GBP -> BTC
"Money Printing" and Bail Outs Are Back
Toward the end of last week and the beginning this week, we saw the British pound (GBP) lose about 6% of its value vs. the US dollar (USD), before rebounding a bit.
Watching this prompted me to revisit the “bitcoin (BTC) is a store of value” narrative for some YouTube Shorts that I made for Finder this week.
In the Short below, I discussed how because fiat currencies around the globe are losing value vs. the USD, central banks around the world will have to “print money” (I put this term in quotes because it’s actually a bit more of a complex process than it sounds; I’m not in the mood to describe the process today, though) just to service their debts, which are largely denominated in USD.
A day after my making this first video, the Bank of England - England’s central bank - announced that it would have to print money (here, it refers to the bank intervening in bond markets) to prop up pension funds, some of which were apparently close to becoming insolvent.
So, then I made the following video:
For an excellent breakdown of what happened in the UK and who really won in this most recent bail out, I recommend watching the following video:
Fun note: I’m scheduled to interview the host of the above video - Nik Bhatia, CFA, CMT; Business and Finance Professor at USC; and author of Layered Money: From Gold and Dollars to Bitcoin and Central Bank Digital Currencies - for Finder in two weeks.
And then I wrote a piece for NASDAQ’s website on behalf of Finder this week on the monetary values that the Bitcoin network preserves entitled “Bitcoin Is a Store of Values”.
Fun note: One of my favorite writers in the Bitcoin space - Allen Farrington, co-author of Bitcoin is Venice - had the following kind words to share about the title of the piece.
(This blew my mind a little bit, as I very much respect Farrington’s work.)
Here’s a excerpt from the piece:
“BTC’s perfect scarcity is what makes it such an effective counter to fiat currency debasement.
As the British pound dramatically lost value against the U.S. dollar a few days ago, you’d have been hard-pressed to find people on Twitter yelling “Buy ETH! Fiat currencies are collapsing!”
Instead, they were urging the world to take out a BTC insurance policy against reckless fiat monetary policy.
Bitcoin’s sound monetary policy is one of the network’s core values.”
The following analysis aligns with the quote above:
So, the question on my mind remains: Will the “bitcoin is a store of value” narrative resurge as fiat currencies around the world continue to lose value against the dollar? Or is Bitcoin still too new and volatile for most people to trust it?
Please let me know what you think in the comments.
Thanks for reading and have a lovely weekend :)
Best,
Frank
Twitter: @frankcorva
