Bitcoin’s big bang moment is impossible to ignore - FT中文网
登录×
电子邮件/用户名
密码
记住我
请输入邮箱和密码进行绑定操作:
请输入手机号码,通过短信验证(目前仅支持中国大陆地区的手机号):
请您阅读我们的用户注册协议隐私权保护政策,点击下方按钮即视为您接受。
观点 区块链与数字货币

Bitcoin’s big bang moment is impossible to ignore

The post-election excitement around crypto comes down to vibes and vision

Apparently it is time to let go of your old mindset (man). Forget about the past. Imagine a new and more glorious future. And buy bitcoin.

This is a serious struggle for normies like me. Bitcoin is still not a proper currency — try using it to buy a coffee or pay your taxes almost anywhere in the world. It doesn’t pay a yield or a dividend or provide a claim to anything other than itself. The ecosystem around it is peppered with wholesome, sensible people but dominated by cranks and grifters, especially as you look past bitcoin and into the vast universe of smaller tokens and coins. 

But even I have to admit that the rally since the re-election of Donald Trump as US president is something special — a big bang moment that is impossible to ignore. The price has vaulted over $80,000 for the first time, marking a rise of almost 30 per cent since election day, which, as a reminder, was just last week. A target of $100,000 by the end of this year is not outlandish. What a time to be alive and what a payday for bitcoin holders.

Analysts at Bernstein are not holding back. “Welcome to the crypto bull market,” they wrote in a note on Monday. “Buy everything you can . . . We recommend investors who have so far remained shy of any crypto exposure due to regulatory concerns ‘invert their mental model’.”

Think of the volatility that speculating on crypto injects into a portfolio, cautions UBS. “We are sceptical that crypto assets can make significant inroads in meaningful and disruptive real-world use cases,” it adds.

Any effort to come up with a macroeconomic rationale for the price of crypto is also a path to madness. But let’s do what Bernstein suggests and think differently. This rally is about two powerful forces: vibes and vision. 

Vibes have always accounted for a good portion of the ups and downs in crypto. In this case, Trump surrounded himself during the election campaign with crypto true believers. He attended the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, described by Bloomberg as a “MAGA-fied crypto lovefest”. 

Along with his sons, he backed a new crypto venture called World Liberty Financial. Elon Musk, high priest of crypto, was one of his biggest backers. The token Musk frequently boosts, Dogecoin, or Doge for short, has gained 145 per cent since election day. Musk has been chosen to lead a “department of government efficiency”, or Doge for short.

All of this and more points to a new administration that is crypto friendly and in no mood to regulate it out of existence. The vibes are good. “People are going crazy,” said Ilan Solot at brokerage Marex.

The vibe shift means that even conservative investors are increasingly willing to give crypto a chance. “This is a global portfolio rebalancing,” Solot said.

Farnborough-based pensions consultant Cartwright says that even before the US election, it advised the first ever UK pension scheme — a £50mn defined-benefit company scheme of the type that would typically rely heavily on boring old government bonds — to put 3 per cent of its portfolio directly in to bitcoin.

“Pensions and institutional investors have got loads of different asset classes,” said Sam Roberts, a director at Cartwright. “We’re saying bitcoin should be on the list.” The unnamed pension scheme he advised bought bitcoin in October and has scooped up enormous winnings since.

The broader vision is that Trump 2.0 could treat crypto not just as a speculative wheeze but as a strategic imperative. Robert F Kennedy Jr, once a rival and now a potential pick for high office, spoke at length at that Nashville conference about the need to build up national reserves of bitcoin, on a scale that rivals gold reserves. “It was a mind-blowing speech. He had really done his research,” said Richard Byworth at Swiss financial group Syz Capital. This plan could potentially start with declining to sell crypto assets seized by the federal government over the years but later expand, Kennedy said, to buying hundreds of bitcoin every day. It may be a struggle to take literally someone who opposes vaccines and wants to remove fluoride from the water system, but again: new thinking. 

Byworth reckons some of the frenzied bitcoin buying in recent days is the work of other nation states around the world keen to get in before Uncle Sam starts buying. Whether this vision comes to fruition or not, “they are adding bitcoin as if this is on the cards”, he said.

Those of us still waiting for a clean articulation of what bitcoin is will remain frustrated. But it’s getting harder every day to fight against the crypto revolution.

katie.martin@ft.com

版权声明:本文版权归FT中文网所有,未经允许任何单位或个人不得转载,复制或以任何其他方式使用本文全部或部分,侵权必究。

欧洲增长前景受到赤字限制打击

欧洲经济还面临多项长期挑战,从老龄化社会导致劳动力萎缩,到应对气候变化和提升防务能力。

“主流媒体”能在第二届特朗普任期幸存下来吗?

美国的新闻集团担心,当选总统将通过监管、诉讼和恐吓来兑现竞选时对新闻业的威胁。

英伟达向全球芯片制造商传达的信息

英伟达向全球芯片制造商传达的信息很明确:如果不能打败它,那就加入它的供应链。

巴西的全球平衡战略比以往任何时候都更难实现

巴西总统卢拉一直寻求与美国、中国和俄罗斯都保持联系。但即使在特朗普再次胜选之前,这一外交空间也在缩小。

冗长的午餐应该为西班牙洪水预警失灵“背锅”吗?

幸存者指责西班牙地方政府失职,专家则警告气候变化正在引发更多难以预测的自然灾害。

广告商将重返X平台,试图讨好马斯克和特朗普

一些品牌曾因马斯克取消审核而放弃在该网站投放广告。
设置字号×
最小
较小
默认
较大
最大
分享×