Yeah some ppl say like you mentioned bitcoin will get up to over 100,000 maybe to 200,000$. It reached 20,000 but dropped a lot. Seems very volatile though. Facebook has their own crypto calledLibra I believe?
All joking aside, the bitcoin use case is:
- 95% fraudulent schemes (scammers trying to steal your actual wealth)
- 4.55% money laundering media for organized crime to evade the anti-money laundering regulations faced by banks
- 0.05% all the possibly legitimate uses that don't quite exist but may some day, and are used to support #1 and #2 above
The fact that bitcoin has any real perceived value (currently between $8,000-9,500 $/BTC) is entirely due to exchange fraud, as crypto exchanges have no regulations, and are themselves engaged in the creation of, distribution of, and buying/selling of these same "currencies"; this results in an unchecked conflict of interest as these exchanges themselves own order books and themselves and large groups manipulate prices to clean out leveraged positions. Exchanges allow and participate in: painting the tape, pump-dump schemes, and other methods that are clearly illegal in regulated markets; furthermore, fake coin ICOs and Ponzi schemes are rampant.
While there is considerable nuance, the simple answer here is that BTC is effectively a scam. Not in it's intended use, but how it has been utilized to date. Right now, the price of BTC is entirely sustained by fraudulent practices, particularly the creation of fake "stable coins", particularly Tether (USDT). Let me explain:
You cannot directly use $ on most exchanges. So to be able to buy and trade BTC and other coins USDT was created. Basically, you buy 1 USDT with 1 US dollar. You can then take that USDT and trade if for BTC or some other coin on virtually any exchange. Once you give Tether a USD, they give you one USDT, and because the only way a USDT is created is by receiving and holding your USD, each 1 USDT= 1 USD; i.e., a "stablecoin" wherein 1 USDT is always equal to 1 USD (dollar). The only way to maintain this "peg" is for Tether to hold all that cash in a bank, so that if you ever wanted to cash out your USDT they would return your USD and burn that USDT token. Makes sense, right? In theory, USDTs are generated with all the money coming into the market to exchanges that do not take US currency (most of them) and allow them to participate in the coin economy.
Now remember there are no regulations. How does one know that USDT are only created when USD are deposited? How do we know that USDT are burned when redeemed? How do we know Tether maintains a bank vault full of all the USD that have been deposited? Pretty sketchy, right?
Now realize that Tether has never allowed audits of their accounts, in fact, they can't get access to US banks because they are a criminal enterprise, that scientific views of the blockchain data shows that the USDT are created in huge amounts and dumped into the market every time BTC prices start to come down, and that these dumps always precede the subsequent raise in the BTC prices, and Tether is wholly owned by the world's largest BTC exchange (bitfinex) and share the same management.
At this time, USDT's daily volume is $17B and there are only 9B coins outstanding, meaning each coin on average is trading hands almost twice a day. Interestingly, BTC daily volume is also roughly $17B.
The rise of BTC value in 2017 was essentially entirely fueled by exchange fraud, and they put into hyperactive with USDT. This did result in FOMO and interest in BTC as a speculative vehicle caused by this fraud which lead to real dollars coming into BTC, but this has largely evaporated at this point.
)! Be well all.
