This Week in Bitcoin: The Hunt for the Next Bitcoin Intensifies

Basically everything that wasn’t bitcoin mooning, bringing with it a new wave of zealots and maximalists, convinced that their coin is The One True Coin to lead the impoverished out of the wilderness and into Lamboland. Welcome to another week in bitcoin. 

  

As the meme on 4chan’s /biz/ messageboard runs, “He missed bitcoin. He missed ethereum. Surely he won’t miss [insert shitcoin]”. There was a lot of FOMO flying about this week, as “investors” (okay, gamblers) piled into the next thing that was going to make them filthy rich, or at the very least provide an easy 2x before they dropped it like a stone and moved onto the next 2x thing. It’s hard to define the point at which we hit peak silliness this week. 

Was it when Tron, a platform with no product and no code, reached a $16 billion valuation? 

Was it when pre-mined Ripple’s founder became the 15th richest man in America? 

Or was it when heavily shilled ICO Dadi was found to have plagiarized half of SONM’s white paper and engaged in shady practices, only for some investors to shrug “Meh, it’s only got a $30 million cap. Can probably still make 300% if I flip it quick”? Even by crypto standards, this week’s been a weird one – and that’s before we get to discussing body suits that can mine cryptocurrency. 

On Friday, the first edition of the new Bitcoin.com podcast launched, hosted by Matt Aaron. You can listen to the debut show using the embed link below. In just six minutes, it neatly summarizes this week’s big talking points and is the perfect primer on bitcoin for anyone who was too busy to read all the articles we went to the trouble of writing this week. Future editions of the podcast will be longer: look out for the show dropping every Friday moving forward. 

  

Everyone had a lot to say about ripple this week: we certainly did, detailing the token’s rise and rise, as well as examining the rumors that Ripple can freeze accounts. Ripple’s army of believers had a lot to say too, in the comments, on social media, and anywhere else they could make their voices heard. The week was sealed with Eric Wall examining ripple and its “one simple trick” in his trading column yesterday. 

The week began with everyone still talking about ripple and whether, on bitcoin’s 9th birthday, it could overtake bitcoin to create The Rippening, but Stellar – developed by former Ripple cofounder Jed McCaleb – has also been on a roll. Then again, what hasn’t? There’s going to be a lot of people smarting when all these vaporwares and shitcoins crash and burn, but while bitcoin idles, silly season is showing no sign of letting up. 

  

Bitcoin might not be making headlines with price moves right now (save for a bounce on Tuesday when it emerged that Peter Thiel had bought a bunch), but infrastructure developments were in the news. Off-chain scaling is getting closer following successful trials of the Lightning Network. Elsewhere, Venezuela released more details of its national cryptocurrency, the Petro. 

A government crypto tethered to barrels of oil complete with its own white paper, coming soon? We truly are living in the upside down. 

This week’s most popular stories concerned the fall of Bitconnect, which has been wounded but still stumbles on, for now, and a man whose Ledger Nano was cleaned out using an ingenious but dastardly reseller scam. As usual, there isn’t space to delve into the remainder of this week’s most fascinating stories, such as Korean crypto exchanges poaching bank workers or the bitcoin effect causing Japan’s GDP to grow. 

See you next week for more highlights, including first word on whether all these newcomers succeed in finding “the next bitcoin” they’ve been searching for in crypto’s bargain bins.