Bitcoin Forum

 With inflation hitting the UK and causing financial unrest, some experts look to Bitcoin as they feel it could make a positive impact on their some what unstable economy..
 According to data shared by James Butterfill, head of digital assets at Coinshares, shows that trade volume with Bitcoin as against the British pound climbed to a high of $881m as of Monday, 26th Sept.!

Meanwhile, the average trade volume between BTC/GBP on a daily is about $70m, invariably meaning an increase compared to the standard of 1,160%.

 With the rate at which the GBP tends to experience volatility, it would only be wise to look at other means. Like becoming a Bitcoin hub for instance, since adopting it will seem a bit of a stretch, Gabor Gubarcs tweet summarized.
 Furthermore, this decline in finance in the UK seemed to have become noticed since the introduction of Prime Minister, Liz Truss' fiscal policies, an analysis proved.

 Liz Truss' tweet  (https://twitter.com/trussliz?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E958253646986272769%7Ctwgr%5E547145ded9e3f78bba04d8bb5fc1c4fc3678cc3f%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdecrypt.co%2F108989%2Fhow-crypto-friendly-is-britains-new-prime-minister-liz-truss)
 
 It looks like she's gotten sidelined from her first view on crypto currencies now. Is there a plan to resuscitate the pound or will be Bitcoin be later considered?

https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/22/09/29070563/btcgbp-volumes-skyrocket-over-1-100-as-the-pound-continues-its-freefall

I heard this news yesterday. It's quite logical, faced with the possibility of the pound going bust or the UK government taking capital restraint measures, people buy what they can't confiscate. Although I would like to know what percentage of those who are buying Bitcoin are keeping their private keys. I'll bet something that there is a not small percentage who leave the Bitcoin in centralized entities.


She will be thinking of a plan to re-strengthen the pound somehow, the UK government is not even going to remotely consider giving Bitcoin legal tender status if that's what you mean, because they can't control it.

Just a quick note for the people that might think that this is automatically bullish: an increase in trading volume with the trading pair doesn't necessarily mean that a lot of people are buying. Trading volume accounts for both buys and sells!

I predicted such behavior more than 6 months ago (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5389264.0). When inflation hits your economy, a lot of people look to invest their tanking fiat into something they can trust as a hedge against inflation.

Now you might ask why price hasn't gone up. My explanation is that most of the world is not struggling with inflation alone, they are struggling with inflation + recession like in United States. In that situation, people don't have any money to invest because they are already struggling to pay the rent, buy groceries, pay the bills, etc. (on top of that we have a lot of state sponsored market manipulation but that's another topic).
Recession is starting to reach UK too but it is not yet as severe as the inflation.

After the value of the British pound fell relative to the dollar and gas prices rose, cryptocurrency assets were used as an alternative investment asset by Britons. Those who have not yet entered the cryptocurrency business fear that they will face the danger of being left behind.

In the midst of the financial crisis the British public has turned various types of cryptocurrency coins into investment assets. Among buyers in the UK, Bitcoin is the most popular coin, followed by Ethereum, Dogecoin, Litecoin, and Chainlink.
 
The development of the cryptocurrency business is currently growing rapidly in the UK after the British government appointed Elizabeth Truss as prime minister. Following comments made by their Treasury Secretary before the UK Parliament that the government would make the country crypto technology friendly, the UK government signaled a quick push to embrace cryptocurrencies.

That's the crazy part: even gold is dropping (https://goldprice.org/) in value. All economic common sense seems to be gone, while the inflation is higher than ever. Inflation is like a tax, but it's less visible. It makes people think they get more money, while their purchasing power doesn't go up (or even goes down). I blame the BRRR, and somehow they all worry more about a possible recession than about the huge inflation. The entire fiat money system is build on eternal growth, which can't go on forever.
The British policy seem to be even weirder with their new prime minister giving tax breaks to the rich.

And that's why I like Bitcoin: it may drop now because of the fear for less BRRR, but nothing else changed: it's still impossible to inflate Bitcoin like they do with fiat. Long-term, I have much more confidence in Bitcoin than any fiat money.

maybe more investors will put their money in bitcoin. because now some currencies have been depreciating in value. and the US Dollar has increased. but I don't think this is enough to make the bitcoin market bullish. besides bitcoin I also heard that interest in gold is increasing. although some time ago it turned out that gold was experiencing a decline. but they still make gold as the guardian of the value of their assets. and when Gold decreased it turned out that bitcoin actually went up. that means there is a transfer of funds in it. which originally many who bought gold then became less and moved to bitcoin. The pound sterling has suffered its worst decline in history. it's no wonder that many are looking for alternative ways to maintain asset values. While the US dollar continues to increase this week.

And it keeps getting funnier.
China’s yuan falls to the lowest level against the dollar since 2008 as foreign currencies continue their sickening lurch (https://fortune.com/2022/09/28/yuan-falls-to-lowest-level-against-dollar-since-2008-foreign-currencies-pound-markets/)

And who is the king of the hill, breaking every currency in its path and sending them to a decade if not centuries low?
The one doing the most BRR of all, the good old $!
Everything everywhere is getting hammered, no place to hide!  ;D

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/20/blob46f337e72dec83d4.png


Probably a tiny fraction, take for example the largest GBP/BTC volume pair, that's on bitfinex:
https://trading.bitfinex.com/t/BTC:GBP?type=exchange

You see the spike on the 26 and then, nothing, volume dropped from 42k BTC to 1.7k two days later, those are not poeple rushing to send they money to an exchange and buy coins to store, these are orders exploiting the news and momentum.

I won't say that no one invests in Bitcoin because that wouldn't be true, but I completely agree with you that a very small percentage of people can afford any risky investments at the moment - and when it comes to Bitcoin, many assume that the big the bull run will not happen before the second half of 2024 after the halving anyway.

The price of BTC is the best indicator of supply and demand, and all these movements are mostly manipulations anyway, because those who have a lot of Bitcoin and fiat know how to make a fortune even if we are talking about a 5% price change.

Do you think that someone has feared from 3%-15% fluctuations during one year. will bear to waste his money in cryptocurrencies with much more fluctuations? Knowing that Bitcoin, according to technical analysis, will not witness a crazy increase during the next year.

What I am trying to say is that people in such circumstances will resort to a reliable solution such as government lending, buying gold, real estate, cars, or investing in stocks even if they achieve losses.

I think that at least in the UK you can scratch two of the things there, cars and real estate.
First for real estate is really hard to have enough money set aside already to buy something, not with such horrendous prices on the housing market, and probably the tiny number that does afford to buy one cash down have already diversified their assets a long time ago.  Not saying that there aren't people who do this but I don't think they would even count on the overall picture. Bitcoin, even at those numbers that are just for a record day still seems like it's still not yet there, still needs a bit more time or a more serious push or something else.

I think that most will go for government bonds or index funds, it's human nature when faced with dilemmas to try and chose the easy way out, one that doesn't involve much thinking, and with these, it's pretty easy, they order their bank to buy it and then they just watch graph and do nothing.
Going by that simple mind approach I would invest in energy stocks. If they are going up at least I get some returns for the high electricity/gas costs, if the stocks go down at least it means prices for the mentioned are also cooling so, in a simple man's perspective it's a nice hedge.

I still think recession is the key reason here making all the difference but I've been thinking about this some more and maybe it's also because people were caught by surprise so they didn't know what to do specially since a lot of crisis happened all at the same time with the Russia/Ukraine thing (food and energy).
And I know you guys aren't used to high having inflation rates so it is understandable for majority of people to have no experience in similar situations (they had never planned for it either).

Inflation is such a normal thing here which has made majority of Iranians into hardcore investors. From gold (specially coins) to real estate and stock market.
Fun fact, for the past months things are not-normal ever since inflation rate went down and then the exchange rate of Rial went up by about 20% :P

Not sure if you're just referring to Gold investors here, but I've never understood anyone that didn't think a recession has been coming. I've been saying it for quite a few months now, and I've predicted it to be on par or worse than the great depression. Considering the pound is at its lowest level, the housing market is pretty much heading for a substantial collapse, I think that prediction might come true.

Plus, I just mentioned this in another related post, but this is two rather substantial recessions in just over ten years, which basically means the same people who went through 2008/2009 are now experiencing again, another recession which will likely claim some banks existence, and will require investment to keep them alive, i.e the exact same as 2008/2009.

So, consumer confidence is at a all time low right now, which is only going to be compounded by a decline in the housing market. I know it's technically only the pound right now that's massively suffering, but every single market is showing signs of struggle e.g gold. So, within a couple of months I believe we'll be on a global level of decline, which will only be emphasised by the recent pandemic, and war investment with Russia, and Ukraine.

This is literally only the start of the recession, we aren't even knee deep in it yet, and the pound has dropped a crazy amount. I remember when you could nearly get two dollars for a pound, how times change right?

This is a huge volume spike, and it most likely speaks to the concerns that people in the UK are having. I've been living here for nearly a year, and, to be honest, I haven't noticed the spike in prices (and, thankfully, I pay a fixed amount for rent, including the bills, so I don't feel the change in the cost of utilities), but I can see that people are very concerned. I believe it comes more from the fact that it's a very developed country with a strong economy, so people here just aren't that used to financial drawbacks rather than that what's going on is truly a huge deal objectively (I mean the pound, not the trading volume with Bitcoin). But since the worry is real, people can be more inclined to look at things like Bitcoin to see if they can invest in it or try trading.

That's the difference in Europe (and no doubt the US too now): since the negative interest is now forced to go up, the usual hedges against inflation don't work anymore. Gold, real estate and the stock market are dropping now. So while fiat money is losing it's value, those investments are dropping faster.

I'd say a recession is long overdue.

I guess you haven't checked how the euro is doing 8)

I made the mistake of checking it to the pound, and was like that's not so bad. Then, the realisation kicked in that both have gone down quite some bit. I'd say it's only a matter of time before the rest of the currencies follow. No doubt, each government will be putting preventive measures in to stabilise it at the moment, but ultimately whatever measures they implement we'll be paying for it down the line.

Then we'll get a housing crash, and basically we'll start seeing people defaulting on their mortgages, and potentially banks ceasing trading or getting bailed out once again. Bitcoin to me should see positive growth during this time, and it might actually help us get out of this rut. Although, it's hard to predict since we'll also be feeling the effects of lesser buying power, I guess it's a question of what's more powerful. Decreased buying power as a result of the recession or people losing faith in banks, and fiat in general.

The good news in all this is that our dear bitcoin is getting the recognition it deserves, more people are getting to know what bitcoin is, they are finally knowing there is indeed, a reliable alternative to the already collapsing fiat system of money, and I hope that some day in the future, bitcoin will become a major player in our money system.

The dump market was started to little green now.It may or may not be the real factor,but the pump after a random dump was the welcome one from the traders view.When people inverse their money in crypto,it’s hard to get huge profit from it from the long run.Instead of making some bad sense,view everything in a good sense in the trading platform.

I'd argue that holding cash is the real risk. As others have pointed out there's no common sense and people are acting opposite to what they should be doing.

USD is being pumped without any fundamentals backing it up because the industry is not expanding, DOW is actually dropping by a lot and people, against any reason, are buying and holding USD, which pumps it even more against what really has value like top stocks, gold and IMO bitcoin. To be honest, I'd rather hold yuan right now than dollar simply because of how much it was pumped in the recent months.

Probably at the best time. Bitcoin was created in reaction to a recession, and the bank bail outs. Now, to kick us up a gear we needed a compounding recession to get people thinking about alternatives, especially since it wasn't all that long ago.

Who knows, maybe this was part of the plan, knowing we'd have recession after recession, and therefore people would get sick of it eventually, and look for alternatives. Now, Bitcoin is looking pretty lucrative, because the mentality of people will be no matter how hard they work, recession after recession hits, and therefore they don't gain in the long run. Whereas, Bitcoin has literally times'd it value several times over in consecutive years.

I'd say it's only a matter of time. It's whether or not governments become more hostile to Bitcoin as a result, which I expect they will.

Bitcoin can't be compared with the rise in USD against GBP because they remains fiat and can loose more value anything sooner no matter how the increase it has realized, bitcoin remains the most approved and recommended digital currency that cannot have the influx of inflation to deter it value with the economy regardless of location, bitcoin will remain increasing over time in value no matter how volatile it may seems and how dip it's been, rising is a certainty attributed to bitcoin even whenever it falls.

I assume that UK had a bit of a trouble back to back with this PM change and Liz Truss but on top of that queen died. It can't all be a chance just after both of these happened that they had a big downfall, it's obvious that it's going to be related for sure.

This is why I am guessing that the best thing to do would be making sure that we are doing the right thing now, and if we can just try to realize that fiat will always lose value over long period of time and put our money into bitcoin which could have down years like this year, but also grows bigger eventually then we could at least have a chance to make a good amount of profit, instead of keeping it in pound and lose gradually.

I saw another article about it and according to many resources, the bitcoin trading volume is growing up even against some fiat currencies such as British Pound, in this case, years ago when bitcoin trading volume was much lower than this none could even imagine seeing one day we see bitcoin trading volume this high. Regardless of that, since we are talking about the British Pound we all know that's not a weak currency but maybe after the economic crash in the world and especially in the European countries, this was predictable to see this happen.

But i think its mostly buying pressure. Recent fall of GBP and the hyperinflation force many people to quickly transform their GBP into different assets. People choose BTC other other assets because of its future potential and the current price looks very attractive to investors. There will be some sell pressure too but i am really doubt that will be much in this time.

USD is being pump hard by the US government using the increased tax on its citizens so it's normal that most of the currency will be weaker against it since they are not doing the same to make there currency value high to fight inflation. Bitcoin value is directly reacting USD which means other currencies that will pair on it will show some weakness too since Bitcoin is fighting USD value despite of its value increasing.

I believe British Pound will recover when US stops increasing there interest on taxes to push dollar value or EU will do the same.

Yes, it increased. The current inflation rate in the UK (as compared to the rest of the world) is very high.
This has changed many people's trend to start investing in the Bitcoin market.
Also, another critical factor is the dramatic fall in the value of the British pound against the USD. I think this can cause a massive volume shoot-up in the bitcoin trade.

UK pound needs to have a higher interest rate in order to fix this situation, Europe and UK do not feel the need to do that, they haven't increased it as much as FED did, which causes the inflation to not recover right now. Look at USA, they have recovered to a point already, not doing great but they are doing fine enough compared to Europe.

Because they increased it a lot, as far as I can remember it has reached 2x higher interest rate and will go up even more soon, because that’s the solution. As long as UK keeps going with their horrible financial planning and the whole "let the market fix itself" approach, it will keep on going worse.

Only solution is to replace gbp with EUR or USD.
Btc could be temporary measure just If anything then Stable coins but it Has a lot to do what the USA decides.

Brits need to start stacking their satoshis if they can afford to spare any of their fiat that has been dumping ever since May/June 2021 specially now that their government is basically headless after the resignation of the Prime Minister. It is also without any policies or even any future plans to even begin to solve any of the financial problems.

The British politics has been highly unstable in the recent time from the time the Yes to leave the European Union till now. Her prime minister just resigned after just 45days in office not a good one for the economy. Traders are scatting for a safe heaven for their money rather than allow the rising cost of living destroy their planned life.