What explains bitcoin’s latest boom?
The cryptocurrency might yet justify a high price. But it will not up-end global finance
THE FIRST surge in the price of bitcoin, to around $1,000 in 2013, minted cryptocurrency millionaires, provoked declarations of a bubble and left some early fans kicking themselves. One unlucky man in Wales searched a rubbish dump for a hard drive containing 7,500 accidentally discarded bitcoins, whose value had grown from almost nothing to $7.5m. Since then bitcoin has been on a wild ride. Fuelled by casual speculators and market manipulation, its price surged to about $19,000 in December 2017; over the next year it fell by more than four-fifths. Bitcoin’s most recent ascent has been its giddiest yet. Having tripled in three months its price is now over $35,000 and somewhere under Newport sits a computer part worth over $260m.
This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “If you can’t beat them”
From the January 9th 2021 edition
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