And yet, for the last few months, one has stayed on the sidelines. In the middle of June you could have bought bitcoin for slightly over $20,000 (£17,273). And if you want one today, it will still cost you slightly more than $20,000. Along the way, it spiked up to $24,000 briefly, then down to $18,000. But for six months the chart has been basically flat.
For the main cryptocurrency that is quite a change. For the 11 years it has been around, Bitcoin has always been in the middle of some form of mania. In 2011, it rose from $2 to $32 in frenzied trading, then fell back to a single cent. In April 2013, it soared again, rising to $260, before crashing back down to $50. In 2017, it went on an epic bull run, soaring all the way up to $20,000, then collapsing again, settling below $12,000, and remaining in the doldrums for most of 2018.
And then of course it went on another epic bull run through 2021, with the likes of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, putting a huge chunk of Tesla’s assets into cryptocurrencies, before it collapsed all over again. Each time around, the price booms, then busts, and then the whole cycle starts all over again. There was one thing that Bitcoin didn’t do. Stability. Until now that is.
The same is true of the other main cryptos. Ethereum has barely moved over the last six months (it was trading at $1,400 in June and $1,500 now). Neither has Litecoin ($55 in June, and $54 now). With the sole exception of Dogecoin, which sparked to life last week as its main backer Elon Musk took control of Twitter, all of the cryptos have become very stable.
Indeed, this month Bitcoin was less volatile than either the S&P 500 or the Nasdaq.
