Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

My Bitcoin Bummer — World’s Virtual Currency Plummets in Price (Again)

So, I bought a bitcoin a few weeks ago — just a single one, for fun! — at around $800, after having listened to a bunch of Internet nerds wax on about it until I was too weary to resist. Since I could not say they were nuts without some personal knowledge to snark properly, I felt I had to pony up some real dough to purchase the virtual currency.

Of course, despite my dubiousness, I was thrilled when it went soared to over $1,000 right after I bought it, all on excitement over its use in China or whatever errant piece of news keeps this heedless excitement going. Wheee!

Today, the Bitcoin Price Index now has the price of each bitcoin at just about $680.

This steep drop came after some news that China’s big bank and some of its key companies — which seemed to have started the recent price spree by showing a bit of enthusiasm for bitcoin — were no longer mentioning bitcoin payments for their services. Most troubling was a statement from the People’s Bank of China, which noted, in part, that financial institutions “must not use bitcoin to set the price for products or services, not buy and sell bit coins.”

Ouch! And so it goes in the brave new world of currency.

And, just in case, I bought another on the dip (this is how the world ends, not with a bang, but with a limper).

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Nobody was excited about paying top dollar for a movie about WikiLeaks. A film about the origins of Pets.com would have done better.

— Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com comments on the dreadful opening weekend box office numbers for “The Fifth Estate.”