What an incredible ride cryptocurrencies have had this year in 2017.  We wrote our original article on cryptocurrencies back in March and then a follow-up article with price updates in May that recorded amazing price jumps in 2 months.  Well, especially for Bitcoin, the journey from May to November has been even more astonishing.

We talked about how the jump in price for a Bitcoin in March of $1,000 to $2,800 in May seemed “unbelievable”, but that there was still excitement for the future.  That’s exactly what’s been illustrated since May with Bitcoin breaking above $7,400 this week and, at the time of this article being published, it is now just over $7,000 per Bitcoin.

There have been a number of developments, including JPMorgan (the largest U.S. bank) announcing massive investments in blockchain technology, upon which Bitcoin is based.  This coming as the CEO had famously commented how he would fire anyone in his company for being “stupid enough” to invest in Bitcoin.  Just last week, another large price spike was launched with news of the CME announcing the availability of Bitcoin futures trading in their marketplace.

This latest development is tremendous.  You need to understand that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) is a marketplace that was founded in 1898 and is the place that traders engage in buying & selling things such as lumber, live cattle, butter, milk, gold, silver, and other core commodities.  That we have moved from techie geeks playing with a shadowy thing called Bitcoin to now the CME offering Bitcoin futures is stunning.  No matter where your opinion rests around cryptocurrencies, one is simply not paying attention to the world going by them if they’re not keeping up on this topic.

This isn’t an investment website and we’re not certified financial professionals offering advice.  We simply find the cryptocurrencies utterly fascinating for the technology leveraged and the commercial impact they’ve had and will increasingly have on the landscape.  But, especially interesting to us is societal impact and the individuals’ ability to participate in a decentralized currency and access to an incredibly nimble storehouse of wealth.

The chart below shows the price of Bitcoin during the past year, including when our 3 articles have been written about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.  We remain as excited as ever about the technology and what the future will bring for (and by) cryptocurrencies.  We are also continuing to invest in them along the way.  One comment we get all the time is “it’s so expensive now and I can’t even buy one Bitcoin anymore.”  We encourage you to read our original article explaining what currencies are and why Bitcoin has some qualities of an ideal currency.  One characteristic is that it’s amazingly divisible, so you can buy in almost any quantity you desire.  Just like a $100 is divisible into 100 $1 bills and $1 is divisible into 100 cents is a good thing.  Bitcoin is actually much more divisible than the US$ and you can buy whatever amount you want as a factor of how many dollars you want to spend.  It makes absolutely no difference if you buy 1 Bitcoin or 0.000012 of a Bitcoin. Bitcoin price increase 2017

If you’d like to get involved, our provider of choice is Coinbase because of the ease of their platform and overall security & assurance they provide.  They are also arguably the biggest player in the industry and the most trusted.  Use this special link and you’ll get $10 of free bitcoin once you buy $100 of digital currency.