What Iran and Instability Mean For Bitcoin

The Breakdown

Blockworks

Investing, Business

4.8 • 806 Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2020

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Last week, the US government took out a key Iranian military leader. As the world - and the markets - reacts to the news, some are asking what happens with bitcoin. With global instability on the rise, will more people turn to bitcoin as a safe haven asset? Will speculators drive the price up on that narrative even if it doesn’t bear out in reality? If Iranians use crypto, will that draw the attention and ire of regulators? In a different area of the industry, Telegram has released updated information about their forthcoming crypto token TON. Most notable was the bombshell that the token would not be integrated into Telegram Messenger - which was, of course, the predominant logic behind the more than $1.7B that was invested in the TON presale. Finally, we discuss the dust up around Nakamoto.com, a new crypto journal that was almost immediately accused of affinity scamming and censorship. Is it a case of overzealous bitcoin defenders or does the critique hold merit?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to The Breakdown, an everyday analysis breaking down the most important stories in Bitcoin, crypto, and beyond, with your host, NLW.
0:15.0	The Breakdown is distributed by CoinDesk. Welcome back to the Breakdown.
0:22.4	It is Monday, January 6th, and today we're going to be talking about three things.
0:26.5	First, we have three questions surrounding Iran and Bitcoin.
0:31.5	Basically how Bitcoin will react or not react to the increase in volatility in the world created by the recent political
0:40.0	and military actions around Iran.
0:42.0	Second, we're going to be talking about telegram and some new news that relates to their
0:46.5	ton token, which is one of the best funded and most anticipated token launches of the last
0:51.4	couple years.
0:52.5	Third and finally, we're going to be talking about the dust-up around Nakamoto.com this past weekend and what it means. So first, let's dive into
1:00.4	this Iran and Bitcoin situation. Obviously, last week there was a military action against
1:06.3	one of the key leaders of the Iranian military and the Iranian political apparatus.
1:12.0	I'm not obviously going to talk about the political implications of that.
1:15.1	That's not what this particular podcast is about.
1:17.6	But I do think that any time that we have a situation on a global stage that potentially
1:24.2	increases the volatility and instability of the world, we have to ask what the
1:28.7	impact on Bitcoin might be, particularly as the narrative of Bitcoin as a way to opt out
1:35.7	or protest action that you don't like from your political leaders is such a key narrative.
1:41.2	So I think there are three questions regarding Bitcoin surrounding this
1:44.8	Iran situation. The first is will it impact the price and why? The second is will it be a safe
1:49.7	haven asset in Iran or elsewhere? And three is will it shift the narrative among U.S. lawmakers?
1:54.8	So let's take the first question first. Will it impact the price and why? We have seen a price
	...

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