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Many Cryptocurrency markets drop 15% or more in 24 hours

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Many Cryptocurrency Markets, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Ethereum, Ripple and others have dropped 15% or more in the past 24 hours.  Some seeing a dip of more than 20% today.  While this level of volatility may be extreme it is important to remember these markets are very new and have grown at a tremendous rate.  The Cryptocurrency market cap one year ago was approximately 16 Billion.  Today, after the dip, it sit over 500 Billion.  This dip was spurred by mounting years that the South Korean government may issue bans or tighten regulation on Cryptocurrencies.  This reaction is very similar to when China stopped Initial Coin Offerings and limited Exchanges in September 2017.  The cost per 1 Bitcoin, on September 1, 2017 was $4,700 and  dropped by 25% after the actions from China.  Within 3 months from this event, Bitcoin reached a new high that exceeded $19,000 per Bitcoin.  This represents a growth of more than 500%, post China ICO ban / Exchange regulation.

Do you view the dip as something to fear or a buying opportunity?

*Note – We are not financial advisors and do not provide financial consultation.  Please seek out professional financial advisors and complete your own research when making investment decisions.

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A Quick Stock update

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**Updated 12/20/2017

We wanted to give a quick update on current items in stock and estimated dates for restocking on any items that are currently out of stock.  We are working to restock any items that have recently sold out.  Please subscribe to our updates to get the latest on restocks.  We are also working on several new products that will release in Q1 2018, so stay tuned.

  • Trezor One Hardware Wallet (Black/White) – IN STOCK (limited stock and higher cost per device from manufacture due to a chip shortage) – supplies are estimated to return to normal in late Feb/Mar 2018.
  • Trezor Model T Hardware Wallet – Anticipated release is Q1-Q2 2018
  • Ledger Nano S – IN STOCK (stock is currently higher cost per device from manufacture due to supply shortage) – supplies are estimated to return to normal in Feb/Mar 2018.
  • CryptoSteel – IN STOCK
  • Moonlander 2 Litecoin Miner – OUT OF STOCK – restock in late Jan 2018.
  • OpenDime Bitcoin Bearer USB – OUT OF STOCK – restock in mid Jan 2018
  • ProtectingCoin Case/Skin for the Trezor One – IN STOCK
  • Direct Connect cable (Trezor to Android) – IN STOCK

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Those were the Dips you were looking for…Bitcoin re-enters $7,000 territory

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It took less than 1 week for the Bitcoin price to go from a high of more than $7,5000, a tumble to $5,500 and a bounce back to over $7,000.  This represented an excellent opportunity to “buy the dip”.  The fire sale price was caused by the recent canceling of the Segwit2x Fork that would have created a 2x coin with larger block sizes for holding transactions.  The 2x fork was canceled due to lack of community support at this time.  The end result for the Bitcoin network is we really no change from where it was a month ago.  Is this the beginning of the climb to $8,000?  We think it just might be time to break the seal on 8k.

Where do you think Bitcoin will be by the end of 2017?

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Will that be cash, card or Litecoin?

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LTC_silverLitecoin has been making a splash in the cryptocurrency market this week, increasing value by nearly 45% in one week.  LTC (Litecoin) hit over $90 per coin on September 1, 2017, before pulling back to land around $77 on September 2, 2017.  A big contributor to the increase is around a new payment system called the Lightning Network and the successful testing of using Litecoin on the Lightning Network .  The Lightning Network will allow for even faster, lower cost micro-transactions (think a cup of coffee) using existing cryptocurrency (Bitcoin, Litecoin).

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Litecoin was released in 2011 by Charlie Lee; previously an Engineer at Google and then the Director of Engineering at Coinbase.  Mr. Lee announced in 2017 that he would be leaving his role at Coinbase to focus fully on the development of Litecoin.

LTC shares many features with Bitcoin but also includes some additional features such as faster transaction processing and has been faster to release new features.  LTC adopted SegWit (a streamlined method of processing transaction data) several months ahead of Bitcoin.

LTC is often referred to as the silver to Bitcoin’s gold.  This may prove to be a very good analogue as Litecoin is developed and could be the currency of choice for day to day spending and Bitcoin remains the choice for large purchases or as a store of value.  You can move value between Bitcoin and Litecoin using exchanges with just a few clicks.  Even though they are separate from one another they are deploying many of the same features and this will only work to move them closer together as a compliment to one another VS a competitor.  Both have adopted SegWit transactions and are compatible with the Lightning network.  Another way to think of the difference for how both may be utilized, think of the difference between a $100 bill and a $20 bill.  These bills are separate bills with the $20 being used for more day to day purchases and you can easily exchange 5x$20’s for $100 or vice versa.

There are currently 52,751,282 Litecoin in circulation with a max amount of 84 million Litecoin.  The current market cap (value of all LTC in circulation) is over $4 Billion as of Sept 2, 2017.  Litecoin can be purchased on nearly all exchanges such as Coinbase, Bitstamp, and Kraken.

What are your thoughts on the adoption of Litecoin as a day to day currency?

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Bitcoin headed North

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Bitcoin has been down since it hit a high on 08/17/17 but has once again turned north and is setting new all time highs.

ProtectingCoin.com had asked this on 08/14/17
“Do we break $4,500 this week or is it time for a pull back under $4,000?”

The pull back to under $4,000 came just 1 week later, on 08/21/17. Now that the pull back has passed, is $5,000 coming by early September?

The gains today are most likely aided by the go-live of SegWit (Segregated Witness) that went active this week on Bitcoin. What is SegWit, you ask? I won’t go into the technical details of SegWit but will sum it up to say it is a more efficient way to process/store transactions on the Bitcoin network. This can increase the speed of transactions over time which will be needed as the popularity of Bitcoin continues to increase. Just how popular is Bitcoin becoming, you ask? Well, recent Google search reports show Bitcoin searches have become more popular than Beyoncé! Pretty sure that is the be all, end all yardstick for measuring popularity.

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Bitcoin surges past $3,800…is $4,000 next?

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Bitcoin has increased over $250 in the past 24 hours and has breached the $3,800 mark and continues to trend upward. Will the new all time high break $4,000 this weekend?

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The current market cap (value of all Bitcoin in existence) is just shy of 63 billion. The market cap has increased by approximately 29 billion in the past 30 days.  This may sound like a large sum (and it is) but it is a small fraction of what it could achieve if it replaces any part of Gold holdings or US currency.  The estimated value of all mined gold is 8.2 Trillion (8,200,000,000,000…that is a lot of zeros!).  The value of gold is 130x larger than the market cap of Bitcoin.  In other words, the market cap of Bitcoin is less than .8% of the value of gold…yes, that is less than 1%.  If a mere 5% of value stored in gold moves to Bitcoin it would increase the price of BTC by more than 600%, increasing the price per coin to $22,800.

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Bank of England gold holdings

This is only when comparing a mere 5% of the value of gold and does not include people and countries that accept BTC as a replacement or compliment to their current fiat currency.  Many countries with unstable governments may accept BTC with open arms as an alternative.  Japan actually just passed a law in April, 2017 that will make BTC a legal method of payment for business and merchants.  All signs point to BTC becoming a mainstream, global, method of payment in the next few years.

 

 

*Note – This recent run up increases the value of Steve’s locked Bitcoin (in a safe with no key) from $50,000 to almost $65,000!  Full story can be found here.

$3,300..new all time high

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Well that didn’t take long, the price per Bitcoin broke through $3,000 around 11:15pm et on August 4th, 2017.  New highs have been reached throughout the day on August 5th.

The price per Bitcoin has reached $3,300 1:30pm et.  Do you think $3,400 will be the next record to fall today?

*note – litecoin and ether (other digital currencies) are also showing big jumps over the last 14 hours.