This past week has seen a dramatic turn-around right across the board in the crypto-currency space. Literally billions of dollars have been slashed off the market value of many of the currencies and the once darlings of the media have quickly become pariahs.

I watched a financial commentator on the local news speaking almost with glee on the dramatic fall from grace of Bitcoin and how cryptocurrencies were completely crazy. He then flashed up a few charts that reinforced his point that cryptocurrency investors were obviously bonkers.

I was chatting with my brother the other day and like the news commentator he also missed the single defining point about cryptocurrencies…..and that is, not all of them are created equal. Unlike fiat money which is essentially the same no matter whether its dollars, pounds, euros or whatever, cryptocurrencies can often have a business model that is attempting to solve a real-world problem.

I've received quite a lot of feedback on my previous article on Bitcoin and rather than reply to them I thought it would be best to write a follow-up article. Most of the comments I've received mistakenly construed the fact that I was drinking the Bitcoin Kool-aid and that we should all buy, buy and buy some more before it's too late.


Bitcoin, like fiat currency, at its core is a concept. If enough people buy into the concept, then it has value. What I was commenting in my previous article is not whether you should buy or not but whether the Bitcoin was going to go up. All the indicators from volume of transactions (both monetarily and value) are still rapidly going heading north which suggests a growing demand for essentially a dwindling supply.

The reduction is supply is largely due to people holding their coins in the belief the price will continue to rise. Why sell today when you can sell tomorrow for $1,000 more.

Until the "currency" stabalises the dream of Bitcoin being used to buy a cup of coffee will remain just that, a dream. The wild hourly swings mean Bitcoin is largely driven by speculation.....the question is when will the speculation tap out…..as it must.

I’ve been reading a lot about the various cryptocurrencies and trying to dig through the misinformation to get to the bedrock of what’s going on. The first thing I’d like to say is cryptocurrencies are a complete game changer for the world financial system…..ignoring them may well be detrimental to your business.

For those of you wondering….at its simplest level the blockchain operates in a similar fashion to the DNS that most domain investors are familiar with. There are additional levels of cryptography added (sort of like DNSSEC) to ensure transactions are legitimate but what it all boils down to is a ledger of transactions held by a distributed computer network.