Matt Levine, Columnist

Bitcoin Swings and Tax Glitches

Also IEX, LTSE, AI, atmosphere models and stock buybacks.

December 8, 2017 at 2:33 PM UTC

Corrected

December 8, 2017 at 5:46 PM UTC

Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit; and an editor of Dealbreaker.

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

Happy Bitcoin Whatever Day.

Yesterday was a big milestone for Money Stuff, and for me: It is perhaps the first time that I have ever made a market prediction that turned out to be right. Right-ish. Right enough. Yesterday morning, with the price of bitcoin a bit north of $15,000, I predicted that it would break $16,000 by that afternoon. In fact, I went even further and predicted $17,000. "Why not," I believe was my precise reasoning. Bitcoin then went ahead and crossed $18,000 on Coinbase before noon, so I was too conservative on both price and timing. But if you read Money Stuff and thought "hey this guy makes some good points" and bought bitcoin at $15,000 or so yesterday morning, you made some money. If you traded on the right exchange, that is, and sold quickly: Bitcoin fell back to a 15-handle by this morning. The lessons are: