As more people and more fiat currency are pulled into the cryptocurrency market, the “wild rides” some have come to love will likely fade into mythological archetypes for of a new information age, Zeex relates. For those seeking brevity in an opinion piece, I’m going to tell you that this holiday season is a great time to invest in cryptocurrencies. That is it in a nutshell. I value your time. If you don’t want to read any further – do yourself a favor and invest what you can afford to invest in Litecoins. For those interested in a little more information, let’s investigate why this is my Christmas gift to you.
In a Free Market, such as the cryptocurrency market, bubbles are expected. The “stability” seemingly gained through regulation, which many see as signs of health, are signs of manipulation designed to the benefit of a relative few and control the masses. Such management can only lead to the stagnation and death of the broader community’s economic power. Right stability in the cryptocurrency market will come through more widespread adoption. There will be bubbles even in the year 2140 as the last bitcoin blockchain is mined, and the previous bitcoins are released into the economy. Bubbles are to be expected in a free market; they are signs of a healthy market that is responding to supply and demand (and often greed). However, the more people involved in buying and selling all of the various cryptocurrencies available, the more quickly buyers will meet sellers, and the smaller the bubbles will become.
It is a greedy (and in my humble opinion, foolish) person who refuses to buy into something because his purchase will benefit others. Indeed, those who “got in at the beginning” stand to make more substantial profits than those who are only just entering this emerging market. But, for those who are only becoming aware of the benefits of a decentralized currency based upon the solid principles of cryptographic mathematics and reliant upon a large community of peer-to-peer networked computer systems, there is still time to make incredible profits.
Misinterpreted news out of China coupled with normal tendencies for dips in prices around holidays sent both the bitcoin and bitcoin price against the US Dollar into a steep downward trend. Some folks, less informed, might have assumed this could be the end of it all. But such talk only has “trollitude” on sites with chat-boxes like BTC-e.com. The reality is that the genie is out of the bottle. Cryptocurrencies are the best thing to happen to a free world in a very long time. Once the masses awaken to why this is so, the new bottom price for bitcoin is likely to be five thousand dollars or more per bitcoin.
Bitcoins and Litecoins are arguably the safest purchases one can make today. The vast majority of mining operations for Bitcoin are being conducted by ASICs. There is currently a technology race to invent faster and faster systems powered by ASICs to mine Bitcoins. However, the system is designed such that the difficulty to mine will continue to increase to maintain a slow and steady release of new Bitcoins into the economy over the next one hundred and twenty-seven years (give or take). Such investment in new hardware will only serve to drive bitcoin prices even higher than the highest they have ever been. Bitcoin mining will become dominated by organizations with deep pockets and climate-controlled data centers. Investors will no doubt pay for “hashing power per month” as a service, to participate in mining virtually, through bitcoin mining contracts as time goes on. Bitcoins are a very smart buy, even today.
That being said, many, including yours truly, believe that Litecoin is currently fantastically undervalued. Litecoins have so far proven resistant to ASIC mining, and small GPU farms are still the leaders in mining Bitcoins for profit. It is an activity that many can even set up systems at home to participate in. This is due to Litecoin’s use of the Scrypt cryptographic algorithm, which, by requiring large amounts of memory, makes it too costly to design custom hardware attacks such as ASICs.
Litecoins may be the single best cryptocurrency you can buy today as news spreads of its compatibility with Bitcoins, as well as some complementary features and improvements on the original design, the growing community of cryptocurrency consumers will learn that not only is their room for both Bitcoin and Litecoin, but that it is as natural as having large denomination bills, and smaller denomination bills. There is also obviously room for another alt-currency to take the space of “pocket change.” While I think it is too soon to declare a winner for this quasi-category of cryptocurrency, it is likely to be an implementation such as primecoin which requires the use of a CPU to mine. Whatever implementation wins this space, the confirmation time would also most likely need to be faster than Litecoin’s.
For everything stated above and more, this holiday season is the perfect time to buy cryptocurrency for friends and family, and convert them into paper wallets to stuff in their stockings.
