Bitcoin bust or boom in 2014?

It is rather fashionable to make predictions on all manner of things at the start of the year, unfortunately such predictions mostly seem laughable when next year rolls around. However, that doesn't seem to dissuade people from continuing to make such predictions. So we at Decrypter have decided to partake in this silly ritual of sorts and make our predictions on bitcoin for 2014. Before we make our humble predictions on bitcoin, we first present our audience the opinion of Byron Wien, the vice chariman of the Blackstone Advisory Committee. For those not in the loop, Blackstone is a private equity investment bank which  is valued at over $30 Billion USD.

Blackstone's Byron Wien predicts that BTC will collapse in 2014, in his own words:

2.      In 2½ years the price of a Bitcoin has increased from $25 to $975.  The supply of Bitcoins is fixed at 21 million with 11.5 million in circulation.  Bitcoins lack gold’s position as a store of value over time.  During the year Bitcoin’s acceptance collapses as investors realize that it cannot be used as collateral in financial transactions and its principal utility is for illegal business dealings where anonymity is important.

Mr. Wien is entitled to his opinion of bitcoin, and we will not address any of his concerns or criticisms regarding bitcoin in this particular post. We will however provide our users with the undeniable fact that Mr. Wien's predictions were only 24% accurate for last year.

Our own predictions are not nearly as grim as that of the sagacious Mr. Wiener. We take into consideration that overstock.com will start accepting bitcoin this year, as well as Zynga. We anticipate more retailers to start accepting bitcoin in 2014 and increased broader acceptance. Our most conservative expectation is that bitcoin will surpass 2000 USD this year and will touch 3000 but will retreat from that high and hover somewhere in the mid 2000 value range. We have no doubt that our users will mark their calendars and dutifully check and track the accuracy of our prediction; making sure to remind us how wrong we were when 2015 is rung in. Best of luck trading!

Here comes a new Challenger! RPC

From the murky depths of the rapidly growing cesspool of copy-paste alt-coins a new challenger arises, meet Ron Paul Coin. Over the last day RPC has posted a shocking 100% gain against BTC:

At first one may find themselves at a loss to explain the phenomenon in the above chart. Fear not, we found ourselves in very much the same predicament. However, we have a hypothesis which may explain it all. We presume that from the recent influx of unabashed copy-paste coins with billions upon billions to be minted and ridiculous block rewards, RPC stood out for it actually has reasonable settings. Target of 2.1 million coins and zero pre-mined. Another factor may include the true supporters of the real Ron Paul advocating this coin. 

Furthermore, we would like to draw the attention of our dear readers to another scarce coin: Cryptogenic Bullion. CGB is even scarcer, with only 1 million coins to be minted and it is already listed on Cryptsy and Coins-e, making it a more liquid coin to trade. If scarcity is the sole driver behind the price of RPC, then one could argue that either RPC is over priced at its current valuation which is higher than CGB. Or that CGB is grossly undervalued. Below is a chart of CGB over the last 5 days. 

We leave the task of concluding which his overpriced and which is undervalued as an exercise for our readers. Best of luck trading! 

The Alt-Coin Graveyard: Meet the walking dead

The number of Alt-Coins is increasing rapidly with the start of the new year. Little did we know that so many developer's had made a firm resolve to launch an alt-coin of their own in 2014. So we respond to the death of an alt-coin or two with some relief and fortified belief in crypto-investors to do the right thing. Our first casualty is DimeCoin. With a target of 460 billion coins and 8% premined, one doesn't have to dig too deep to ascertain the reasoning behind the coins demise. The alt-coin forums are littered with DimeCoin give aways. We don't envy the person tasked with distributing 36 Billion premined coins to the public. 

DimeCoin roams the alt-coin graveyard, managing to scrape by a trade or two from someone betting the coin will bounce. We do advise against such behavior; regardless we don't anticipate DimeCoin escaping the graveyard anytime soon. We cannot mention DimeCoin in such negative light without recognizing and voicing our appreciation of the developer's apology to the public, however brief it may be, it is a rare event indeed. Our intentions are not to criticize or chastise the developer. Instead we hope it serves as a lesson to anyone who still entertains a desire to create yet another copy-paste alt-coin.

Next up, CageCoin. The demise of this coin should not come as a surprise to anyone. Perhaps it portends a similar outcome for the yet to be released Coinye Coin? We certainly hope so. CageCoin has a target of 100 billion coins and a 0.75% premine. The meme coin may have provided some profit to a few early comers but there are quite a few left holding the bag with not a single buyer in sight:

Rest in peace CageCoin, and best of health to the real Mr. Cage. As always, we advice you not feed the zombie coins in the graveyard, please let them rest in peace. 

Weekend recap

This weekend was a strong one for bitcoin as it rose over 17% on btc-e. It tested a high of 950 but was not able to breakthrough. We expect bitcoin to climb to 1000 USD before the end of next week. 

Alt-coins fell against bitcoins as it rose this weekend, however despite the fall against BTC some coins were still positive against fiat. Furthermore two coins, TAG & SRC rose against BTC significantly and had a great weekend. 

Alt-Cryptos that bucked the trend this weekend

While most alt-crypto currencies fell against BTC this weekend as it rose to over 900 USD, posting an impressive 19% increase. There were two outliers which moved up against BTC. Surprisingly the two currencies are neither famous nor the darlings of the alt-crypto currency crowd. First up TAG. The following chart below displays TAG's rise of over 39% against BTC.

One must consider that while TAG was gaining against BTC, BTC itself was gaining against fiat. On Thursday morning one could have purchased TAG for the price of 0.0001 BTC which at that time was 0.8 USD. At the time of this writing; only three days later on Sunday, that same share of TAG could now be sold for 0.00016 BTC or 1.49 USD. That is more than a 46% gain.

SecureCoin posted very similar performance over the same time period. Whether this is merely a coincidence or if there is something deeper, we currently don't know. Perhaps an informed reader will provide more information. Below is the chart for SRC, notice that it too gained against BTC about 39%.

Congratulations are in order for holders, and miners of TAG & SRC. Stay tuned for more market analysis and other news. Best of luck trading!

Bullish start for crypto currency

BTC/USD

The recent apparent crash of alt crypto currencies may have some worried. However, it has been noted by many astute observers, that as BTC rises, Alt-Cryptos tend to fall but ultimately retain their previous value in fiat currencies. Let's take a quick look at recent market activity to confirm that this is indeed the case. In the first chart at the top, we can see a dramatic rise in BTC price during the first week of 2014. Certainly this can only be a good sign for an upcoming bullish year for BTC.

LTC/BTC

During the same time period we can see the LTC/BTC spread fall. But, before holder's of LTC panic, they should consult the LTC/USD chart below which confirms that the value of LTC in USD has actually risen modestly over the same period.

LTC/USD

Another very actively traded Alt-Crypto is WDC.  In the following chart we can observe the spread between WDC/BTC fall.

WDC/BTC

 Below we can confirm that WDC also experienced an actual increase in total value.

WDC/USD

We can quantify the market movements in the first week of Jan 2014 as follows:

• BTC $740  - $907   [+18.4%]
• LTC $23.5 - $26.58 [+11.5%]
• WDC $0.46 - $0.49  [+06.1%] 

This is a good start to 2014 for crypto currencies. We leave further interpretation of these numbers as an exercise for our prodigious readers.

Best of luck trading!

Welcome

Welcome to decrypter. The goal of this site is to decrypt and dispense information regarding crypto-currencies in the form of concise and unbiased reporting. The cryptocurrency scene is developing at a rapid pace. Here at decrypter, we aim to help you navigate those changes with honest reporting. Best of luck trading the cryptos.