Coin News

• Dogecoin, the digital currency inspired by the popular Doge meme, now has a market capitalization above $2 billion.
• Its founder is worried the coin's recent rise indicates wider frothiness in the cryptocurrency market.

Dogecoin, the alternative cryptocurrency inspired by a popular 2013 meme, has surged over the weekend and now has a market capitalization over $2 billion.

It soared above the $1 billion milestone on Christmas Day and has continued to hit new milestones. As for its price, the coin was trading at $0.018 on Sunday. Still, that's up from $0.00000021 a coin at the beginning of December.

Founder Jackson Palmer, who created the digital currency as a joke, said new found interest in Dogecoin is a concerning indicator of wide-spread frothiness in the cryptocurrency market.

"I have a lot of faith in the Dogecoin Core development team to keep the software stable and secure, but I think it says a lot about the state of the cryptocurrency space in general that a currency with a dog on it which hasn't released a software update in over 2 years has a $1B+ market cap," Palmer told cryptocurrency watcher CoinDesk.

Wall Street has been raising red-flags about a bubble in the market. In fact, UBS chief economist Paul Donovan said cryptocurrencies are in "the bubble to end all bubbles."

"A twenty-fold increase in bitcoin prices in just two years, and an absence of any fundamental economic backing, cryptocurrency prices are almost certainly a bubble," Donovan wrote in an October memo.

As for Dogecoin, Palmer, a group product manager at Adobe, and Billy Markus, a software engineer at IBM, created it "without much real thought," according to reporting by Motherboard. 

As Palmer told Motherboard's Patrick McGuire, “one night after work, I sat down with a beer, I had too much time on my hands, and I bought Dogecoin.com."

Markus stepped in to help make Dogecoin an actual currency. 

The name of the coin is an homage to the popular internet meme known as Doge, which became popular in 2013 and features the face of a dog with comic sans texts in the background.

This is the meme:

SEE ALSO: Litecoin is gunning for $300

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NOW WATCH: We talked to Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman about tax reform, Trump, and bitcoin

• Dogecoin, the digital currency inspired by the popular Doge meme, now has a market capitalization above $2 billion.
• Its founder is worried the coin's recent rise indicates wider frothiness in the cryptocurrency market.

Dogecoin, the alternative cryptocurrency inspired by a popular 2013 meme, has surged over the weekend and now has a market capitalization over $2 billion.

It soared above the $1 billion milestone on Christmas Day and has continued to hit new milestones. As for its price, the coin was trading at $0.018 on Sunday. Still, that's up from $0.00000021 a coin at the beginning of December.

Founder Jackson Palmer, who created the digital currency as a joke, said new found interest in Dogecoin is a concerning indicator of wide-spread frothiness in the cryptocurrency market.

"I have a lot of faith in the Dogecoin Core development team to keep the software stable and secure, but I think it says a lot about the state of the cryptocurrency space in general that a currency with a dog on it which hasn't released a software update in over 2 years has a $1B+ market cap," Palmer told cryptocurrency watcher CoinDesk.

Wall Street has been raising red-flags about a bubble in the market. In fact, UBS chief economist Paul Donovan said cryptocurrencies are in "the bubble to end all bubbles."

"A twenty-fold increase in bitcoin prices in just two years, and an absence of any fundamental economic backing, cryptocurrency prices are almost certainly a bubble," Donovan wrote in an October memo.

As for Dogecoin, Palmer, a group product manager at Adobe, and Billy Markus, a software engineer at IBM, created it "without much real thought," according to reporting by Motherboard. 

As Palmer told Motherboard's Patrick McGuire, “one night after work, I sat down with a beer, I had too much time on my hands, and I bought Dogecoin.com."

Markus stepped in to help make Dogecoin an actual currency. 

The name of the coin is an homage to the popular internet meme known as Doge, which became popular in 2013 and features the face of a dog with comic sans texts in the background.

This is the meme:

SEE ALSO: Litecoin is gunning for $300

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We talked to Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman about tax reform, Trump, and bitcoin

• Dogecoin, the digital currency inspired by the popular Doge meme, now has a market capitalization above $2 billion.
• Its founder is worried the coin's recent rise indicates wider frothiness in the cryptocurrency market.

Dogecoin, the alternative cryptocurrency inspired by a popular 2013 meme, has surged over the weekend and now has a market capitalization over $2 billion.

It soared above the $1 billion milestone on Christmas Day and has continued to hit new milestones. As for its price, the coin was trading at $0.018 on Sunday. Still, that's up from $0.00000021 a coin at the beginning of December.

Founder Jackson Palmer, who created the digital currency as a joke, said new found interest in Dogecoin is a concerning indicator of wide-spread frothiness in the cryptocurrency market.

"I have a lot of faith in the Dogecoin Core development team to keep the software stable and secure, but I think it says a lot about the state of the cryptocurrency space in general that a currency with a dog on it which hasn't released a software update in over 2 years has a $1B+ market cap," Palmer told cryptocurrency watcher CoinDesk.

Wall Street has been raising red-flags about a bubble in the market. In fact, UBS chief economist Paul Donovan said cryptocurrencies are in "the bubble to end all bubbles."

"A twenty-fold increase in bitcoin prices in just two years, and an absence of any fundamental economic backing, cryptocurrency prices are almost certainly a bubble," Donovan wrote in an October memo.

As for Dogecoin, Palmer, a group product manager at Adobe, and Billy Markus, a software engineer at IBM, created it "without much real thought," according to reporting by Motherboard. 

As Palmer told Motherboard's Patrick McGuire, “one night after work, I sat down with a beer, I had too much time on my hands, and I bought Dogecoin.com."

Markus stepped in to help make Dogecoin an actual currency. 

The name of the coin is an homage to the popular internet meme known as Doge, which became popular in 2013 and features the face of a dog with comic sans texts in the background.

This is the meme:

SEE ALSO: Litecoin is gunning for $300

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We talked to Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman about tax reform, Trump, and bitcoin

The post Bitcoin Cash Surges to $3,800 in Korea amid Flurry of Mainstream Media Coverage of Roger Ver appeared first on CCN

Within the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange market, the price of Bitcoin Cash has surpassed $3,800, due to a flurry of mainstream media reports that have emerged over the past few days. Mainstream Media Earlier this week, Roger Ver, an early investor in bitcoin and the CEO at Bitcoin.com, did an interview with SBS (Seoul Broadcasting

The post Bitcoin Cash Surges to $3,800 in Korea amid Flurry of Mainstream Media Coverage of Roger Ver appeared first on CCN

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The US government has been approved by a federal judge in Utah to auction off 513 bitcoin and 512 Bitcoin Cash seized from an investigation into Aaron Michael Shamo, a dark web dealer. 8.5 Million Sale In the upcoming weeks, the government is expected to sell all of the assets seized after the arrest of

The post US Government to Sell 513 Bitcoin and 512 Bitcoin Cash Seized From Dark Web Dealer appeared first on CCN

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Dennis Gartman, the editor and publisher of The Gartman Letter, who has also been called the “commodities king,” continues to call bitcoin one of the silliest ideas he has heard in a long time, a position he expressed on CNBC’s “Futures Now.” He said he expects the bitcoin market will fall when its value drops to

The post ‘Commodities King’ Dennis Gartman Predicts Bitcoin Price Drop to $5,000, Then Implode appeared first on CCN

• Morgan Stanley says we've reached the "euphoria" stage of the 8 1/2-year equity bull market, which is usually the final leg of a rally.
• The firm sees financial conditions tightening, and argues that GOP tax reform is already priced into the market.

For an equity bull market, overconfidence can be the kiss of death.

This can be seen in a cycle that's played out repeatedly throughout history. At a certain point during an extended stock rally, investors get cocky and continue to pile head-first into positions with little regard for risks. Then the market faces a drastic reckoning, leaving those traders wishing they'd been more careful.

Simply put, when investors start to feel invincible, bad things happen. To Morgan Stanley, this so-called "euphoria" stage marks the beginning of the end of a bull market. And guess what? That's where we are right now.

In its 2018 equity outlook, Morgan Stanley makes it clear that we've gotten ahead of ourselves. Those extended conditions, combined with earnings growth that's forecast to plateau in the first six months of 2018, has the firm feeling cautious.

"Financial conditions will tighten this year, and we can no longer say that investor sentiment and positioning is muted," Mike Wilson, Morgan Stanley's chief US equity strategist, wrote in a client note. "In fact, there are now signs we have entered into the 'euphoria' stage of this bull market."

It's a continuation of comments Wilson made in mid-December, when he asserted that "no cyclical bull market has ever ended without some excitement from investors."

Still, Wilson is not calling for the end of the bull market — at least not right this instant — since, as he notes, this euphoric stage can last for a while. He's simply warning that further upside may be limited, and that any remaining gains will be more speculative.

If there is an immediate threat to lofty stock valuations, it will likely be investors overestimating the effect of GOP tax reform going forward, says Wilson. He believes that it's been almost entirely priced into the market already — a view that conflicts with those held by many of his Wall Street counterparts.

This skeptical commentary matches Wilson's 2018 S&P 500 price target of 2,750, which is among the lowest on Wall Street. It's also just 0.5% higher than the equity benchmark's current level.

Rather than continue to chase new highs in the US, Wilson recommends looking for opportunities overseas.

"After a long period of US dominance, we believe both Europe and Japan can outperform the US in 2018 and beyond due to the meaningfully lower valuations and potentially faster earnings growth," he wrote. "These countries are much earlier in their economic recoveries from the financial crisis."

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• Falling car sales could point to a Labour government under Jeremy Corbyn.
• Car sales closely track consumer confidence, which in turn is a good indicator of voting intentions.
• The phenomenon — spotted by Samuel Tombs of Pantheon Macroeconomics — was obvious at the general election last June.

LONDON — Data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) on Friday showed that for the first time since 2011 Brits bought fewer cars than the previous year in 2017.  Not only that, but car buying dropped by the largest amount since the tail end of the financial crisis in 2009.

The numbers may help predict what happens the next time Britain goes to the polls in a general election, something many commentators believe is likely to occur sooner rather than later.

Here's how it might work.

New car registrations, the key metric used by the SMMT are generally highly linked with overall consumer confidence, the index that measures how ordinary British people feel about their personal financial situation.

The reason for this is pretty obvious.

A car is pretty much the biggest purchase you can make — other than a property — and when you're not feeling great about the state of your finances, you're probably not going to think about buying a new one, choosing instead to just make do with what you've got.

So, when consumer confidence drops, so to do car sales, as the chart below (courtesy of Pantheon Macroeconomics analyst Samuel Tombs) shows:

In turn, consumer confidence indexes have proved to be a surprisingly good indicator of what goes on in UK politics, particularly during last year's June election.

On May 19, three weeks before the general election, Tombs published a chart showing the relationship between consumer confidence and the size of a UK government's majority in the House of Commons after a general election, and predicted just a slim Tory majority. 

At the time, the vast majority of commentators, as well as the polls, were predicting that Theresa May's party would increase their majority significantly. What actually happened, as we all know, is that the Tories failed to win a majority, and were forced into a confidence and supply deal with the Northern Irish DUP.

The basic argument for the theory is that when consumer's get less confident about their finances they tend to blame the incumbent government, therefore are more likely to vote against them at the next election. Right now that means people moving away from the Tories, giving a boost to Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party.

So, while the polls show that the Conservatives and Labour are pretty much neck and neck, and suggest the Tories will manage to remain as the biggest party at the next election, car sales data suggests otherwise.

Things are only going to get worse for the car industry as well.

As Sam Tombs wrote on Friday: "Sterling’s depreciation points on past form to new car prices rising by about 4% in 2018, similar to the 3.8% rise seen over the last year. Demand also likely will be hit by further increases in personal loan interest rates, which rose in year-over-year terms for the first time in five years in Q4."

"Closer regulatory oversight and rising funding costs will force lenders to raise interest rates for unsecured loans further this year. All told, then, the downturn in car sales still has a lot further to run."

Britain's next general election isn't scheduled until 2022, but virtually no one expects it to be that long until a vote. Analysts at Morgan Stanley, for example, think it is "likely" that Britain will have a general election in 2018 as rifts in the Tory government intensify.

"With a minority government torn over Europe and facing a divisive choice between 'taking back control' and maintaining close links, we see another early election as likely," economists Jacob Nell and Melanie Baker said last November.

If that election comes to fruition, and consumer confidence continues to fall, don't be surprised if you see Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street before the end of the year.

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