If Recession Kicks In, How Will Bitcoin Perform?

[cryptoboy007]

Hello Everyone,

I guess I am just being curious here. Bitcoin was born after the 2008 recession in which many Bitcoin loyalists have argued that Bitcoin was born to cushion the effect of a possible future recession. What are your prediction and analysis concerning the digital asset if for any reason we witness just another deep recession in 2020? Will Bitcoin go down with the global market?

[20kevin20]

It's not going to be "just another deep recession". If you think what happened yet in 2020 wasn't enough, you're right. We're at the edge of a very tall building that is bound to collapse, which is basically the economy.

What happens to BTC will remain to be seen. In the ideal case, people wake up at the perfect time and put their money in something that doesn't artificially inflate like nuts every few weeks/months and doesn't lose value over time. At this point, I'd honestly believe in any asset, be it virtual or physical. If I ever have the opportunity, I would kick fiat out of my world in no time and use only BTC, gold and silver for the rest of my life.

By the looks of it, we're sooner or later going to enter a very, very bad economical situation. We'd probably wish for a 2008-like recession. The latest USA unemployment figures doesn't speak enough words anymore - it's starting to scream. If that wasn't enough, it's happening everywhere. I'm a very long distance away from the USA, yet we have a similar (possibly even worse) situation here.

Bitcoin will either survive or not. This entirely depends on us and on how we use it. If tomorrow the internet somehow falls in a country or enough people will remain unemployed for such a long time they won't be able to afford electricity & internet bills, expect huge FUD and a radical price decrease. Anything could happen. Comparing it to the previous recession, you had BTC go from nothing to $1,2k in a matter of 5 years (2008 - 2013). If history repeats, then Bitcoin will literally go nuts before 2015. But I'd rather follow a more realistic scenario.

The health crisis is quickly fading away and don't you think it's going to stop there - this was just a beginning. I read somewhere something that really made me think: the 2008 recession has redefined the financial industry. This one will redefine the way we live.

These drastic changes in the way we live will stay for a very long time. For some (probably many, actually), it's going to be a trauma.

[cryptoboy007]

It's not going to be "just another deep recession". If you think what happened yet in 2020 wasn't enough, you're right. We're at the edge of a very tall building that is bound to collapse, which is basically the economy.

What happens to BTC will remain to be seen. In the ideal case, people wake up at the perfect time and put their money in something that doesn't artificially inflate like nuts every few weeks/months and doesn't lose value over time. At this point, I'd honestly believe in any asset, be it virtual or physical. If I ever have the opportunity, I would kick fiat out of my world in no time and use only BTC, gold and silver for the rest of my life.

By the looks of it, we're sooner or later going to enter a very, very bad economical situation. We'd probably wish for a 2008-like recession. The latest USA unemployment figures doesn't speak enough words anymore - it's starting to scream. If that wasn't enough, it's happening everywhere. I'm a very long distance away from the USA, yet we have a similar (possibly even worse) situation here.

Bitcoin will either survive or not. This entirely depends on us and on how we use it. If tomorrow the internet somehow falls in a country or enough people will remain unemployed for such a long time they won't be able to afford electricity & internet bills, expect huge FUD and a radical price decrease. Anything could happen. Comparing it to the previous recession, you had BTC go from nothing to $1,2k in a matter of 5 years (2008 - 2013). If history repeats, then Bitcoin will literally go nuts before 2015. But I'd rather follow a more realistic scenario.

The health crisis is quickly fading away and don't you think it's going to stop there - this was just a beginning. I read somewhere something that really made me think: the 2008 recession has redefined the financial industry. This one will redefine the way we live.

These drastic changes in the way we live will stay for a very long time. For some (probably many, actually), it's going to be a trauma.

This is a really great insight Kelvin, "the 2008 recession has redefined the financial industry. This one will redefine the way we live", this fact is already becoming a reality.

Again, what do you think about commodity-backed cryptocurrencies, maybe a silver-backed, gold-backed, a cryptocurrency backed by a basket-of-goods? Do you think they can outshine other cryptocurrencies that are only based on mere fundamentals?

[HeRetiK]

Hard to say as this is now the first time we're going to see if Bitcoin's theoretical hedging function works in practice.

Unlike gold it's not really seen as a stable alternative yet but this perception is likely to change after 2020 -- for better or worse. This will largely depend on how much Bitcoin's price movements will correlate with the rest of the classical market. I'm not sure if you currently can make a strong case for either. On the one hand Bitcoin dropped more or less in sync with the stock market, on the other hand it seems to have recovered much faster.

Regardless of that -- with fiat currencies inevitably devaluating more than usual over the next few years due to governments stimulating their economies with monetary injections I do believe having a position in Bitcoin might be smarter than having none.

[Janation]

In my opinion, I guess Bitcoin will not be affected by it.

There are a lot of times that Bitcoin stayed normal despite the pandemic and other things happened. There are some irregularities I guess so that also adds up to random movements and might affect the price negatively. For me, it will not be affected just like the time despite the pandemic happening.

[Ucy]

Bitcoin will either survive or not. This entirely depends on us and on how we use it. If tomorrow the internet somehow falls in a country or enough people will remain unemployed for such a long time .

If the current internet fails(localized failure esp) , we could use Bitcoin in ways listed here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2183740.new#new


I find local Blockchain/Bitcoin interesting (not in that links^ page). It should be possible to build something that can be used locally and later sync with World's Blockchain whenever there is internet. Whether it takes 2year to find internet for synching shouldn't be a problem as long as the data is well decentralized, fool-proof, secure etc

Another interesting idea is to create a physical Blockchain/decentralized-system that is totally independent of the internet.

[figmentofmyass]

I guess I am just being curious here. Bitcoin was born after the 2008 recession in which many Bitcoin loyalists have argued that Bitcoin was born to cushion the effect of a possible future recession. What are your prediction and analysis concerning the digital asset if for any reason we witness just another deep recession in 2020? Will Bitcoin go down with the global market?

some prominent investors/analysts (paul tudor jones and raoul pal to name a couple) think the crisis and potential inflation from all the money printing is bullish for bitcoin.

i wish i shared their confidence. the economic situation looks dire, and just based on the correlated crash in march, i'm feeling pretty nervous for bitcoin. the next leg down in the stock markets could be just around the corner.

[smyslov]

After ten years, Bitcoin has proven itself that it can adopt any situation like this pandemic and any recession, in fact Bitcoin will be bullish in this recession, because people are going to move on Bitcoin being a more established market, there is going to be recession there's a big possibility because of the pandemic, all countries are spending a lot of there are a lot of workers losing their jobs and companies closing.

[Hydrogen]

During past EU bailouts of greece, there were fears the EU would collapse, and the euro would implode. Europeans rushed to exchange their euro fiat for gold and precious metals. In some cases, they impulse purchased big screen TVs and retail items they expected would retain their value better than an imploding euro.

If a deep recession sets in, accompanied by fears of default or hyperinflation. It is possible we'll witness a similar mad scramble. Consumers could rush to exchange their fiat for gold, precious metals, bitcoin, whatever they can get their hands on. The value of bitcoin could soar if its viewed by the public as a safe haven from hyperinflation, should circumstances and government balance sheets deteriorate.

It all depends on the sequence of events leading up to it and how circumstances unfold. We do know many large banks are currently holding bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a hedge against hyperinflation. Its plausible global economies will follow suit and officially recognize bitcoin as a recession safe asset, similar to the role gold has enjoyed over the years.

[fabiorem]

Bitcoin will follow the stock market, as it did in the recent pandemic-related crash.

That is, every market crash will have a corresponding bitcoin crash. They are correlated, as bitcoin is being traded without the speculators having it, and the exchanges are allowing these trades to dictate the price.

Our only hope for cryptocurrencies is if ethereum, ripple and monero unpeg themselves from bitcoin. Ethereum is a utility coin, ripple could help the banks, and monero could protect the citizen against the rising technocracy, as it values anonymity.

However, it will be hard for these currencies to unpeg from bitcoin. Maybe projects related to debit cards could help with it. But we still have the exchange problem, since the exchanges are allowing for the bear market to endure, by not implementing circuit breakers in their books. I believe they have a veiled interest in extrapolating the speculation, since this could also lead to a bubble, which would be good for them. But this hurt the technology and its applications, as a replacement for fiat money.

Then you have the network issues. The bitcoin-qt software takes up to five minutes just to start. A transaction in ethereum last one second, whereas with bitcoin, it takes up to one hour, paying the maximum fee. The forks are even worse: the only transaction I did with BSV took more than one day, paying the maximum fee.

It is old tech, and the price is only high due to market speculation. In fact, if there is a worldwide EMP attack, bitcoin would be one of the first to fall.

[Jating]

Hello Everyone,

I guess I am just being curious here. Bitcoin was born after the 2008 recession in which many Bitcoin loyalists have argued that Bitcoin was born to cushion the effect of a possible future recession. What are your prediction and analysis concerning the digital asset if for any reason we witness just another deep recession in 2020? Will Bitcoin go down with the global market?

The looming crisis is just around the corner, almost all of the economy around us are in the brink of collapse like the US. And there are predictions that it will take like 5 years for their economy to fully recover and restored pre Covid-19, but it is debatable though.

Regardless, crypto assets will still be there as an alternative to precious metals like Gold to be a hedge against this financial collapse. And this is another good test specially for bitcoin if it can hold the supposedly Gold 2.0. But we can't really tell at this point, but so far we have passed the test already and we have seen how resilient bitcoin is, so there a good chance that we will survived in another global meltdown happen worst than 2008.

[davis196]

Hello Everyone,

I guess I am just being curious here. Bitcoin was born after the 2008 recession in which many Bitcoin loyalists have argued that Bitcoin was born to cushion the effect of a possible future recession. What are your prediction and analysis concerning the digital asset if for any reason we witness just another deep recession in 2020? Will Bitcoin go down with the global market?

The recession already kicked in and it will continue "kicking" during the next few years.
Nobody can say or predict how Bitcoin will react to this recession.If anyone could predict this,he can become a billionaire.The investors might run away from risky assets and start buying more gold.Bitcoin is considered a risky asset,so I don't think that most of the investors are going to be willing to buy more BTC.
For me,the most important thing is that the Bitcoin Core blockchain will survive in the long term.
The BTC price goes up and down every week,so long term predictions are impossible to make.

[Natalim]

Bitcoin has been very unique, it's very volatile, unpredictable, and it does not correlate with the economic status, so if the recession will kick it, I'm thinking that the big capitalist will invest in bitcoin and consider this market as a hedge for the value of their funds, bitcoin is going to be a safe haven for them.

Therefore, I think bitcoin will rise in tough times.

[Hydrogen]

there are predictions that it will take like 5 years for their economy to fully recover and restored pre Covid-19, but it is debatable though.

Source:  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/business/china-economy-coronavirus.html

....

There are claims china's factory output is returning to normal. Elon Musk appears to have confirmed this to a degree. Musk claims tesla has 7,000 employees living in china with not a single one of them having issues with corona virus. He also claims factories in china, which tesla relies on to produce parts, are supplying at their normal output.

We may still have a shot at a quick V shaped recovery.

[20kevin20]

Again, what do you think about commodity-backed cryptocurrencies, maybe a silver-backed, gold-backed, a cryptocurrency backed by a basket-of-goods? Do you think they can outshine other cryptocurrencies that are only based on mere fundamentals?

I am not sure if a commodity-backed cryptocurrency could be a reality in a trustless manner. If it could, it'd be awesome imo. But the separate investment in gold & silver has its beauties - you do not get that feeling of holding a beautiful coin in your hand with BTC (there are physical BTCs, but that still doesn't make BTC be 100% physical).

I'm not sure they could outshine Bitcoin, for example. The way I see it, it's going to probably remain the king for a very long time due to the fact that it's been proven to work as it was intended to and it's been successful through lots of different attempts.

In a crisis where barter becomes a thing and internet connection is still affordable, Bitcoin could thrive easily due to its transparency and immutability. Gold could be faked, you'd have to trust someone else's words as you can't check whether the coin is 99.99% gold or not. I don't think backing a crypto with gold would give it many advantages overall.

If the current internet fails(localized failure esp) , we could use Bitcoin in ways listed here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2183740.new#new

Here comes the problem: that is only if you already have the knowledge inside your head or bought the necessary stuff. But in case of an internet outage, +95% of the people wouldn't have any option to make use of their coins. If internet fails, people will probably have way more important things to care about than purchasing bicycle generators.

I find local Blockchain/Bitcoin interesting (not in that links^ page). It should be possible to build something that can be used locally and later sync with World's Blockchain whenever there is internet. Whether it takes 2year to find internet for synching shouldn't be a problem as long as the data is well decentralized, fool-proof, secure etc

Another interesting idea is to create a physical Blockchain/decentralized-system that is totally independent of the internet.

So after 2 years of having no internet, would you trust the blockchain you'd get connected to? Would they trust us? Because at one point, someone could maliciously revert the blocks to their own advantage and give you a connection to their own version of the blockchain.

What if someone uses a device offline to send you 10 BTC and then goes to a place where there is internet connection and sends the same amount to a different address, but online and from another device? You would have no idea their BTC were double-spent and once the blockchain goes live.. oh well, your 10 BTC would become obsolete.

[gentlemand]

2008 wasn't staring in your face quite the same way this is. There was a vast amount of turmoil but whole industries weren't turning to dust in front of your eyes.

At the same time the elites are pulling further away from the little people than ever before and markets have less relation to underlying reality than at any other time. Many normal people did not benefit from the never ending stock boom of the last few years. That could repeat in an even more stark manner this time.

If more big money chooses to play with BTC it might latch on to that la la land.

Whatever happens the little guy is unlikely to be driving anything this time.

[Febo]

If Recession Kicks In, How Will Bitcoin Perform?

It will crash then slowly recover. Just like Gold. Stocks will recover way more slow. For Bitcoin will be just a normal time as it happened for years.

[Upgrade00]

Bitcoin was born after the 2008 recession in which many Bitcoin loyalists have argued that Bitcoin was born to cushion the effect of a possible future recession.

Bitcoin was created during the aftermath of the 2008/09 recession, and I would to an extent agree, it was geared towards solving some of the problems faced in the banking sector which led to financial crisis that followed. I'll quote below an excerpt from the Bitcoin white paper;
Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot
avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the
minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions,
and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for non￾reversible services. With the possibility of reversal, the need for trust spreads. Merchants must
be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need.
A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable. These costs and payment uncertainties
can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments
over a communications channel without a trusted party.
What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust,
allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted
third party. Transactions that are computationally impractical to reverse would protect sellers
from fraud, and routine escrow mechanisms could easily be implemented to protect buyers. In
this paper, we propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer distributed
timestamp server to generate computational proof of the chronological order of transactions
It was not created to save economies from crashes.
We should note that cushioning the effect of a recession and how bitcoin perfomrs during one are different. For it to cushion the effect of a recession, it has to have gotten mass adoption and become an accepted currency. If the global currencies are on a decline and stocks are falling, Bitcoin is going to be affected.

[Ryker1]

Well, on my own. The Great Recession in 2008 made a huge impact in the financial industry back then, --but perhaps businesses were still able to cope up in from these recessions and economy has recovered as what we experienced before the pandemic Now that the economy is going through on another downturn we cannot easily assume about the recovery and how it will cope up but one thing I am sure is that every individual will still their part to survive as the economy also depends on their citizens. Same as with bitcoin if a recession in the economy will kick it definitely it will also affect the crypto world. Indeed, I am pretty much sure that bitcoin will cope up may be slowly yet it will survive because bitcoin has already proven us its' capability to adapt to the changes in the economy.

[el kaka22]

Bitcoin would probably go up but we never really can see the future on what bitcoin will do. For example on the pandemic we were all expecting bitcoin to go up instead of go down because its a store of value and people would want their money to gain value during something like that, but it dropped. Sure it didn't dropped too much and recovered faster than anything else, but is that enough? We didn't wanted something that recovers faster, we wanted something that went up instead of going down.

So with recession its the same mindset, when everything goes down in economy we want it to go up to show how its a great store of value, will it once again drop and surprise us? We don't really know. In the end the thing that will be most crucial is how people react on recession once again.