The Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall and Rise of Bitcoin - YouTube

 

Hi I’m James Preston reporting for Kalkine. 

If Bitcoin were a TV series, it would be a day  time soap like The Bold and The Beautiful.  

Unpredictable twists and turns brought about  by inexplicable and mysterious forces. The  

over-arching story of Bitcoin, since its  inception in 2009 has been overwhelmingly  

and undeniably positive – the specifics of which  we’ll get into. But within the larger framework  

are contained more twists and turns than  a French wine waiter’s corkscrew. What  

are these twists and what do they mean?  

PRESENT DAY 

Our story begins today, October 20, 2021 where  the price of Bitcoin is currently valued at  

US$62,152, edging ever so close to its record high  of around US$64,000 a little over six months ago.  

At that time, in the first dozen days of  April, it seemed Bitcoin would beat Amazon CEO,  

Jeff Bezos’ planned space trip in that  it was seemingly headed to outer space,  

in a matter of speaking. In fact, the  popular phrase amongst Bitcoin bulls was  

“To the moon!” – a reference to the seemingly  unstoppable ever-surging price.  

Much like the Titanic, though, Bitcoin hit  its own proverbial iceberg in mid April,  

which began a price spiral which soon saw  Bitcoin sink to the bottom of the ocean,  

figuratively speaking. More literally, by July 21,  

Bitcoin had lost more than half its  value, sinking to just below  US$30,000.  

Consequently, the only person who  ended up going anywhere near the moon  

was Bezos whose phallic-shaped  rocket seemed to rub it  

in (pun intended) to all us working  stiffs (again, pun intended). 

THE ORIGIN STORY 

Bitcoin is the superhero of cryptocurrency.  As such, every superhero has an origin story.  

Bruce Wayne began his journey to become  Batman following the tragic murder of  

both his parents in a dark Gotham City  alley. Spider-Man was bitten by a spider  

which subsequently gave him Spidey powers  of climbing walls and the ability to swing  

through downtown Manhattan using webs which  he could shoot from his wrists. Superman  

escaped his home planet Krypton to arrive  on Earth to save mankind from destruction. 

Bitcoin’s origin story, amazingly enough,  involves almost the same amount of intrigue.  

And before you ask; no there’s no planet crypto. 

Although, just who exactly invented the  original cryptocurrency remains clouded  

in mystery. There is no formal identity of  its creator. Rather there’s a pseudonym.  

Satoshi Nakamoto. This name represents the  anonymous person or persons who created the  

code which ultimately formed the  first ever crypto blockchain.  

The nature of blockchain technology is the basis  for Bitcoin and all digital currencies that have  

since come after.  To understand why Nakamoto  was compelled to create this technology,  

one must consider the state  of the global economy in 2009.  

It was barely a year since the  biggest global economic collapse  

since the great Wall Street crash in 1929  which gave way to the Great Depression. 

Again in 2009, the global economy had been  let down by the greed of major banks who had  

been living high off the hog whilst dishing  out sub prime mortgages to people who had no way  

of affording the repayments. Inevitably, by 2008,  thousands of homeowners were forced to foreclose  

on their homes. The knock on effect resulted  in ordinary people’s stock investments suddenly  

becoming all but non existent.  

Of course, fortunately justice prevailed and  the corporate fat cats whose greed and gross  

negligence had caused this catastrophe were  punished to the full extent of the law.  

 

Actually, that’s not quite true. And by “not quite  true”, I mean, “not true even in the slightest”.  

Rather, those responsible received no  ramifications. The only people who were  

punished were ordinary Americans, many  of whom lost their entire life savings. 

And this brings us back to Satoshi Nakamoto.  You see, the drive behind the creation of  

Bitcoin was the desire to completely  do away with third party institutions,  

like banks - and to essentially create a  financial system where monetary transactions  

were done peer-to-peer. This is what’s  known as a decentralised financial system.  

A complete rejection of the third  party financial institutions.  

And thus, Bitcoin was born. 

EARLY PRICES 

The initial price of Bitcoin in 2009 was barely  above zero; understandable when you consider that  

only a handful of people knew about it. It was  2013 where the first major price hike occurred. In  

May 2013, Bitcoin was valued at just under  US$100 - I know, I know. If only you could’ve  

gotten in then. Maybe you too would be zooming  through the atmosphere in a phallic spaceship.  

The truth is though, the only people who  seemed to know about Bitcoin at that point,  

apart from a few Silicon Valley insiders, were  people who wished to purchase things on the web  

without the purchase being traced back to  then. Conclude from that what you will,  

but I think the now defunct online drug delivery  service, Silk Road, probably deserved some credit  

in what happened to Bitcoin’s price  later that year. By December, 2013,  

the price had shot up from US$100 to  US$1,150 – an eleven-fold increase. 

That peak was short lived and was the beginning  of a pattern that’s continued till this day.  

The mass sell-off. That is: The price  will rise steeply to a peak which is  

then immediately followed  by a just as steep dip.   

The same thing happened in the aforementioned  crash in the middle months of this year.  

Why does this occur? Well that’s the tricky  part. Some point to outside forces, like policy  

changes within governments. This year’s crash had  many people pointing towards President Biden’s  

April announcement of future tax reforms. Others  blamed China’s April crackdown on crypto currency,  

which included the shutting down of several  mines throughout the country. Others blamed  

the enigmatic Tesla chief executive and now  infamous crypto flip flopper, Elon Musk,  

who in April decided that Tesla would amicably  decouple with the world’s premier digital  

currency on account of the fact  that Musk suddenly came to the realisation  

that Bitcoin’s mining practices  were harmful to the environment. 

These events indeed did correlate with  Bitcoin’s mid-year dive. But any analyst  

worth his salt will tell you that correlation  is not necessarily aligned with causation. 

BITCOIN WHALING 

Not discounting the aforementioned theories, let  me introduce a concept which probably has more  

impact on Bitcoin’s price than those three  possible aforementioned drivers. Whaling.  

Bitcoin whales are those players who own an  enormous amount of Bitcoin. So much in fact  

that one trade, purchase or sell off can  have a significant effect on the market. 

What’s worse is that theoretically these  whales can work in concert with each other,  

which is a nice way of saying they can conspire  to agree to complete mass sell offs when Bitcoin  

hits an agreed upon price. In the stock  market, this is akin to insider trading.  

In the crypto market, its just part of the  game where the whales make money - hand  

over blowhole - while the average trader or  investor watches his gains diminish faster  

than a Hollywood action star who’s stopped his  daily injection of human growth hormone. Not  

mentioning any names but this market manipulation  is enough to incur the wrath of Thor. 

IT’S THE whaling phenomenom which  has historically been the cause of  

massive spikes immediately  followed by devastating crashes.   

 THE FUTURE OF BITCOIN 

 

It would seem, with Bitcoin surging past  US$60,000 once again, that the King of Crypto  

is set to surpass its all time high. This  time, the key influences, many would argue,  

are things like El Salvador recently adopting  Bitcoin as legal tender – a move which many  

feel will push other countries to follow  suit, particularly in Central America. 

Perhaps more impactful is the emergence of  Bitcoin ETFs – or electronic traded funds –  

which have began popping up on various stock  exchanges around the world. Although the big  

game changer will likely be the inclusion of  an ETF on the NASDAQ which seems inevitable  

at this point. Indeed this has likely been a  big contributer to Bitcoin’s most recent bull  

market. BUT REMEMBER. History shows with every sky  high spike comes an equal and opposite crash.  

Whether the next one will come as a result  of a new Chinese crackdown on crypto,  

or a new economic reform mumbled by  the now barely lucent President Biden  

or the pod of Bitcoin whales sending  out the signal to sell! Sell! Sell!  

Just know that the drop is coming. The  trick is to get out ahead of it. [e] 

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across to the website – Kalkine media.com. This  is James Preston for Kalkine.