Best Performing Asset on the Planet
Photo Credit: New York Times
With surprisingly little fanfare, Bitcoin has racked up an amazing feat: a 6,000% increase in value since the beginning of the year. This places it as the best performing asset class on the planet, bar none. While anyone can simply look up the historical price to determine the percentage increase, the number was buried deep within a New York Times story that was somewhat slanted against Bitcoin. Buried eight paragraphs down was the sentence, “Since the beginning of the month, the value of bitcoin rose to more than $900 at one point, from $200, and it is up 6,000 percent since the beginning of the year.”
From the article:
“For many people, bitcoin seems like something from the day after tomorrow.
For Lawrence Blankenship, it’s already a thing of the past.
A software engineer from Springfield, Mo., Mr. Blankenship is putting his money on PeerCoin, one of the biggest of the virtual currencies that are being promoted as alternatives to bitcoin.
With mounting interest from prominent investors and growing acceptance from regulators, bitcoin — either the new gold or the next Dutch tulip craze, depending on who is being asked — is at the center of the virtual money universe. Yet there are dozens of digital alternatives, like PeerCoin, Litecoin and anoncoin, whose backers point to advantages they say their currency has over bitcoin.
PeerCoin, according to Mr. Blankenship, is closer than bitcoin to the perfect, communal money. Mr. Blankenship, who is 34, has arranged to accept PeerCoin as the virtual currency of choice at a Star Trek convention he is organizing in his hometown.
‘Looking down the road 10 years from now, I definitely see bitcoin being ousted,’ he said. ‘Everyone’s going to start switching to other coins, and hopefully PeerCoin comes out ahead in that.’”
While Mr. Blankenship anticipates Bitcoin adopters to switch to other coins, that may simply be wishful thinking. Bitcoin acceptance continues to grow exponentially, and no other crypto currency – the New York Times article points out there are more than 60 – offers the acceptance rate that Bitcoin enjoys. Bases upon Bitcoin’s rapidly growing momentum in the marketplace, it seems highly unlikely that any alternative will overtake and replace it.
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