2017 Year End Bitcoin Price Proposition Betting Odds

Written by Jim Murphy

–Bitcoin’s price hit an all time high of $6,300 early this morning.

– Bitcoin is completely digital money with no central authority or middlemen.

– Bitcoin takes politics out of money allowing for completely free exchange of value.

When we originally published some Bitcoin proposition odds in early 2017 the big story was the recent achievement of an all time high price of $1,200. Earlier today, Bitcoin hit a new all time high of $6,300 and has settled in at around $6,100. Some financial experts have suggested that it could go higher still with projected price targets of anywhere from $10,000 to $1 million.

One thing that isn’t different is the reality with which we began our February article–Bitcoin is still a game changer. It’s potential impact has been compared to things like the discovery of petroleum products or to the development of the Internet itself. The status quo power monoliths hate it. Governments hate it. Legacy banks and financial institutions hate it. And this contempt from the entrenched ‘gatekeepers’ of our society is one of the reasons that it’s so powerful.

I’ll give you a brief explanation of Bitcoin but if you want to learn more here’s a few links:

BITCOIN.COM

GETTING STARTED WITH BITCOIN AT WEUSECOINS.COM

INTRO TO BITCOIN AT BITCOIN.ORG

I won’t delve too deeply into the intricacies of Bitcoin but here’s a quick explanation: Bitcoin is a technology that allows instant payments to anyone in the world. Here’s where the fun begins–it was designed to operate without any central authority meaning that it circumvents both government regulation and the banking system. This is why it has the potential to be so revolutionary and why it completely terrifies any number of people, governments, corporations and other entities. Since Bitcoin uses cryptography to control its creation and transfer it means that the usual regulatory framework that seeks to restrict how and where people spend their money can’t intervene. They provide a relative (though not absolute) degree of anonymity and are impossible for a ‘gatekeeper’ like a bank, corporation or government to block them. You’ve probably used BitTorrent to download music or other media, right? Now imagine a similar concept only with money.

There is a robust and growing economic ecosystem developing around Bitcoin offering places to buy them, spend them, save them and exchange them. There are online sportsbooks and casinos that operate exclusively in Bitcoin and many more ‘legacy’ gambling business that now accept them as a payment option. There is a peer to peer marketplace called Open Bazaar built entirely around Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. That is now but the economic ecosystem of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is poised to explode. The market cap of Bitcoin has moved over $100 billion and Google searches for Bitcoin related topics are also near an all time high.

THE MAINSTREAM IS FINALLY COMING AROUND

For much of the past few years the coverage of Bitcoin in the mainstream media in the US and abroad has been downright hysterical.They’re quick to denigrate it as a ‘hacker currency’, prattle on about ‘volatility’ and underscore the fact that Bitcoin is a popular payment option for any number of ‘illicit activities’. They seldom mention the fact that Bitcoin isn’t the most popular method of payment in the ‘underworld’–the payment instrument of choice in that milieu is green and has Benjamin Franklin’s picture on the front. Most importantly, the mainstream media doesn’t have a stellar track record when it comes to understanding potentially transformational and disruptive technologies. In fact, they’re downright technophobic and scared of the future of technology. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman once opined that the Internet’s economic impact “would be no greater than the fax machine’s”. It didn’t exactly work out that way.

There are several analog era troglodytes vying for the dubious distinction of becoming the ‘Paul Krugman of Bitcoin’. The current front runner is the subject of several of the props below–JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon who has become the target of much derision in the crypto community after he called Bitcoin a ‘fraud’. There’s something really ironic about the head of an investment bank calling anything a ‘fraud’. Making his claims all the more laughable–he was on CNBC to warn investors of a 20% revenue drop for the quarter. Get used to it. He’s since ‘doubled down’ on his tirades against Bitcoin and has been joined by a cadre of other terrified ‘big banking’ dinosaurs. Interestingly, the majority of those making misguided critiques of Bitcoin have been from the ‘baby boomer’ generation which has led to researchers speculating that they could simply be from an era that can’t conceptually grasp what it is and why it is important. In the case of many would-be Jamie Dimon’s, however, it’s evident that they realize that their industries and businesses are at great risk of becoming completely irrelevant.

We wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t have some Bitcoin prop bet odds. Some of these address the price of Bitcoin while others are just for fun: