Bitcoin Down 22% in Past Week

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Bitcoin Down 22% in Past Week

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The bitcoin crash has come, but will it go away? The digital currency lost 22% in value over the past week, falling to $15,180.

The case made for bitcoin value in the past year is that people can buy ever more things with the currency. In other words, it has come closer and closer to “mainstream” instead of what has been in the past, almost only a way for speculators to trade it and make money. Recently, however, an apartment in Dubai sold for 50 bitcoin, or about $240,000 based on how bitcoin was priced then. That sort of activity has become increasingly less of an isolated story.

Those who believe bitcoin is overvalued fall into two categories. The first takes the other side of whether bitcoin will become mainstream. They argue that bitcoin will never become widely used by major retailers or for real estate transactions. Its usefulness will fade because its spot in the real world of commerce, made via current major currencies like the dollar, will disappear.

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The other major argument against the present value of bitcoin is that it is a bubble, and it will have to collapse to return to a valuation that matches its real usefulness for commerce. That value is up 1,587% in the past year, which is a bubble by almost any reasonable measurement of a relatively new basis of transactions. It exceeds the rise in any traditional currency, stock market or real estate market, at least in recent memory. This argument is based on the fact that sustaining such a sharp appreciation of value is not possible, particularly if the argument that it is not mainstream enough is true.

Bitcoin’s value has been attacked by a number of financial executives and many economists and currency traders. They argue that the sort of collapse going on now is only the start of one that will take it back to levels of a year ago or earlier. A 22% fall may just be a beginning.

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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