This is how you know it is reaching peak bubble:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bitc...nada-1.4436149
When everyday Joe's throw their life savings into it.
The elephant crouching in the corner is also the massive power consumption required. I wouldn't be surprised if some countries eventually ban Bitcoin mining. What a waste:
Quote:
An index from cryptocurrency analyst Alex de Vries, aka Digiconomist, estimates that with prices the way they are now, it would be profitable for Bitcoin miners to burn through over 24 terawatt-hours of electricity annually as they compete to solve increasingly difficult cryptographic puzzles to "mine" more Bitcoins. That's about as much as Nigeria, a country of 186 million people, uses in a year.
This averages out to a shocking 215 kilowatt-hours (KWh) of juice used by miners for each Bitcoin transaction (there are currently about 300,000 transactions per day). Since the average American household consumes 901 KWh per month, each Bitcoin transfer represents enough energy to run a comfortable house, and everything in it, for nearly a week. On a larger scale, De Vries' index shows that bitcoin miners worldwide could be using enough electricity to at any given time to power about 2.26 million American homes.
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https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...climate-change
Canada generates about 600TWh yearly, for reference. This is all essentially wasted energy. Steam recently stopped accepting Bitcoin due to transaction charges rising from $0.2 to $20! Could you imagine a Visa transaction costing $20, even on a purchase of $1, and burning 1/4 of your monthly electrical bill? It's madness.