The balloon goes up!

Hello Coincubbers,

around the world all eyes have been on the rise of inflation in major economies, not to mention shortages of semiconductors to keep your cars and fridge freezers working, oh yes, and even the return of something called coal as ‘the fuel of the future’. But there was something else happening too – and nobody really took notice of it.

Yes, rising up ever so gently on the horizon, like a Chinese weather balloon (drifting unintentionally over secret military bases by pure coincidence), was the price of Bitcoin. Remember Bitcoin?

Bitcoin Bashing!

Bitcoin was that much maligned and misunderstood cryptocurrency, that was being written off by leading political and economic commentators in the press. Since Bitcoin dropped from its high of $60 dollars over a year ago, headlines have ranged from ‘Bitcoin Crashes and Burns’ to ‘The End of the Road for Bitcoin’  – you get the idea. But all of these clunky headlines are proving to be iterations of what Mark Twain would have called the ‘exaggerated death of Bitcoin’. 

Commentators angry at this upstart cryptocurrency, conveniently overlooked that for the last year or so year, plenty of conventional investments also plummeted in value and, no doubt, lost fortunes for hapless punters. And it’s not just investments that have struggled, most economies around the world also suffered through inflation, supply-chain disruption, and, of course, the Ukraine War/Conflict/Military manoeuvres – delete according to your news feed. And yet, in the midst of all this disruption, Bitcoin somehow became the whipping boy of the world’s press. 

Shows us your Reggs!

Okay, we’re not saying Bitcoin is the best thing since Heinz put a ring-pull on its cans of baked beans. Bitcoin has its problems and downsides for sure – but neither is it something to be blamed for the world’s ills. Fraud, crime, and bad practices can be put down to poor and badly conceived regulations, and a lack of decisive action. Thankfully, since FTX crashed, governments are now speeding up much-needed and possibly life-saving regulations for cryptocurrency – regulations and licensing which could bring Bitcoin into the mainstream.

And so, onto the nub of this piece. Take a look at the Bitcoin price over the last eight months and it’s actually been a bit of a reliable performer. Its price staged a mini-recovery in mid-2022 stabilizing at around $14k (not a bad price if you had some – and we’ll talk about that later). But Bitcoin has continued to move upwards during the start of 2023 and now, shock-horror, this currency that’s been written off more times than Donald Trump’s re-election prospects now stands at not messy $18k. How about that? There are signs it may rise higher, but that’s just a possibility, not a certainty (note the weasely disclaimer – Ed). 

Bitcoin – the ‘throw away’ currency!

And so, talking as we were about the value of Bitcoin, can anyone in the world be as unlucky as the man in England (we’ll call him Lucky – but his real name is James Howell) who inadvertently threw away his hard drive worth £107 million into the garbage? Yes, you guessed it, his hard drive contained his well-preserved Bitcoin collection – comprising 8000 of the first Bitcoins ever to be mined. It was started 10 years ago when Bitcoin was it gleam in Satoshi Nakamoto’s eyes but now worth a current value of approx £130 million and rising. Apparently, it was worth over half a billion pounds sterling only a couple of years ago but who’s counting? This heartwarming story of riches to rags was revealed in London’s Sunday Times Magazine – probably as a human-interest story, but we’d say more of a tragi-comedy.

Lucky is now in the tricky position of cajoling the local authorities who serve the area to be given permission to go to the multi-acre landfill site and try to relocate this hard drive amongst around 15,000 tonnes of er, garbage. He’s even willing to donate 10% to good causes and – and spend another fortune paying for the technology and manpower to sift through the site (we’re back to those baked beans tins again). Isn’t it a great story – and here’s the punchline, the longer he leaves it the more his hard drive will be potentially worth – now that’s what we call pay dirt!   (ps if you can think of a better payoff line – send it to us at coincub.com and you can have my job!)

A last word on Balloons!

The Chinese love balloons. At New Year they send them up into the sky – usually red and adorned with golden tassels. In England we had an epidemic (if you’ll pardon the phrase) of Chinese balloons floating across the night sky, each of them hosting a lighted candle that looked ever so pretty but was a bit of a fire risk and a potential hazard to aircraft so they got, sort of, discouraged.  

And so, because the Chinese love their balloons it’s obvious that the even larger balloon that allegedly floated over America – and allegedly found itself over a sensitive military installation, having allegedly been blown off course – was in no way a spy balloon – even though this is what the American establishment has allegedly alleged. (Nb – over-use of the word ‘allegedly’ is to prove we’re totally fair-minded) 

Our cool, unbiased opinion is that Americans need not worry.  This was just a Chinese New Year balloon on a world mission of peace and goodwill that somehow lost its way.  

Until next week – Peace and love to you all!