Bitcoin on track to topple global economy in five months

It’s now doubled in 21 days:

It’s approaching 300bn market capitalisation now. So at the current rate of growth it will surpass the $79tr global economy in value in roughly five months.

Lunacy is setting in, via FTAlphaville comes five reasons:

1) The spread between the top three exchanges offering your product is no less than… $4,000.

2) The utility function of your “currency” product is compromised by a traffic jam of 193,211 transactions…

3) The average transaction fee to initiate a payment is $7.

4) A conspiracy theory involving the imminent hacking of your network doing the rounds.

5) People allegedly killing themselves because of FOMO.

And panic is following, via the FT:

The world’s largest banks are pushing back on the introduction of bitcoin futures, raising concerns with US regulators that the financial system is ill-prepared for the launch of the contracts as the value of the volatile cryptocurrency has soared. The price of bitcoin has risen to a new high of more than $15,000 on several exchanges.

Institutional investors have been keen to trade the asset but only via a regulated market. However, the planned launch in the next 10 days of futures contracts by the Chicago exchanges CME Group and CBOE Global Markets, given a green light from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission last week, has prompted a backlash among the major brokers who backstop trading across the industry.

According to a letter from the Futures Industry Association, the main futures industry lobby group whose members include all the largest Wall Street banks, to the CFTC, the rapid introduction of bitcoin futures “did not allow for proper public transparency and input”.

Somehow observing that this is crazy just doesn’t say it.