Bitcoin ‘Best Performing Currency Year-to-Date’

Bitcoin, used by a small number of online casino operators, is being touted as the “best performing currency year-to-day” according to Tyler Durden of ZeroHedge.com. 

Durden writes:

BTC, as the currency is known, up 130% year to date in dollar terms, thanks to rising demand from a wide variety of adherents, which ConvergEx's Nick Colas notes, includes libertarian activists, small businesses, online drug dealers and gambling sites.  That makes the Bitcoin a controversial subject, to be sure, but Nick notes we can also learn from this unique case study a lesson in global economics.  Bitcoin ‘Money supply’ growth is capped at a slow rate – far below its current levels of demand.  That makes it prone to boom-bust cycles.  It also has no sovereign sponsorship, which means it works outside any nation’s security apparatus. 

Gambling911.com has been covering the Bitcoin revolution, or perhaps the precursor to it. 

That’s because a handful of online casino companies that accept Bitcoin have reported their mostly positive numbers during the last half of 2012. 

Durden sums it up like this:

I have no idea which way Bitcoins will trade in the next 2 days or 2 years, but the whole process of starting a new Internet currency is a great case study in how real people use real currency.  Limiting supply has clearly been a huge plus for the BTC.  Becoming known as a currency for illegal drugs and gambling is more problematic, of course.  But let’s not forget that the U.S. Treasury printed 3 billion $100 bills in the 2012 Fiscal Year.  Most of those (the Federal Reserve estimates 80%) go overseas and many of them simply facilitate the global drug and arms trade, not to mention tax evasion and human trafficking.  So the BTC’s growing role in the same types of business might qualify it for “Reserve currency” status sooner than anyone thinks.

- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com