Is the crypto bubble bursting?
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2022
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Last week cryptocurrency suffered it’s ‘black Wednesday’ moment. Investors raced to withdraw their funds and more than $200billion was wiped off the cryptocurrency market. One currency lost 98% of its value.
Ironically it was a so-called “stablecoin”, whose value is meant to be pegged to currencies like the dollar, that collapsed.
Was this a solitary - but very costly - blip or is the crypto bubble in danger of bursting?
Joining David in the briefing room are:
Gavin Brown, Associate Professor in Financial Technology at The University of Liverpool Jemima Kelly, columnist at the Financial Times Dominic Frisby, MoneyWeek columnist and author of Bitcoin: The Future of Money? David Shrier, Professor of Practice, AI & Innovation with Imperial College Business School Stephen Diehl, a software engineer and crypto writer.
Producer: Ben Carter Editor: Richard Vadon Studio manager: Neil Churchill Production co-ordinators: Siobhan Reed & Sophie Hill
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:06.7 | Welcome to the briefing room with me, David Aronovich. |
| 0:09.7 | The briefing room is the metaversal thought capsule, |
| 0:12.5 | where in 28 minutes you and I get to understand a big issue |
| 0:15.7 | with the help of the top experts on the subject. |
| 0:18.7 | This week, we want to know what's happening with cryptocurrencies in |
| 0:22.4 | the week after $200 billion was wiped off the value of the market. Was it a big blip or the |
| 0:29.4 | bursting of the bubble? Crypto means hidden or secret, and we all know what currency means. What isn't a secret about |
| 0:39.5 | cryptocurrency is that last week it suffered what some described as its Black Wednesday moment. |
| 0:45.5 | Investors fell over each other to withdraw their funds, and more than $200 billion was wiped |
| 0:51.1 | off the cryptocurrency market. One currency, ironically of a type known as |
| 0:55.7 | stable coin, lost 98% of its value. But was this a solitary, if for some very costly, blip? |
| 1:04.1 | Or is the cryptocurrency market a classic bubble in danger of bursting? And will it matter if it |
| 1:10.2 | did? Step inside the briefing room and together |
| 1:12.7 | we'll find out. In a minute, we'll look into what caused last week's crash and ask what it all |
| 1:22.4 | means. But before we do, the briefing rooms Rosamond Jones spoke to Gavin Brown, |
| 1:30.9 | associate professor in financial technology at the University of Liverpool, |
| 1:34.6 | and she started by asking him a simple question. |
| 1:36.9 | Gavin, what is cryptocurrency? |
| 1:41.8 | It is a money which is controlled and issued by something other than a nation state. |
| 1:44.7 | In other words, it's not controlled by a government or a central bank. |
| 1:48.6 | And can you give me a brief history of crypto? I mean, when did it first start? |
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