Lockdown easing dawns on Bitcoin’s revolution
It is said that the darkest hour is just before the dawn, but if you look at it another way, the darkest hour is probably a long time before that, probably just after dusk with all that night ahead.
So it may be with lockdown UK as a depressed, imprisoned, insomniac and profoundly changed species can go back to the shops again. Whether it’s a hairdresser, a bookshop or even a charity shop, the social bait to be kind-of human again awaits.
So, this weekend may be odd after months of isolation. Did the worst pass in the early days after Boxing Day or will tomorrow and Sunday be the longest days?
Has the night passed forever or will let-loose variants and pathogens put us back in our places before long? Is this just a window out of the prison or have we blown the bloody doors off?
Nobody knows, but may your God be with you, let there be light after darkness. However, day or night, one thing is certain over these long weeks and that is the rampant consolidation of crypto across Time.
On Boxing Day, the Bitcoin price was sitting around $26,000 and the oft-prophesied bull market has since continued to surge and, while the price is important, it’s all the other things that have happened under UK lockdown that matter the most.
Think of any aspect of life, even the arts, from traditional to modern finance, crypto has been as omnipresent as a pandemic, seeping into all parts of life and becoming grown-up. It’s almost as if crypto put away its childish things while we hibernated and is now an adult.
While there were many who were of the bull market persuasion, there were many more who did not see the rise of NFTs and the announcements that came thick and fast from traditional financial institutions that Bitcoin was, after all, something of value.
Even recently it has been the charity sector that has benefited from the crypto factor such as Binance’s $1 million donation to UNICEF for the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, 24 hours after Huobi donated a similar amount to UNICEF to create ‘blockchain technology innovations’.
Over these 11 years since the first blockchain and all the other movements and changes of crypto adoption and acceptance, it may be that the first few months of 2021 were the most revolutionary of all.
Nothing lasts forever, though, as today’s death of Prince Philip illustrates.
It may be that everything will go pear-shaped in 2021 and crypto markets will crash and burn, lockdown-end will see people back at work and not sitting at home trading. It may all collapse and the crypto era may be seen as a crease in the universe, but that’s very unlikely.
What is more liable to happen is that prices and interest will rise across the crypto spectrum, there will be no dark hours, be that early in the morning or late in the night. It will be rainbows and rainbows everywhere.
As we tiptoe back to normal life, the previous tiptoe through the crypto has already turned into a stomp.
From twilight to dawn, from December to April, time is having its way with us as we do our best to understand about the past, present and future.
Same as it ever was… sleep well this weekend.
Monty Munford is a world-famous tech journalist and runs his own podcast https://blockspeak.io and is the Co-Founder of DeFi startup Senius.
He WAS a keynote speaker/emcee/moderator/interviewer at prestigious events around the world until Covid destroyed his conference speaking career… until 2023. He has spoken at more than 200 global events.
He was previously a weekly tech columnist for Forbes in New York, the Telegraph in the UK and continues to write regularly for the BBC, The Economist, The FT and… City PM.