Bitcoin has seen its value drop from $ 64,000 in April to $ 36,000 today. While the big conference on cryptocurrency, bringing together stars and stock marketers was held on June 4 in Miami, virtual currency continued to tumble on trading platforms, raising concerns and questions especially on the part of those who joined the wave of buyers from the month of April with the ardent faith of the new converts. To those who hoped for the Promised Land on the strength of an angry tweet from Elon Musk, the disillusionment is great.
In two months, the gains of the first quarter of 2021 were erased, relaunching the debate on the volatility of this asset, which no one denies the qualifier of “money” because it does not fulfill in their eyes the three fundamental functions of money: to be a medium of exchange, a store of value and a unit of account. This means that the 50% fall in Bitcoin since April, 37% of which during the month of May alone (the worst underperformance of BTC since September 2011) strengthens the camp of the conservatives, ranging from the boss of the European Central Bank (ECB ), Christine Lagarde to… Warren Buffet, the most famous stock market investor in the world, who considered that investing in this currency was “probably rat poison squared”.
The Oracle of Omaha, which this year refrained from making any case of Bitcoin during the general meetings of its investment fund, Berkshire, had declared in 2020 this sentence loaded with meaning on CNBC: “I have no Bitcoin. I don’t own any cryptocurrency, I never will ”. Many conservative analysts believe that cryptocurrencies are unproductive assets. “They don’t reproduce, can’t send you a check, can’t do anything, and what you hope is someone else will come and pay you more money for them later, but then this person has a problem. “A characteristic that could however concern gold, an asset that has been sought after for 5,000 years less because of its use than because of its symbolic value or its rarity.
In short, will the classifieds unveiled during this global show succeed in thwarting the decision of the Chinese Central Bank not to accept cryptocurrencies as a means of payment and finally to return Bitcoin to the heights promised by many analysts? What we are at least sure of is that it would take much more than the assurances of the resident of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, namely that he will soon present a proposal on the use of bitcoin in public procurement, to contain the selling pressure. Elon Musk’s latest tweet, posted over the weekend titled, “#Bitcoin” with a heartbroken emoji and a reference to Linkin Park’s famous song “In The End,” sums up the market situation. The little post caused Bitcoin to lose 3.4% in a matter of hours. This will need to be put into perspective, however, because despite the rout in May, Bitcoin has risen by around 280% over the past year.
