Bitcoin has been going through a remarkable surge in the past few months:
It looks like a classic short squeeze, but the open interest on the CME futures (4,800 times 5 coins) is not a material portion of trading that occurs on the higher volume exchanges (which is cleverly charted here).
So who the heck is firing a bunch of capital at Bitcoin? Good mystery.
There is no fundamental case to be made for any price of bitcoin at this level (four thousand, eight thousand, twenty thousand…) – its utility ultimately is derived from its participants and right now, it is clearly higher than it was a couple months ago!
When things start getting interesting again will be if it goes above USD$10k again – that should be the price level where it will start getting a lot more mainstream media attention.
I’m still following it – the market shrugged off every bad news.
The biggest shocker is how Bitfinex exchange is able to raise a $1 billion in a coin offering in matter of a few days after legal trouble with NY AG is revealed. So there is still some interest there.
As per general use, other than online gambling, I still don’t see much reason why anyone would prefer to use BTC.