In mid-August, the price of Bitcoin peaked in its latest milestone touching $4500 USD for the first time in the history of the cyptocurrency. Bitcoin’s latest surge was brought on by the hard fork in the blockchain that was created by the initiation of Bitcoin Cash in the early stages of August. The fork in the blockchain created the new currency that was supposed to have solved the former problems that the original bitcoin still faces in scalability. Because of that, the blockchain fork was predicted by analysts to actually hurt the price of bitcoin instead of what it did in reality, which caused the surge in price.
The price of bitcoin has had peaks and valleys since its creation and regular bitcoiners gave become accustomed to the price of a single bitcoin fluctuating drastically over the course of a month. The price of bitcoin is so volatile, in fact, that even the opinion of popular financial minds can have an affect on its price. Lately, those opinions have caused a steep drop in bitcoin’s price.
JPMorgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon has recently denounced the cryptocurrency in a public manner stating that the currency is fraudulent at its core and will likely blow up and cause people to lose tons of money once the bitcoin bubble pops. He looked to enforce his opinion by making a reference to the demand for tulip bulbs in the 17th century that crashed and left many in financial ruin. He then continued to expound on the market that has been created for bitcoin, admitting that there is a market, however limited it may be. “If you were in Venezuela or Ecuador or North Korea or a bunch of parts like that, or if you were a drug dealer, a murderer, stuff like that, you are better off doing it in bitcoin than U.S. dollars.”
As the negative spotlight is strewn upon bitcoin by the JPMorgan Chase CEO which has been the reported cause for the drop in price, its important to note that both Dimon personally and JPMorgan Chase have been seen in the industry as leaders when it comes to developing ideas based on blockchain technology. They have been using the ethereum platform, which is fundamentally based on blockchain technology the same way bitcoin is, to develop Quorum, which is specifically designed to help financial institutions large in size to comply with the vast regulatory requirements that they are subject to.
As a result of Dimon’s negative appeal of Bitcoin at the Delivering Alpha conference in New York on Tuesday, not only did bitcoin’s price fall pretty heavily, ethereum has also lost about 10% of its total value.