Bitcoin bounces back
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 4 April 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Cryptocurrencies are on the rebound, but does the case for investing in them make any more sense?
Manuela Saragosa hears both sides of the argument. Jay Smith is a long-time player in the markets for these digital tokens, and is a popular player on the electronic trading site eToro. He explains why he believes Bitcoin and its ilk have a long-term future, even though he doesn't personally subscribe to the libertarian ideology that most of his fellow investors share.
However, cold water is poured on this vision by sceptic David Gerard, author of a book called Attack of the 50ft Blockchain. Plus Angela Walch, a research fellow at the Centre for Blockchain Technologies at University College London, says she thinks the crypto craze is a symptom of the broader rise of populism since the 2008 financial crash.
(Picture: A visual representation of the digital Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin; Credit: Chesnot/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. I'm Manuela Saragossa. Coming up, Bitcoin |
| 0:07.5 | Believers. Bitcoin is very ideological. There's a lot of politics involved, you know. I think the |
| 0:13.0 | majority of people that invest in cryptocurrency are pretty libertarian in their views. And Bitcoin |
| 0:19.7 | unbelievers. |
| 0:23.8 | If you want to buy magic beans, you are rich enough that you can deal with it. |
| 0:28.7 | But if you are just the normal person being told that this gamble is an investment, it's not. |
| 0:34.8 | Why, cryptocurrencies and the ideologies that endorse them are back in the spotlight this week. |
| 0:37.1 | That's all in Business daily from the BBC. |
| 0:47.7 | On Tuesday this week, the price of Bitcoin surged to over $5,000, its biggest jump since the height of the cryptocurrency investment craze in late 2017. Back then, Bitcoin topped $19,000 apiece before its bubble burst and the price |
| 0:57.9 | collapsed. So what's behind the price surged this time? We are watching the price of Bitcoin this |
| 1:04.3 | morning. That's because the cryptocurrency briefly touched $5,000 overnight. It's the highest |
| 1:08.6 | level since late. We didn't have to talk about Bitcoin for months and all of a sudden |
| 1:11.7 | it surged 17% or 14% in an hour. I think that is anybody's guess why this is happening. From all |
| 1:19.7 | my conversations with people in industry over the past 24 hours, the short answer is that |
| 1:24.6 | nobody really has a good answer for why this is happening. |
| 1:28.1 | It's possible that a lot of people on Twitter have been saying this was an April Fool's joke. |
| 1:34.0 | Reuters News Agency later reported that a major order by an anonymous buyer set off a frenzy of computer-driven trading, helping Bitcoin hire. |
| 1:43.8 | Cryptocurrency enthusiasts immediately took to the discussion forum Reddit with images of |
| 1:48.4 | roller coasters. The bull market was back, they said. Meanwhile, Bitcoin skeptics put out |
| 1:54.1 | their usual warnings. Clearly, they said, nobody had learned their lesson from the 2017 bubble. |
| 2:00.3 | David Gerard is the author of a book called Attack of the 50-foot blockchain and a cryptoskeptic. |
| 2:06.5 | The thing about Bitcoin is it's an asset that doesn't do anything. |
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