{"id":179665,"date":"2017-12-03T20:32:00","date_gmt":"2017-12-04T01:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/12\/03\/not-a-currency\/"},"modified":"2017-12-03T20:32:00","modified_gmt":"2017-12-04T01:32:00","slug":"not-a-currency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/12\/03\/not-a-currency\/","title":{"rendered":"Not a Currency"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Fundamentally, one of the critical characteristics of currency is that it be current.<\/div>\n<p>It needs to be there when you need to spend it, and not appreciate by 1000% in a year or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-global-markets-bitcoin\/bitcoin-loses-over-a-fifth-of-its-value-in-less-than-24-hours-idUSKBN1DU1Z3\">lose one-fifth of its value in 24 hours<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>While there are exceptions, Wiemar Germany Deutschmarks and Zimbabwean Dollars come to mind, currency should be a relatively stable means of exchange of commerce.<\/p>\n<p>Bitcoin is not this.&nbsp; It&#8217;s a trip to the casino:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Bitcoin slid to as low as $9,000 in volatile trade on Thursday, having lost more than a fifth of its value since hitting an all-time high of $11,395 on Wednesday. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/finance\/currencies\/quote?srcCurr=BTC&amp;destCurr=USD\">BTC=BTSP<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>The cryptocurrency fell as much as 8 percent on Thursday on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange to hit $9,000 exactly, marking a fall of well over $2,000 in under 24 hours. It then edged back up to trade at around $9,400 in the hour that followed, still down roughly 4 percent on the day. (Graphic: Bitcoin searches exceeds that of Trump &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/reut.rs\/2zSavA6\">reut.rs\/2zSavA6<\/a>) <\/p>\n<p>One market-watcher attributed the fall to outages in bitcoin exchanges and the heavy price surge of recent times. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cNaturally a few of the early bitcoin traders are taking some profits off the table,\u201d said Charles Hayter, founder of CryptoCompare.com. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cVolatility is in the market at the moment and that means both positive and negative moves.\u201d <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While the technology behind Bit Coin, the block chain, appears to be generally sound, for any crypto-currency to function as a working means of exchange, it needs to have some sort of stability engineered in.<\/p>\n<p>Otherwise, it&#8217;s just a speculative vehicle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fundamentally, one of the critical characteristics of currency is that it be current. It needs to be there when you need to spend it, and not appreciate by 1000% in a year or lose one-fifth of its value in 24 hours. While there are exceptions, Wiemar Germany Deutschmarks and Zimbabwean Dollars come to mind, currency &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[426,588],"class_list":["post-179665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-currency","tag-fail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179665"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}