Should you cash in bitcoin profits or wait for the moon?

This is Money Podcast

This is Money

Business News, Business, Investing, News

4.1 • 650 Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2021

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In case you hadn’t noticed, bitcoin went on bit of a tear recently. And as the price of the leading cryptocurrency soared again, so did the number of stories written about it.

Bitcoin is an interesting tale, a welcome diversion in a Covid-bound world, and the circus around cryptocurrency is the gift that keeps on giving for journalists.

But the vast majority of those column inches focus on two things: bitcoin’s price and should you invest?

A question that’s not so much asked is what should you do if you’ve reaped handsome profits on bitcoin or another cryptocurrency?

Should you cash in those gains or – to combine a couple of crypto phrases - hodl on the basis that it really could go to the moon?

(Where that moon is and when it’s been reached is as yet undefined.)

On this week’s podcast, we dive into the story of a This is Money reader and listener who told us about what it’s really been like to hold bitcoin long-term and how although he’s not quite got Lamborghini money, he did buy a Skoda and pay off some of his mortgage.

Georgie Frost, Lee Boyce and Simon Lambert also look at the rival cryptocurrencies to bitcoin and Argo Blockchain, the small UK listed company that’s come from nowhere to place among investors top recent share buys.

On a more pedestrian note, the team also discuss inflation-beating savings accounts and where they can be found – spoiler alert, don’t get too excited – and property guardians: would you live in an empty building for cheap rent?

And finally, there are some new concocted financial terms doing the rounds – how many can Simon and Lee guess correctly?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to This Is Money podcast. I'm Georgie Frost and alongside me and editor Simon Lambert today is
0:05.0	assistant editor Lee Boyce. And coming up, we go crypto crazy, taking a look at some of the real life
0:10.6	winners and losers from Bitcoin, explore some of the less than known cryptocurrencies, as
0:16.0	one of some of the other ways to get on the crypto investing train. Crypto mining anyone?
0:22.2	Also today, could you be a property guardian and live for next to nothing? The savings accounts that still beat inflation,
0:26.7	yes, there are some around, and it's all Greek to me. Let's play financial lingo bingo.
0:33.3	Of sorts. Don't forget you to stay up to date with all the latest breaking money news,
0:36.8	just go to this ismoney.co.uk or download the app. But first, we've spoken a fair bit about Bitcoin
0:42.9	recently, not a surprise. It is one of the most searched money issues on the web at the moment.
0:48.1	But we don't want to go into the whys and the wherefores. We've done that. We've done the
0:52.0	crystal ballgazing. We want to look at the real people, the winners and the losers, because there will be some, of the Bitcoin craze. Because,
0:59.4	Lee, you mentioned one of those a couple of weeks ago. Does he feature in George's article?
1:05.0	Yes, this is the person that I spoke about on the podcast a couple of weeks ago. And actually,
1:09.9	when I mentioned him on the podcast, I was weeks ago. And actually, when I mentioned him on the
1:11.1	podcast, I was messaging him on Twitter saying, do you fancy being part of a story for us? Because
1:16.3	I think there's always this chat around Bitcoin, people have invested, but I've never taken any
1:23.1	money out of it and actually banked cash profits and done anything with it. He was saying otherwise,
1:27.7	so I convinced him to be part of the story. I mean, as you say, there's always going to be
1:32.0	winners and losers from this. And from the cryptocurrency point of view, starting with the
1:36.6	losers, there's people that have obviously been scammed in the past because there's been a lot
1:40.6	of shonky wallets and different scams and elaborate things out there that have
1:45.8	tripped people out of their money and got burnt. We've had people that might have invested at end of
	...

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