Bitcoin bubbles and safe havens
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 6 September 2017
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In times of economic crunch, where should you store your savings? Perhaps you are tempted by the rise in value of bitcoin. But can it last? And what is bitcoin anyway? A currency or an asset?
Garrick Hileman, Research fellow at the Cambridge centre for alternative finance, tells the BBC's Manuela Saragosa what to make of the cryptocurrency.
British business couple Baroness Michelle Mone and Doug Barrowman tell Ed Butler about their property development where units will be sold for bitcoin.
And Martin Arnold, an analyst at London investment firm ETF Securities, weighs it up against other assets, like the safe haven of gold.
(Picture: bars of gold. Credit: Getty.)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC with me, Manuel Saragossa. |
| 0:09.4 | Coming up, the rise and rise of Bitcoin. Can it last? And what is Bitcoin anyway? A currency |
| 0:15.9 | or an asset? I would see that the cryptocurrency world, which is a family, it's a community, they're very |
| 0:23.2 | passionate people. |
| 0:24.7 | We speak to Bitcoin believers, but can cryptocurrencies ever really replace banknotes? |
| 0:31.0 | Plus, what makes a financial safe haven? |
| 0:33.7 | If you have some gold down in your bunker wherever you are and you survive, then at least you've got something to exchange, even if a government doesn't exist. |
| 0:43.7 | That's all in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:48.9 | One of the big stories in technology this year has been a surge in the value of cryptocurrencies, that is, digital currencies. |
| 0:57.5 | One Bitcoin was worth $5,000 last Saturday, up from $1,000 at the start of the year. |
| 1:03.7 | Other alternative digital currencies, such as Ethereum, reached $400 from just $8 in January. |
| 1:10.3 | More on why and why the value of digital currencies has wobbled this week in just a moment. |
| 1:15.8 | First, though, what is a digital currency anyway? |
| 1:18.7 | It's not as if you can walk into a cafe on any high street and buy yourself a coffee with Bitcoin. |
| 1:23.4 | In other words, it's hardly mainstream. |
| 1:25.8 | So I turn to Garrick Heilman, research fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, for a quick refresher. |
| 1:32.2 | A digital currency is an alternative currency, meaning it's not produced or minted by a government. |
| 1:38.8 | It's produced privately. |
| 1:40.8 | And by alternative currency, we also mean you can't pay your taxes with it. You can't legally settle debts with it. |
| 1:46.8 | It's not something that's recognized in the eyes of the laws, an official currency like the pound, the euro, and the dollar. |
| 1:52.7 | But what is it? |
| 1:53.9 | It's digital. So this is really important. I think, you know, most of us are, we think of money. We think of the coins and banknotes in our pockets. |
... |
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