Oil your printers, start your helicopters We saw some concerted (and co-ordinated) central bank action this week to address the coronavirus outbreak. The general idea of central bank intervention is that it should smooth market tensions sufficient to give people confidence to invest and generally promote growth. This has been interpreted in various ways across

Safe haven……? In early January, when bitcoin was rising strongly, the prevailing view was that bitcoin was acting as a risk off asset, much like gold. At the time I said I very much doubted that was the case. Simply, no sane person in a time of crisis looks to hide away in a volatile

Collateral The best way to get a cheap loan is to have collateral backing it. You buy a home, the bank keeps the deeds until you pay the mortgage. A company issues a bond, the bondholders get a claim on all the  assets before the shareholders. You can use all sorts of things as collateral,

$10k On Sunday morning, bitcoin once again went through the psychological US$10,000 barrier. When it first happened in 2017 it prompted hysteria from regulators and the public alike: “Bitcoin price soars above $11,000 as central bankers seek to calm fears: Bank of England and Fed officials say cryptocurrency is too small to threaten world economy

Realised market cap at all time high In bitcoin, the concept of realised market capitalisation reflects the value of each specific sub-unit of bitcoin based on when it last moved on the blockchain. This is as opposed to the traditional measure which is simply the total number of coins multiplied by current market price. It

Silvergate Most likely you haven’t heard of Silvergate Bank. They  exclusively serve cryptocurrency exchanges and OTC desks and late last year they listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In their first full report as a listed entity, they share some encouraging details about the ecosystem as a whole. Their client base has nearly doubled

The ECB I love the European Central Bank. They are everything that’s bad about bureaucracy and banking all in one handy location. What’s more, they are also reasonably open about their internal insanity, this week treating us to a report called “Central Bank Digital Currencies and the financial system”. Here are the benefits of digital currency

Welcome back More than anything, I don’t want to be the guy who died wondering. I’m long bitcoin (not investment advice), I think fiat currency is a giant fraud, I think the rest of the world is an enormous bubble benefiting very few people. As far as I’m concerned this decade will prove me wrong

2019 This will be the last update for 2019, we’ll return to action on updates in mid January. It seems then, that this is a suitable time to review some price action. Bitcoin has had (as usual) a very volatile year, ending up around 95% while having six times the volatility of the S&P500. Using

2030 At the turn of the decade we will be treated to all manner of wild predictions about the next ten years, most of which will be wrong. First cab off the rank throwing random darts at the future was technically bankrupt European behemoth, Deutsche Bank. It’s been a tough decade for Deutsche, with their