I first read about bitcoin in Wired when bitcoin was about $6-8 in 2011
The story in Wired that got a lot of attention (and introduced many people to Bitcoin) was late 2011. It was a large review (maybe cover?) that included the history of Satoshi, etc., the pump, the MtGox hack, etc. The price had hit $30 earlier that year and was on its way down to $2 or whatever the low ended up being after another year or so. Still I guess $6-8 when the article came out.
The one I read was before the bubble. Let me just find it
EDIT: Here it is. The article came out just before the bubble:
http://www.wired.com/2011/06/silkroad-2/Price was $8.67 according the article.
Ah okay, I hadn't seen that one. The pump started in late April though (maybe Silk Road becoming popular?). The price as of April 15 was still $1, and arguably even back in October ($0.06). Maybe the Wired piece did contribute to the blow-off high at $30 though.
More to do the point, do you agree with my perception that the next pump that attracts mainstream media attention will be much, much bigger?
Yes, I've made some posts about how I think the recurring bubble cycle is based partly on the bitcoin hype expanding into increasingly wider demographics through different media outlets, starting with cryptoanarchists and STEM guys hearing about bitcoin from Slashdot getting us to $1, and then Silk Road/Gawker/Wired geeks getting us to double digits, and so on. We have a lot more demographics that we can expand into.
We still haven't seriously broken into the worldwide baby boomer demographic at all.
We haven't broken into Japan at all. There are 450,000+ millionaires in Tokyo alone. Almost all babyboomers. How many of them own bitcoin? We can probably round the number down to zero. The yen is the third biggest currency in the world. We haven't cracked it at all.
We have very few women owning any bitcoin.
We actually haven't
really broken into China. If Chinese retail investors were buying bitcoin like they were buying Chinese stocks in 2015, we would've broken $20,000 easily. All we did in 2013 was break into the Chinese geek population.
If we can break out into the wealthy babyboomer demographic and get them buying bitcoins like they were buying real estate or dotcom stocks, then we could have a media hype cycle and bubble that could dwarf anything we've seen.
The problem is that they are going to be the hardest demographic to crack. The previous bubbles were low hanging fruit. Of course we could get the DollarVigilante, Max Keiser, Wired/Gawker, Zerohedge, PirateParty, Wikileaks guys on board. The delay between the last bubble in November 2013 and the next real hype cycle goes to show how difficult it is to crack the next demographic nut.
