Bitcoin Blasts Through $15,000 – “It’s A Consensus Hallucination”

In the last 36 hours, Bitcoin has blasted through $12,000, $13,000, $14,000, and now $15,000 levels in an unprecedented 28% surge…

For those keeping track, this is how long it has taken the cryptocurrency to cross the key psychological levels:

• $0000 – $1000: 1789 days
• $1000- $2000: 1271 days
• $2000- $3000: 23 days
• $3000- $4000: 62 days
• $4000- $5000: 61 days
• $5000- $6000: 8 days
• $6000- $7000: 13 days
• $7000- $8000: 14 days
• $8000- $9000: 9 days
• $9000-$10000: 2 days
• $10000-$11000: 1 day
• $11000-$12000: 6 days
• $12,000-$13,000: 17 hours
• $13,000-$14,000: 4 hours
• $14,000-$15,000: 10 hours

With a market cap of around $250 billion, Bitcoin is bigger than Proctor & Gamble and approaching the size of Wal-Mart as the 12 biggest ‘company’ in the S&P 500.

As CoinTelegraqph reports, the price is likely being driven by news of the imminent launch of Bitcoin futures trading. CBOE will be launching their futures market this coming Sunday, December 10, with CME Group following on December 18. Nasdaq plans to launch futures trading in the summer of 2018 and Japan’s Tokyo Financial Exchange is preparing to launch futures trading as well.

Bloomberg has announced that brokerage firms TD Ameritrade and Ally Invest will be offering Bitcoin futures trades to their clients. Even J.P. Morgan Chase may follow suit, despite CEO Jamie Dimon’s infamous views on the digital currency.

GDAX, Coinbase’s digital currency exchange, has been leading the rally all day. The price on GDAX is currently about $500 ahead of other Western Bitcoin exchanges. The likeliest – and most bullish – explanation is that Coinbase is the easiest way for new Bitcoin investors to get involved. Consequently, when GDAX leads the charge as it has today, it probably means new “retail” investors are fueling the rally.

Meanwhile, as CoinDesk reports, Ron Paul wants to know: would you take $10,000 in bitcoin, cash or something else?

The former U.S. Congressman from Texas is currently holding a poll on his official Twitter account that asks in which form they would take $10,000 from a “wealthy person”. The catch: you can’t get rid of it for 10 years.

Paul – who earlier this year called for the U.S. government to “stay out” of bitcoin – put the question to his more than 650,000 followers, asking if they would take $10,000 in the form of bitcoin, dollars, gold or 10-year U.S. Treasury Bonds. The result thus far – one hour remains in the poll at press time – indicate that of the more than 70,000 responses, 54 percent expressed support for bitcoin.

Gold took the second-highest amount with 36 percent, followed by a mere 8 percent for the 10-year bonds. Just 2 percent indicated that they would take the Federal Reserve Notes if offered.

A wealthy person wants to gift you $10,000. You get to choose in which form you’ll take the gift. But there’s a catch: You must keep the gift in the form that you choose, and you can’t touch it for 10 years.

In which form would you take the gift?

— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) December 5, 2017

Speaking with TheStreet in October, Paul conceded that he’s no expert on cryptocurrencies (back in 2014, he argued that bitcoin wasn’t “true money”). That said, he voiced his support for cryptocurrency in the most recent interview, arguing that it lends credence to the emergence of alternative currencies against the U.S. dollar.

And while Bitcoin’s eye-popping price movements have some observers saying the market is in bubble territory, Naval Ravikant, the co-founder of AngelList, while he’s not ruling it out entirely, holds a less alarmist view.

“Money is a bubble that never pops,” he said at yesterday’s Token Summit II in San Francisco.

He told attendees:

“It’s a consensus hallucination.”

And speaking to the newfound attention to bitcoin, Ravikant said people are interested in growing the wealth that they have. With most savings accounts returning zero these days – as central banks conduct what Ravikant called their “grand money printing experiment” – the general public is looking for alternative places to store their money and watch it grow.

Bitcoin and other protocols seem to offer that, as even the less-developed cryptocurrencies are showing substantial returns.

“I think people are looking to solve their money problems,” he said.

And finally, for those calling this a “bubble” – we would humbly suggest you ain’t seen nothing yet…