The Bitcoin bulls came back. Literally.
Little Dude, a real-life bovine housed in a make-shift pen in a Manhattan ballroom, greeted crypto enthusiasts at the Magical Crypto Conference last weekend. He was brought by the anonymous Bitcoin Sign Guy, who offered 21 “Buy Bitcoin” replicas -- pen on yellow legal-pad paper -- for roughly $8,000 a pop. Only six were left at the end of the week.
Bitcoin true believers will tell you they never lost faith, but a 50% rally earlier this month has awakened the animal spirits that roamed in the halcyon days of 2017, when the digital currency dominated Thanksgiving conversations and sparked one of the biggest asset bubbles since the financial crisis.
Now, the hype machine that fed the frenzy has kicked back into gear. At New York’s Blockchain Week, one of the industry’s biggest gatherings, the Winklevoss twins hawked crypto swag to promote their payment network. Fund manager Mark Yusko dusted off his call for Bitcoin $400,000. A presidential hopeful spoke of digital currency’s inevitable future. Even a recent hack that saw $40 million evaporate was praised as evidence of blockchain’s immutability. On Sunday, the venerable news magazine “60 Minutes” will air a segment to its gray-haired audience reminding them of Pizza Guy.
“A lot of people say ‘party like it’s 1999,’” Yoni Assia, chief executive of online exchange eToro, said at an industry gathering Tuesday during Blockchain Week. “For crypto, people are starting to feel that maybe it’s time to party like it’s 2017.”
Crypto prices soared that year, with Bitcoin alone gaining 1,400%. It was dubbed “digital gold” and mania over its performance drove the price to almost $20,000. Entrants popped up nearly daily, with hundreds peddling their new digital coins. All that was followed, of course, by the colossal crash of 2018 that wiped out billions in value and pushed many to abandon the space altogether.
But just when Bitcoin appeared to have been left for dead by mom and pop investors, it went on a tear, doubling in price this year to more than $8,000. Despite a number of theories, no one seems to know exactly why, or really care. More recently, prices have surged since President Donald Trump ratcheted up his trade rhetoric against China, leading to speculation investors are seeking shelter in digital assets as other currencies such as the yuan depreciated.
A stronger acceptance of digital assets by institutional mainstays and old school Wall Street firms has also attracted attention. E*Trade Financial Corp. is said to be readying cryptocurrency trades on its platform, with Fidelity Investments soon to follow.
“It’s an exciting time,” Andrew Yang, a Democratic presidential candidate, said in an interview Wednesday at the Consensus conference. “We’re still in the early stage of the frontier.”
Of course, this being Bitcoin, nothing is straightforward -- the rally eased this week, and the cryptocurrency has dropped more than 10% in the past two days.