Total News - Atlanta, GA 9/3//2018 - Bitcoin is cool. You can see people's faces light up when you talk about it. It's like Gold. Humans are fascinated by Gold for a number of psychological reasons which are well more powerful than its scarcity. Other elements, such as Rhodium, Platinum, Iridium, and many others - are far more rare than Gold. Gold is just something magic, that resembles happiness, wealth, and shines brightly. There may be an ancient connection here we haven't yet stumbled upon.
For 15 years, FX and other alternative asset classes have proven they have what it takes to outperform the stock market. FX algorithmic strategies for example, are in a class of their own. But few understand and those who don't aren't willing to spend the few minutes required to get it. But Bitcoin has changed all that. Tell someone you are an FX quantitative fund manager and they might look at you like you have a disease. Tell you are trading Bitcoin and they will get excited. Go figure!
Bitcoin made investing cool again, especially with millennials. Although there are probably hundreds to thousands of better investments - Bitcoin is just cool. This is the viral effect that shot BTCUSD to 20,000 - not because of its robust design, or anything else. It's just cool. And you can quantify cool - that's not the problem. The problem is identifying the next 'trend' before it becomes a trend.
And what's interesting is that Bitcoin is a digital 'crypto' currency but so is the US Dollar, the key difference is that Bitcoin is not issued by any centralized authority. But many have been trading electronic digital dollars for a long time. So EUR/USD is not so different mechanically than BTC/USD - except the allure. FX is complicated - Bitcoin is not. You just buy and HOLD. They've combined FX with penny stocks! It's electronic day trading on steroids, with an IV drip Red Bull. It's unregulated, it's decentralized - and we don't even know the names of the owners of the exchanges! But it's cool.
You can get cool points probably in high school by talking about it (this is a theory we didn't ask any high schoolers). But we remember the 90's when it was that way about stocks. Got a stock tip? What's hot? ATHY? OSTK? Bitcoin is that plus more - because of social media and the internet which is worldwide.
So we're not saying that it's good or bad - maybe it is good because more people will be interested in investing. Maybe it's bad because it has shown them the wrong example of what an investment should look like. What is interesting though you can do arbitrage in Crypto. There's really no minimum so you can invest $1. So go ahead - have your crack at it!
Hopefully, as more sane and reasonable approaches to Crypto markets become more prevalent - such as Total Cryptos BIT FIX - we will see an institutionalization of the Crypto markets. -jg
