Personally I think it is great that the mainstream have picked up on it and are throwing headline banners around about it- it made (digital) front page of the beeb today.
Obviously the BBC wanted to grab attention with a negative sounding headline- they like to stir a bit of panic if they can.
The beauty of this is, despite all the shitstirring, BTC/the cryptocurrency markets have NOT crashed
(yeah- the dramatic graphs might make people think so but truly it hasn't).
Let's put some perspective and logic in the mix here:
Look at the rise in the run up to Xmas... it was stratospheric. Unprecedented.
All it has done is "correct"- unless the "press" think it can just keep going up & up & up without any readjustments.
Let's take a look at the price 1 year ago, look at the price today.
https://charts.bitcoin.com/chart/price#cat-economics
From just under $1000 to what it is as I type: $14,697=1 BTC
We have all been ridiculously spoiled at its giant leaps upwards.. but what other "commodity" ever has shown such growth?
The big jumps have often been followed by big dips (or corrections as some fiscal peeps want to call them) these are to be expected and no one anywhere has been saying it won't have them- everyone in the "industry" has expected them- and many look forward to them as it enables buying in at lower prices in readiness for the trades when it soars again - as it will.
It is just that the leaps have been so massive that the falls are also massive.
Let's look at it logically-
It has been having a pretty good run all year, and finally grabs the attention of the general public.
It hits the $10,000 mark and bang- a notable milestone is passed- so it gets attention.
& all this attention sends it rocketing upwards to $20,000 in the space of DAYS- has any other market EVER done that?
This attention brings in a massive amount of trade- massive, so much that many of the exchanges have almost buckled under the weight of it.
People who have no clue what it even is are buying into it- on a personal level people who teased me back in August when I first started talking about it have been coming back to me asking advice about how to get into it.
So much so that I started a group discussion so that I could have all those chats in one place as it was eating all my time up explaining the steps I took to buy in.
People who are seeking fast money are buying in , in the hope of a massive gain so that they can sell out.
So we have all that,
in the run up to Christmas.
& the week before Christmas it drops dramatically- hmm now if I had made lots and lots of money in the product, I think I might be tempted to sell some stuff off to treat my family to a cruise around the Bahamas, or buy a flash car or buy a house or whatever as a very nice Xmas treat.
Wouldn't you?
This has to account for at least a large chunk of the price dip as people sell off their CCs.
There have also been a few things going on behind the scenes with a few exchanges having problems, some hacking, the "insider trading" accusations and so on. These are bound to have an effect too.
The people who have recently bought in are potentially a bit more nervous than those of us who got in when it was cheap.
Understandably, they paid a lot more $$$ for a lot less BTC. I don't blame them, I probably would be too.
Howver this all adds the indgredients into a recipe for panic selling when things look bad to them.
Those of us who have been HODLing (HoldingOn for dear Life) just see it as normal BTC trade behaviour.
Bitcoin/Cryptocurrencies:
Hundreds of thousands of trades a day- it is a very fluid and volatile market.
This is what makes it an exciting thing to buy into.
It is pioneer territory.
New frontiers are not smooth sailing.
Would anyone buy into any other invest ment and expect ROI to be amazing in the space of a week? Seriously?
My advice - sit back (even if you did pay top dollar for your coin), watch & wait.