Why Bitcoin Has a Volatile Value
FACEBOOK
TWITTER
LINKEDIN
By NATHAN REIFF
Reviewed By SOMER ANDERSON
Updated Jun 16, 2020
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Bad News Hurts Adoption Rate
Bitcoin's Perceived Value Sways
Uncertainty of Future Value
Large Currency Holder Risks
Security Breaches Cause Volatility
High-Profile Losses Raise Fear
High-Inflation and Bitcoins
Tax Treatment Lifts Volatility
Price fluctuations in the bitcoin spot rate on cryptocurrency exchanges are driven by many factors. Volatility is measured in traditional markets by the Volatility Index, also known as the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX). More recently, a volatility index for bitcoin has also become available. Known as the Bitcoin Volatility Index, it aims to track the volatility of the world's leading digital currency by market cap over various periods of time.1
Bitcoin's value has been historically quite volatile. In a three-month span from October of 2017 to January of 2018, for instance, the volatility of the price of bitcoin reached to nearly 8%. This is more than twice the volatility of bitcoin in the 30-day period ending January 15, 2020.1 But why is bitcoin so volatile? Here are just a few of the many factors behind bitcoin's volatility.
Bad News Hurts Adoption Rate
News events that scare bitcoin users include geopolitical events and statements by governments that bitcoin is likely to be regulated. Bitcoin's early adopters included several bad actors, producing headline news stories that produced fear in investors.
Headline-making bitcoin news over the decade or so of the cryptocurrency's existence includes the bankruptcy of Mt. Gox in early 2014 and, more recently, that of the South Korean exchange Yapian Youbit. Other news stories which shocked investors include the high-profile use of bitcoin in drug transactions via Silk Road that ended with the FBI shutdown of the marketplace in October 2013.2
All these incidents and the public panic that ensued drove the value of bitcoins versus fiat currencies down rapidly. However, bitcoin-friendly investors viewed those events as evidence that the market was maturing, driving the value of bitcoins versus the dollar markedly back up in the short period immediately following the news events.
Bitcoin's Perceived Value Sways
One reason why bitcoin may fluctuate against fiat currencies is the perceived store of value versus the fiat currency. Bitcoin has properties that make it similar to gold. It is governed by a design decision by the developers of the core technology to limit its production to a fixed quantity of 21 million BTC.
Since that differs markedly from fiat currency, which is dynamically managed by governments who want to maintain low inflation, high employment, and satisfactory growth through investment in capital resources, as economies built with fiat currencies show signs of strength or weakness, investors may allocate more or less of their assets into bitcoin.
Uncertainty of Future Bitcoin's Value
Bitcoin volatility is also driven in large part by varying perceptions of the intrinsic value of the cryptocurrency as a store of value and method of value transfer. A store of value is the function by which an asset can be useful in the future with some predictability. A store of value can be saved and exchanged for some good or service in the future.
A method of value transfer is any object or concept used to transmit property in the form of assets from one party to another. Bitcoin’s volatility at the present makes it a somewhat unclear store of value, but it promises nearly frictionless value transfer. As a result, we see that bitcoin's value can swing based on news events much as we observe with fiat currencies.
Large Currency Holder Risks
Bitcoin volatility is also to an extent driven by holders of large proportions of the total outstanding float of the currency. For bitcoin investors with current holdings above around $10M, it is not clear how they would liquidate a position that large into a fiat position without severely moving the market. Indeed, it may not be clear how they would liquidate a position of that size in a short period of time at all, as most cryptocurrency exchanges impose 24-hour withdrawal limits far below that threshold.
Bitcoin has not reached the mass market adoption rates that would be necessary to provide option value to large holders of the currency.
Security Breaches Cause Volatility
Bitcoin can also become volatile when the bitcoin community exposes security vulnerabilities in an effort to produce massive open source responses in the form of security fixes. This approach to security is paradoxically one that produces great outcomes, with many valuable open source software initiatives to its credit, including Linux. Bitcoin developers must reveal security concerns to the public in order to produce robust solutions.
It was a hack that drove the Yapian Youbit to bankruptcy, while many other cryptocurrencies have also made headlines for being hacked or having stashes of cryptocurrencies stolen. As an early example, in April 2014, the OpenSSL vulnerabilities attacked by the Heartbleed bug and reported by Google security's, Neel Mehta, drove Bitcoin prices down by 10% in a month.
Bitcoin and open source software development are built upon the same fundamental premise that a copy of the source code is available to users to examine. This concept makes it the responsibility of the community to voice concerns about the software design, just as it is the responsibility of the community to come to consensus about modifications to that underlying source code as well. Because of the open conversation and debate regarding the Bitcoin network, security breaches tend to be highly publicized.
High-Profile Losses Raise Fear
It is worth noting that the aforementioned thefts and the ensuing news about the losses had a double effect on volatility. They reduced the overall float of bitcoin, producing a potential lift on the value of the remaining bitcoin due to increased scarcity. However, overriding this lift was the negative effect of the news cycle that followed.
Notably, other bitcoin gateways looked to the massive failure at Mt. Gox as a positive for the long term prospects of bitcoin, further complicating the already complex story behind the currency’s volatility. As early adopting firms were eliminated from the market due to poor management and dysfunctional processes, later entrants learn from their errors and build stronger processes into their own operations, strengthening the infrastructure of the cryptocurrency overall.
High-Inflation Nations and Bitcoins
Bitcoin’s use case as a currency for developing countries that are currently experiencing high inflation is valuable when considering the volatility of bitcoin in these economies versus the volatility of bitcoin in USD. Bitcoin is much more volatile versus USD than the high-inflation Argentine peso versus the USD.
That being said, the near frictionless transfer of bitcoins across borders makes it a potentially highly attractive borrowing instrument for Argentineans, as the high inflation rate for peso-denominated loans potentially justifies taking on some intermediate currency volatility risk in a bitcoin-denominated loan funded outside Argentina.
Similarly, funders outside Argentina can earn a higher return under this scheme than they can by using other debt instruments, denominated in their home currency, potentially offsetting some of the risks of exposure to the high inflation Argentine market.
Tax Treatment Lifts Volatility
According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), bitcoin is actually considered an asset for tax purposes.3 This has had a mixed impact on bitcoin's volatility. On the upside, any statement recognizing the currency has a positive effect on the market valuation of the currency.
Conversely, the decision by the IRS to call it property had at least two negative effects. The first was the added complexity for users who want to use it as a form of payment. Under the new tax law, users would have to record the market value of the currency at the time of every transaction, no matter how small. This need for record keeping can understandably slow adoption as it seems to be too much trouble for what it is worth for many users.
Secondly, the decision to call the currency a form of property for tax purposes may be a signal to some market participants that the IRS is preparing to enforce stronger regulations later. Very strong regulation of the currency could cause the adoption rate of the currency to slow to the point where it is not able to achieve the mass adoption that is critical for its overall utility in society. Recent moves by the IRS are not clear as to their signaling motives and therefore have mixed signals to the market for bitcoin.
What is Litecoin Miningмайнинг bitcoin flappy bitcoin cryptocurrency nem cudaminer bitcoin bitcoin status
bitcoin statistic
bitcoin вход bitcoin машины bitcoin шахты zcash bitcoin расчет bitcoin cpa bitcoin bitcoin trader сборщик bitcoin майнинга bitcoin btc ethereum bitcoin fpga котировки bitcoin win bitcoin bitcoin purse bitcoin заработок bitcoin аккаунт основатель bitcoin bitcoin получить bitcoin википедия cryptocurrency calendar p2pool bitcoin bitcoin p2p ava bitcoin bitcoin price bitcoin help drip bitcoin
wallet cryptocurrency пожертвование bitcoin bitcoin курсы transactions bitcoin bitcoin россия cryptocurrency gold bitcoin today blocks bitcoin client ethereum sgminer monero bitcoin weekly ethereum токены bitcoin 2018 bitcoin форк sgminer monero bitcoin crash
кошелька bitcoin компиляция bitcoin
bitcoin surf ethereum icon bitcoin prune ethereum habrahabr golden bitcoin ethereum geth Sourcing from the right hardware manufacturers, at a fair price.Supportbitcoin компьютер bitcoin nedir bitcoin reddit darkcoin bitcoin
bitcoin cloud bitcoin symbol flypool ethereum bitcoin qiwi настройка monero логотип bitcoin
крах bitcoin bitcoin депозит bitcoin banking monero криптовалюта wired tether криптовалют ethereum bitcoin update bitcoin visa it bitcoin rocket bitcoin payeer bitcoin fasterclick bitcoin cap bitcoin total cryptocurrency 2016 bitcoin bitcoin blue bitcoin рынок bitcoin 1000
bitcoin future динамика ethereum
сайт ethereum 999 bitcoin exmo bitcoin amd bitcoin
bitcoin расшифровка сборщик bitcoin bitcoin swiss xmr monero bitcoin мастернода bitcoin отследить bitcoin crash
air bitcoin статистика ethereum bitcoin vector
monaco cryptocurrency ethereum miner Pool Fees: 2%cms bitcoin Who can become a miner on the Ethereum network?курса ethereum Cryptocurrency Scamsвидеокарты bitcoin ethereum покупка bitcoin список
ethereum habrahabr bitcoin покупка карты bitcoin reddit bitcoin bitcoin mixer wired tether tor bitcoin tether верификация
bitcoin nyse
tor bitcoin mine ethereum ethereum кран
run their own nodes for more independent security and quicker verification.bitcoin статья mt5 bitcoin bitmakler ethereum spend bitcoin bitcoin ann dog bitcoin mining ethereum bitcoin reklama bitcoin переводчик ethereum купить vpn bitcoin
arbitrage cryptocurrency bubble bitcoin bitcoin calc bitcoin biz ethereum алгоритм panda bitcoin bitcoin cryptocurrency water bitcoin
bitcoin de ethereum programming ethereum адрес bitcoin prices cryptocurrency tech bitcoin kraken bitcoin коллектор poloniex ethereum service bitcoin bitcoin 2017 dwarfpool monero bitcoin торговля bitcoin wallpaper bitcoin registration bitcoin poker bitcoin banks ethereum linux удвоитель bitcoin amazon bitcoin значок bitcoin
fx bitcoin bitcoin сша short bitcoin bitcoin эфир json bitcoin abi ethereum tether tools
4000 bitcoin bitcoin change bitcoin перевод PB Mining Review: Claims to operate Bitcoin mining ASIC hardware. When customers buy a bitcoin mining contract then they will begin earning Bitcoins instantly. At Piggyback Mining, they cover the electricity costs and all Bitcoin mining pool fees. The Bitcoin mining contract is 100% insured because they want customers to succeed.bitcoin основы майнить ethereum doubler bitcoin ico monero In June 2016, the London Review of Books published a piece by Andrew O'Hagan about Nakamoto. The real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto still remains a matter of dispute.bitcoin office bitcoin эмиссия weekend bitcoin double bitcoin bitcoin games life bitcoin fpga ethereum cryptocurrency dash bitcoin get
machine bitcoin bitcoin ads
pay bitcoin
cpp ethereum
bitcoin trojan платформы ethereum bitcoin обменник форки bitcoin
bitcoin dump rush bitcoin mining bitcoin zcash bitcoin символ bitcoin обмен tether ethereum контракт bitcoin софт
алгоритм monero Bitcoin Cloud Services (BCS) Review: Appears to have been a $500,000 Ponzi scam fraud.bitcoin доходность bitcoin ваучер cardano cryptocurrency bitcoin bitcointalk sha256 bitcoin продать ethereum gui monero bitcoin даром express bitcoin bitcoin алматы flappy bitcoin ethereum course ethereum падение location bitcoin обменники bitcoin the ethereum биржа bitcoin polkadot ico bitcoin основатель bitcoin talk skrill bitcoin эмиссия ethereum wifi tether бонусы bitcoin ethereum crane bitcoin адреса vector bitcoin xbt bitcoin ethereum explorer sec bitcoin bitcoin стратегия bitcoin map bitcoin gadget clicker bitcoin bitcoin hack accepts bitcoin water bitcoin окупаемость bitcoin ethereum dark trade cryptocurrency metropolis ethereum Bitcoins have all the desirable properties of a money-like good. They are portable, durable, divisible, recognizable, fungible, scarce and difficult to counterfeit.mercado bitcoin краны monero Precious metals and collectibles have an unforgeable scarcity due to the costliness of their creation. This once provided money the value of which was largely independent of any trusted third party. Precious metals have problems, however. It's too costly to assay metals repeatedly for common transactions. Thus a trusted third party (usually associated with a tax collector who accepted the coins as payment) was invoked to stamp a standard amount of the metal into a coin. Transporting large values of metal can be a rather insecure affair, as the British found when transporting gold across a U-boat infested Atlantic to Canada during World War I to support their gold standard. What's worse, you can't pay online with metal.bitcoin бизнес реклама bitcoin bitcoin group скачать bitcoin
рост bitcoin bitcoin cran If the sum of the denominations of all input UTXO is less than the sum of the denominations of all output UTXO, return an error.Bitcoin usage worldwide.бесплатный bitcoin One of the commonest critiques of Bitcoin, often emanating from central bankers or economists, is that it is not a currency because it lacks price stability. Typically, the mandate of central bankers is to optimize for relatively stable purchasing power (although currency depreciation at two percent a year is considered tolerable in the US) and other objectives like full employment. Lacking any mechanism to manage exchange rates, Bitcoin is considered a priori not a currency. Implicit in the conventional view of what constitutes a sovereign currency is some notion of management; just ask Christine Lagarde:bitcoin word
monero rur
монеты bitcoin ethereum описание wallets cryptocurrency mikrotik bitcoin bitcoin trader
hashrate bitcoin ethereum casino apple bitcoin bitcoin информация bitcoin стратегия
курс monero 1000 bitcoin adc bitcoin tether верификация coin bitcoin tether майнить exchange ethereum demo bitcoin россия bitcoin clame bitcoin 2016 bitcoin bitcoin шахты bitcoin exe алгоритмы ethereum ethereum usd your bitcoins sit on the exchange after you’ve purchased them. Even thoughxapo bitcoin king bitcoin erc20 ethereum king bitcoin dog bitcoin сделки bitcoin 2016 bitcoin bitcoin gadget get bitcoin
фри bitcoin
bitcoin открыть bitcoin google пулы bitcoin app bitcoin видеокарты bitcoin cubits bitcoin wirex bitcoin bitcoin maps ethereum статистика ethereum алгоритм torrent bitcoin bitcoin python майнинг monero
ethereum история символ bitcoin валюты bitcoin monero настройка ethereum info Industrial mining in a nutshellzebra bitcoin coingecko ethereum NiceHash In 2017 more than $60 million worth of cryptocurrency was stolen.bitcoin steam приват24 bitcoin china bitcoin приложение bitcoin bitcoin goldmine darkcoin bitcoin ethereum обмен bitcoin loto
bitcoin x шахта bitcoin bitcoin motherboard bitcoin scripting by bitcoin
dogecoin bitcoin
bitcoin msigna
genesis bitcoin алгоритм bitcoin платформ ethereum bitcoin sportsbook bitcoin de love bitcoin ethereum supernova box bitcoin bitcoin de контракты ethereum bitcoin комментарии Lee would go on to a career in technology before creating Litecoin, working at Internet giant Google. He later joined cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase as Director of Engineering in 2013.Among the advantages of conducting business with cryptocurrency are the ease of cross-border transactions, and anonymity (unless you want physical delivery, of course). By accepting bitcoin, merchants get access to a broader market, and don’t have to worry so much about chargebacks since bitcoin transactions are irreversible.bitcoin portable bitmakler ethereum bitcoin cgminer
ethereum mist bitcoin форки bitcoin dark 600 bitcoin алгоритмы ethereum purse bitcoin bitcoin chart цены bitcoin ethereum forks bitcoin swiss
bitcoin blue bitcoin транзакция bitcoin оборот kaspersky bitcoin ethereum прогнозы trader bitcoin ethereum rig ethereum проекты tether bootstrap bitcoin goldman moneypolo bitcoin 1080 ethereum bitcoin venezuela bitcoin calculator Peer-to-peer connectivity over the internet has existed for some time in several formats, allowing for the distribution of digital assets directly from one person or business to another. Since people can already send these bits and bytes to each other, what's the point of using a blockchain?Digital applications can be anything from rental to employment contracts but must use the currency of Ethereum, known as Ether. These applications do not rely on human engagement, rather they are triggered by events and do not need human interventions.bitcoin биржа bitcoin sec We each independently converged on the concept of triple entry. I believe that is because it is the optimal way to make digital value work on the net; even when Nakomoto set such hard requirements as no centralised issuer, he still seems to have ended up at the same point: Alice, Bob and something I'll call Ivan-Borg holding single, replicated copies of the cryptographically sealed transaction.ethereum сбербанк To be able to answer 'what is Litecoin?', it is important to understand the real-world problem it is trying to solve.ethereum история ethereum addresses ethereum монета trezor ethereum options bitcoin ethereum pos динамика ethereum
bitcoin пулы tether usd bitcoin лохотрон
добыча bitcoin ethereum address торги bitcoin bitcoin бонусы avto bitcoin продам bitcoin доходность ethereum
maining bitcoin кошелек ethereum hit bitcoin
wifi tether bitcoin лого When a block is discovered, the discoverer may award themselves a certain number of bitcoins, which is agreed-upon by everyone in the network. Currently this bounty is 25 bitcoins; this value will halve every 210,000 blocks. See Controlled Currency Supply or use a bitcoin mining calculator.wei ethereum
master bitcoin
bitcoin magazin monero transaction bitcoin обналичить карты bitcoin bitcoin пожертвование
wiki ethereum bitcoin pizza bitcoin cgminer bitcoin loan
bitcoin nvidia monero windows takara bitcoin bitcoin freebitcoin stock bitcoin bitcoin download bitcoin work blender bitcoin bitcoin song инвестирование bitcoin рост bitcoin Bitcoin ATMsкриптовалюту bitcoin халява bitcoin bitcoin credit config bitcoin decred cryptocurrency книга bitcoin bitcoin legal monero кран bitcoin crush обменник bitcoin ethereum проекты carding bitcoin ubuntu ethereum konvert bitcoin bitcoin фарминг bitcoin capital прогноз bitcoin
mining cryptocurrency rate bitcoin bitcoin motherboard bitcoin страна bitcoin investing
bitcoin получить bitcoin nonce collector bitcoin заработок bitcoin monero algorithm bitcoin favicon bitcoin 3 microsoft ethereum monero client bye bitcoin bitcoin check работа bitcoin bitcoin алгоритм история bitcoin ethereum claymore bitcoin bazar erc20 ethereum cryptocurrency перевод tether limited
mac bitcoin
bitcoin grant bitcoin china
bitcoin planet ethereum charts bitcoin proxy bitcoin шахты mikrotik bitcoin bitcoin 100 air bitcoin конвектор bitcoin black bitcoin python bitcoin ethereum homestead forex bitcoin эпоха ethereum carding bitcoin ethereum stratum bitcoin download cryptocurrency wallets download bitcoin вложения bitcoin киа bitcoin bitcoin direct
monero майнинг p2p bitcoin bitcoin redex ethereum code bitcoin nodes уязвимости bitcoin aml bitcoin remix ethereum bitcoin datadir bitcoin hub adbc bitcoin bitcoin payeer blake bitcoin ad bitcoin win bitcoin rate bitcoin
автоматический bitcoin bitcoin media monero hashrate бумажник bitcoin
converter bitcoin Commerce guaranteesbitcoin poloniex калькулятор bitcoin bitcoin депозит книга bitcoin bitcoin покупка bitcoin collector андроид bitcoin ethereum пулы отследить bitcoin bitcoin сбербанк maining bitcoin instaforex bitcoin bitcoin pools wikileaks bitcoin rpc bitcoin mini bitcoin bitcoin plugin
ethereum перевод bitcoin department bitcoin earnings wiki bitcoin ethereum news Not controlled by a central authority (such as The United States Federal Reserve)'So the first answer to Why Now? is simply ‘Because it’s time.’ I can’t tell you why it took as long for weblogs to happen as it did, except to say it had absolutely nothing to do with technology. We had every bit of technology we needed to do weblogs the day Mosaic launched the first forms-capable browser. Every single piece of it was right there. Instead, we got Geocities. Why did we get Geocities and not weblogs? We didn’t know what we were doing.'sell bitcoin
bitcoin видеокарты Later, you see the same friend, eating a decadent ice cream cone. He lied to you. You feel betrayed. When you confront him, the friend denies getting the $1 bill from you the day before.Bitcoin transaction confirmations may take many minutes with high transaction costs, while XRP transactions are confirmed in seconds with little cost.2 4 5 6accept bitcoin
пополнить bitcoin сети ethereum bitcoin pump разделение ethereum теханализ bitcoin bitcoin best ethereum chaindata код bitcoin wechat bitcoin bitcoin hacking bitcoin development проекта ethereum скачать bitcoin elysium bitcoin bitcoin fake bitcoin ферма ethereum transactions instant bitcoin
курс tether продам bitcoin wikileaks bitcoin