Saturday 22 February 2014

What happened to Bitcoin?

Good question. A "bit" more than a week ago, this happened. It fell to as low as $96 at Mt. Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange, where withdrawals were suspended until the Bug is sorted out. Today, there must be some news again because it has doubled in less than a day to over $230 and may even be headed back to its high near $1200.

Anyways, faith in the BTC has been shaken to the core although BTC Futures at 796.com hung around $550 and as of this writing were $612. Suffice to say, crypto-currencies are having growing pains leading to wild volatility swings on top of this large spread between futures and the spot market.

It hasn't stopped Robocoin from trying to add more Bitcoin ATM's yet though. We will have to wait and see as this new method of foreign exchange plays out. As for speculation, it is still too wild a market to look at seriously until all the glitches can be sorted out. But if you have a lot of faith in it, it hasn't been this low for several months.

The Bank of Montreal is not amused though, and moved to close accounts of bitcoin businesses. The Canadian Government, unlike the USA, also does not recognize Bitcoin as legal tender. It seems like the more people one asks for an official position or price, the more different answers one gets on Bitcoin. And that in itself calls out for caution.

Anyways, the latest on the problem can be found here.

An Update: Mt. Gox has reportedly gone off line as the exchange may have been bankrupted by all this now. Or you can believe them in that they are stopping to protect the 744K bitcoins they reportedly hold until the problem is solved. At any rate, they are making headlines. Bill Still has also weighed in on his site.

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