Bitcoin Forum

Many mainstream media channels ran articles on the notion that bitcoin is used as a safe heaven asset after UK citizens voted to leave the European Union. Yet, GBP BTC and EUR BTC saw no change. Bitcoin might be a speculative heaven asset but definitely not a safe heaven one.
http://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/6m/GBP?c=e&t=a
Reddit discussion on the matter:
https://redd.it/4pu4a1

I agree tha Brexit didn't affect Bitcoin, at least not in substantial way. Brexit is something that affect traditional financial markets and fiat money, but not Bitcoin.

the price of bitcoin<->pound did change. but not because of any large british buys. more so it was just speculative drama about arbitraging between bitcoin dollar pound, and round again in circles

the main reason for this is that the UK is not that big on bitcoin, due to the fact that bank wire transfers are free and near instant. then only real appeal for bitcoin in the UK is that its 24/7 rather than the UK banking system that can guarantee <1hour only during business hours.

the UK has a way to go before it will catch up with the Yanks. especially when there is not much in the way of a trustable well established UK exchange.
so i personally never expected any mass buy in's and only expected some fun arbitrage opportunities.

however there is still 2 years before the real "impact" of the EU leave option really comes into effect.. so things may change in the future

Of course it didn't but that graph's going to tell you nothing.

There's no effective UK exchange and if you do want to trade in pounds you have to wire them to Europe. Why would you bother when you can send currencies with real liquidity? It takes the same amount of time.

I'm in the UK and don't have the patience to wait for bank transfers. All my buying's taken place far away from anywhere that chart's going to pick up. Same goes for the vast majority of Brits I'd expect.

it's funny how the media is saying to know how and why things are happening. brexit has no impact on the price so far. maybe that it will at some point when the brexit actually becomes reality, but at this point not. the media is once again wrong about bitcoin. i think people and traditional investors that are really worried about the brexit, will much more likely head over to gold to put their money in.

Everyone is worried about the Brexit because of all the trade deals and free movement of workers that will be affected, and so everyone was dumping the pound and their shares (and a lot of stock exchanges dumped a large, large amount of their value during the vote), but so far a lot of companies are not going to be moving their jobs back to the Union and so far, the stock exchanges have primarily recovered. There is very little reason for anyone in Britain to buy into bitcoin now, as most of the bad stuff that could have happened have happened, and the worst of the Brexit is done.

Even the regular financial markets weren't affected by the Brexit. What really happened was that alot of sell-side pressure has been artificially pumped out of all recognition for the last 7-8 years, because of all the cheap money being thrown around. Turning off the credit spigot and announcing "we got that one wrong" is not an option: waiting for a huge media parade, like the Brexit, then letting the air out of the ball, then getting media shills to blame the very parade they started is more like the central bankers style.

Most of the liquidity in BTC markets is in the USD/BTC market (by a large margin), and there is HUGE liquidity in the GBP/USD market, so it would probably make sense for someone in the UK to first buy USD and then use that USD to buy bitcoin if they wanted to buy BTC due to brexit issues.

The US dollar is widely accepted and traded around the world, and in many parts of the world, it is easier to spend/use then the local currency. I would not doubt that it would be trivial for people in the UK to first buy US dollars prior to buying BTC.

Also it has been speculated that other countries in the EU may also leave the EU after the UK left, so it is possible that people in those EU countries have purchased BTC in anticipation that their country might leave.

There is the issue that the UK leaving the EU might cause financial havoc around the world, damaging even US assets/profits, so people in the US would probably want to buy BTC as a result (if you were to assume that BTC is a safe haven asset).

There is no proof for the claim of the media that Bitcoin was used as a safe haven asset in connection with the Brexit decision. But at the same time there is neither proof for OP's claim that Bitcoin was not used as a safe haven asset.

In both cases you can only speculate on the cause and effect relationship, because you only have correlative data. No change at GBP and EUR exchanges is no proof, because a possible safe haven function is not limited to Europe alone. After the Brexit, all major international indices suffered significant losses.

Especially you can't control for what would have happened at the same trading day without the Brexit (maybe Bitcoin valuation would have dropped substantially...) - the possible relative effect of the Brexit can't be quantified.

ya.ya.yo!

I agree with your basic premise, however there are some non-corellations to factor in also; one salient such factor would be the lack of discernible/statistically significant  volume increases at GBP trading exchanges. And as I said in my post earlier in the thread, the macroeconomic cycles, and central banks tendency to duck their responsibility for inducing them, that are most likely behind the market turmoil. Kind of ironic, seeing as it's central banks that claim their role is to smooth out the cyclical dynamics.

Volumes of exchanges are published, and therefore it's easy to see if and how much certain real world events affected bitcoin exchanges. EUR and GBP ones didn't seem to be affected. This is a valid indicator that the assertion labeling bitcoin as a safe heaven asset in response to the brexit is unsubstantiated to a great extent.

Are you surprised?
The opposite would have been the surprise, the people who have exchanged their Sterling for gold are pretty far from the average bitcoiner.

though i doubt that none of them bought the bitcoins, i think there was not enough people buying to have impact

Not surprised but I felt the need to state the obvious as several people were overlooking the fact that EUR and GBP markets did not move and rushed to conclude that the brexit was of any relevance to bitcoin's price.

Of course, the bitcoin price has never been affected by the global financial events that usually affect the fiat economy, because bitcoin has developed its own market unattached from ordinary financial markets, and it is totally understandable because of the same nature of the bitcoin origin as a reaction against the current economic system.

proof that OP doesn't have 100% concrete proof of the TITLED claim...

the fact that this thread was created

That event was related to forex, and not bitcoin markets. Bitcoin is completely different, so why are you comparing such an event which has nothing to do with it?

Why are you? What evidence is there that the FX markets were genuinely affected by this? Something you saw on TV, maybe? Why would you believe what the media say about something as political as this?

I'm not saying that a lot of the stuff you read of TV qualifies as actual news that doesn't have a political agenda, but a lot of the Asian markets took a massive hit during the Brexit vote, namely through most indexes ending up with 0 advancing stocks and >100 decline stocks; something that doesn't normally happen on an average trading day.

The British FTSE took a massive hit (yet it has recovered due to a bailout by the English Central Bank iirc) and that was at the same time the Brexit vote happened, etc. There was a fair amount of evidence. The charts exist.

What is brexti? Because i really don't have any idea for that . 😂😂

Ok MingLee, I can broadly accept your statement: the charts exist, and the correlations were widespread.

But do not forget: the FTSE, the Dow, the NYSE, the London Housing Market, the US Housing market..... and alot of the Asian markets affected by proliferating Yuan printing ALL have been directly & seriously over-pumped ever since the 2008 financial crisis. The central banks relating to the jurisdictions where those markets take place have been printing and lending money like crazy; the US monetary base has more than doubled since 2008. All those Trillions of dollars went into the US stock and housing market, borrowed by large brokerage firms and hedge funds at between 0.5% and -0.5% interest. Literally negative interest rates. The central banks were desperate to get that new money out there.


Does anyone remember this: "The Times, 3rd January, Chancellors announces second bailout for the banks?"


Satoshi didn't choose that headline just to prove which day he mined the Genesis Block, he chose it as a poetic expression of why he made Bitcoin to begin with. Let's not forget that these owned-and-controlled financial markets are probably the most pernicious institutions in history. They like to win, and they do it through one principle method: deception. Knowledge is king in the markets.


So, I can accept that the world markets really were reacting to something, but was the cause of the reaction really what their corporate media friends were espousing? The alternative view (and I believe to be a great deal more plausible) is that the very real bubble required bursting, and any major political event can be conveniently used as a scapegoat. Brexit was oh so convenient an issue like that.

Even with the statistics and graphs, it doesn't mean anything at all. I don't see quite a big change with the value of bitcoin in comparison to the brits pound.

Yeah just the usual load of crap that media outlets spue out these days.  instead of media trying to reporting the news they try to make it these days..... sad

Brexit did have a lot of impact  on financial markets like in the forex and commodities area also in the stock and shares which all tumbled after the british voted to leave Eurozone. But this has in no way any connection that bitcoin is affected by this decision. Price of bitcoin is stable these last 2 days after the Brexit vote so I cannot see any correlation between the two.

Brexit is a wordplay referring to the UK referendum where people there voted for the country to leave the european union.

I disagree.

Bitcoin did experience similar levels of market disruption to the FX and COMEX markets, as you say. So, if all those markets experienced big swings at exactly the same time as a major political event, why aren't they all attributable to the Brexit outcome?

bitcoin market is still under control black market. I think crypto currency is different with the stock market so brexit will not give any effect on bitcoin.

manipulators like to play when big news are in play it does not matter if they are not directly correlated with bitcoin, they have a greater chance to cause a movements, on the market with the correct timing

brexit was used like grexit, nothign more or less, but here this time the halving has almost all the effect for the last price increase