcoin has gotten a newfound level of legitimacy thanks to household names like PayPal and Square, which now allow their more than 350 million active users to buy and sell the coin on their platforms. This support helps create confidence that bitcoin will eventually become a mainstream currency.

"I think some big steps were what we've seen from Square, MasterCard and Tesla as of late," Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives tells CNBC Make It. "That has started to legitimize crypto and bitcoin for transactions."

Is it a safe investment?

Prior to its current rally, which started in late 2020, bitcoin had only been above $10,000 for five weeks of its existence. The last time the digital token found itself in the midst of a monster rally was in the winter of 2017, and it quickly slumped well below $10,000, where it remained for the better part of the next three years.

The key difference between now and three years ago is that bitcoin is being taken seriously by people who had previously been wary of it. In addition to the votes of confidence from PayPal and the like, bitcoin also got a major boost last week when Tesla said in an SEC filing that it was buying $1.5 billion worth of the crypto and that it would begin to accept bitcoin as payment for its products.

"Bitcoin has definitely gone more from a sci-fi project to something that's not going away," Ives says.

But even with the support from household names like Tesla, bitcoin's value is still prone to massive spikes and slides. In January, the U.K.'s Financial Conduct Authority warned bitcoin investors that they should be "prepared to lose all their money" due to the high risks associated with it. And with governments around the world taking a piecemeal approach to regulation, the value of cryptocurrencies still hinges on traders having access to them.

"From an investment perspective, bitcoin is not for every investor. It's a much higher risk profile," Ives says. "Until we start to see more goalposts around bitcoin and crypto from an investing and regulation perspective, it's going to continue to be volatile."

How can I buy bitcoin?

These days, getting your hands on some bitcoin is as easy as downloading a smartphone app. Bitcoin can be purchased on a wide variety of platforms, including popular stock trading app Robinhood, and dedicated exchanges like Coinbase and Gemini.

Despite its $50,000 price tag, you can begin investing in crypto with much less. Unlike the dollar, which can be divided into 100 pennies, a bitcoin is divisible into 100 million units, called satoshis. You can purchase $10 worth of bitcoin just as easily as you can purchase an entire coin.

It's not just bitcoin that is available on crypto exchanges. Other currencies, such as Ether and Litecoin are also popular, but neither come close to approaching the nearly $1 trillion market cap that bitcoin commands thanks to its meteoric rise in price over the past year.

What can I spend it on?

Should I buy bitcoin? Why the cryptocurrency is on the verge of a bear market - MarketWatch

Posted: 23 Feb 2021 10:30 AM PST

Bitcoin was on the brink of entering a bear market Tuesday as the volatile crypto asset suffered a double-digit plunge over the past 24-hour period.

A single bitcoin BTCUSD, +0.50% was trading at $47,944.40, down around 10%, on CoinDesk, representing a roughly 18% skid for the popular digital asset from its rise over the weekend to a record at $58,332.36. The world's No. 1 crypto had tumbled by at least 20% from that recent peak at one point over the past 24 hours, meeting the commonly used definition for a bear market.

To be sure, bitcoin's wobbles aren't unusual but the crypto's reputation for volatility is one reason naysayers contend it isn't suited to serve as a medium of exchange.

Why is bitcoin's price down?

Indeed, that was a point raised by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Monday during a New York Times DealBook conference.

"To the extent it is used I fear it's often for illicit finance. It's an extremely inefficient way of conducting transactions, and the amount of energy that's consumed in processing those transactions is staggering," the former Fed chairwoman said.

Yellen's comments have been cited as a reason for bitcoin's recent losses. However, Yellen's assessment of bitcoin as a inefficient medium of exchange is an important point and one that has already been raised in the past by bitcoin bulls.

Using a volatile asset in exchange for goods and services makes little sense if the asset can tumble 10% in a day, or surge 80% over the course of a two months as bitcoin has done in 2021, critics argue.

To put a finer point on it, over the past 12 months bitcoin has registered 8 corrections, defined as a decline from a recent peak of at least 10% but not more than 20%, and two bear markets, which are defined as falls of 20% or more, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

By comparison, the S&P 500 index SPX, +1.14% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.35% have had one correction that then fell further into a bear market over the past year and gold GC00, -0.41%, considered one of bitcoin's rivals as a store of value, has had two corrections (including its current one) but has avoided slipping into a bear market over the past year.

Some have also attributed bitcoin's recent retrenchment to comments from newfound crypto enthusiast Elon Musk, the chief executive of electric-car maker Tesla Inc. TSLA, +6.18%, who tweeted on Saturday that the price of bitcoin and the No. 2 most popular crypto, Ether ETHUSD, -0.43%, which runs on the ethereum blockchain, were too high.

Tesla shares, meanwhile, have tumbled into bear-market territory, dropping more than 20% from a Jan. 26 record close. Analysts have tied the weakness to bitcoin's slide, with Tesla earlier this month announcing it had purchased $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency.

Check out: Tesla stock's drop likely related to bitcoin bet

Other theories on bitcoin's downturn include the idea that the drop is down largely to profit-taking, with some holders taking profits near its weekend peak. that some owners have taken profits, selling bitcoin during its weekend peak.

Should I invest in bitcoin?

Many critics warn that bitcoin and other cryptos are purely speculative assets that could be regulated out of existence, knocking their price to zero.

It is just not clear what the future holds for cryptos or if bitcoin specifically will emerge as the dominant virtual asset to rule them all.

Although Yellen's comments were credited with bringing down the price of bitcoin and its rivals, the Treasury secretary's remarks could be ultimately viewed as constructive for digital assets in general.

She also said, during her interview with the Times, that digital payments, which the Fed and other central banks across the globe have explored, could lead to "faster, safer and cheaper payments," which she described as important goals.

That is hardly a knock on bitcoin, but it isn't a full-throated endorsement of the cryptocurrency or other cryptos since fiat-backed digital assets or central bank digital currencies are viewed in a different class to cryptographically backed assets.

Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda, in a Tuesday note, characterized the bitcoin pullback as a bit of hiccup and said he wouldn't surprised to see it retake $50,000 at some point, but notes that it had been overbought and was vulnerable to a downturn.

Read: Bitcoin drops further below key $50,000 level after Yellen calls it 'extremely inefficient'

"Bitcoin fever hasn't gone away all of a sudden because Musk has questioned the price but his Twitter feed has certainly become a primary catalyst for the market," Erlam wrote. "That probably won't stop it surging back above $50,000 in the very near future and probably hitting new highs shortly after."

He speculated that bitcoin could hit $42,000 or $40,000 before it stabilizes.

In any case, it is worth recalling that bitcoin enjoyed a parabolic surge back in December 2017, nearing $20,000 before it crashed early in the following year to a low of $3,000.

That low likely crushed new investors who bought into the asset for fear of missing out, or FOMO, but long-term owners or "HODL"-ers, who hold on to their bitcoin through thick and thin, were still enjoying monster gains.

Yves Lamoureux, president of macroeconomic research firm Lamoureux & Co., told MarketWatch that average investors need to be particular cautious in bitcoin and cryptos.

"Bitcoin offers the same predictable pattern," he said. "Nobody wants it until we go parabolic…then most [people] get decimated," Lamoureux said.

In the end, bitcoin buyers should beware.

Why has bitcoin risen sharply over the past year?

The recent run-up in bitcoin to a market value exceeding $1 trillion on Friday has more broadly been tied to institutions becoming more involved in the asset.

Those include PayPal Holdings Inc. PYPL, which back in November opened up its cryptocurrency platform to all U.S. customers after conducting a more narrow rollout, has helped drive bitcoin prices sharply higher in recent weeks and months.

More recently, Musk's Tesla announced that it had acquired $1.5 billion in bitcoins in January and that it could accept the world's No. 1 digital asset for payment in the future, helping to deliver a fillip to crypto assets broadly.

Checkout: Is bitcoin headed to $100,000 in 2021 or is its price 'unsustainable'?

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