bitcoin’s back with a vengeance
Don’t you just hate it when some annoying person tells you ‘I told you so’. Well, I told you so. Na, na, na, na, na! Earlier this year, on the 7th January to be precise, in a post entitled ‘2019:The Year of Bitcoin’, I unequivocally stated “I genuinely believe in its (Bitcoin) value (wholly unrelated to its price), its technology, its idealism and it is for these reasons that I’m sticking with it. I fully concede that crypto currencies still have some way to go to establish themselves as both a means-of-exchange (being able to buy/trade things) and as a stable store of value but I’m in for the long-term.”
Last week the leading crypto hit its highest level for some time, a smidgen under $9000 per coin, a rise of 140% during this year, including a 70% uplift in May alone. Ethereum, my personal coin of choice, is up 110% and Litecoin almost 300%. Admittedly, they’re all still way-down on their unprecedented individual and collective high-points but the situation begs the question, why?
Several scenarios appear to be having an influence – fears of a stock market crash, concerns over global trade following the continued US/China spat, the impact of our own Brexit and the noticeably reduced supply (17m bitcoins have now been mined out of a total of 21m available) are all lending a hand. Factor in an increased level of regulation and large-scale institutional buying and it’s certainly a buoyant time again. Fidelity, one of the world’s largest asset managers are about to offer crypto trading and JPMorgan Chase has unveiled plans to transfer ‘JPM Coins’ over the underlying ledger tech, blockchain.
Furthermore, this current level of commercial acceptance and increased credibility is about to be overshadowed by news that Facebook intends to launce its own crypto, ‘globalcoin’ next year. In an attempt to reduce its reliance on advertising (subtly avoiding claims of being in hock to them and the subsequent impact on data protection) and enhance its commercial footprint directly within its two billion user base, the tech behemoth has been in deep discussion with several of the world’s largest banks and is set to initiate its own digital payments system across a dozen countries. This is exactly what the alt-coin arena has been waiting for, and how long before YouTube, and others, follow suit? Of course, there’s going to be volatility and whatever your belief and position, you’ll need to hang onto your hat. And when it crashes and falls through the floor some wag out there will tell me, ‘see, told you so!’.
