What a week.
First, a wrap of the state of trading. As can be seen from the adjacent low-resolution screen-shoot, Bitcoin is holding well above R80,000 on this fine Friday morning.
Okay, this was not unrelated to Malusi Gigaba announcing to the world that South Africa has the fiduciary status of a chronic gambler at an ATM at Carnival City at 5am on a Monday morning. Ratings agencies announced that they were feeling a little queasy and the rand tanked against the dollar and, because Bitcoin is dollar-priced, ZA holdings took on a healthy hue.
PS: Government's PR agency released this picture of him pulling up his socks (a fiendishly clever visual pun) shortly before the speech. Incidentally, anyone know anything about that watch? I'm guessing 5 Bitcoin.
By the way, this image confirms that Gigaba was pulling his socks up exactly 29 minutes before the address, give or take an EFF heckling session. Which was leaving it late, in my opinion.
More to the point, Bitcoin seems to be a rand hedge, albeit a volatile one as the below graph of three hours of trading this morning (Friday) shows.
The trick appears to be to play the rand's swings against Bitcoin's roundabouts to max out the gains? Being of little trading expertise, I would never try that myself, but there are trading operations that will do this for you. For a fee of course.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin has taken another step towards respectability with Britain saying there's little risk of it being used to finance terrorism or for money laundering. This from Coindesk:
The UK government's economic and finance ministry has released a new policy document stating that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin pose "low risk" for terrorist financing.
According to the HM Treasury paper on money laundering and terrorist financing risks in the UK, the country's National Crime Agency (NCA) also deemed that the risks of digital currency use in money laundering is "relatively low". However, it went on, cryptocurrencies are used to "launder low amounts at high volume".
And now for an analogy. Bitcoin is now probably where self-driving cars were in 2001. Watch this video to see where this tech started out in robot wars and read this excellent long-form (warning: more than 140 characters) account of the origin of self-driving technology on Verge.
One more thing: Don't take investment advice from this column. I don't.
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