Is the bitcoin bubble about to burst?

You spend them in the same way you would spend other currencies. Contrary to perception, bitcoins are traceable — you can see which internet addresses every bitcoin has been at — but the owners’ names are encrypted. As of 2015, 100,000 vendors, including The Pembury Tavern in Hackney and Nincomsoup café in Old Street station, accepted bitcoin as payment. There’s even a church in Gospel Oak that accepts it for its collection. It is now so mainstream that a £1.65 million Peckham townhouse has just become the first UK property that can be bought using the digital currency, and there are ‘bitcoin ATMs’ (including one in the Londis on King’s Road).

The irony of the debate over a bubble is that bitcoin was born just six weeks after Lehman Brothers went bust, as people searched for an alternative to the existing monetary system. It had its roots in the Julian Assange-backed ‘cypherpunks’ movement of the Nineties, in which activists argued the internet would create a new world outside the nation state. The conversation had died down until the financial crisis resurrected it. The first transaction came in 2010, when computer programmer Laszlo Hanyecz persuaded someone to accept 10,000 bitcoins he’d ‘mined’ in exchange for two pizzas. It came to be embraced by libertarians as a way, like gold, to store wealth. Silicon Valley then joined the bitcoin crypto-rush, interested both in the technology and its potential as a way to raise cash.

Bitcoin has, however, been hit by crisis and scandal. It first entered mainstream consciousness as the currency of the Silk Road, the online black market where drugs were sold. Two major bitcoin names have also ended up in court. Charlie Shrem, who set up Bitinstant (in which the Winklevoss twins invested), went to prison after being convicted of aiding and abetting an unlicensed money transmitting business, a charge related to the Silk Road. Meanwhile, Mark Karpelès, former head of what was once the world’s biggest bitcoin exchange, Mt Gox, was charged in Tokyo with embezzlement and data manipulation after Mt Gox collapsed in 2014.

‘I reject the idea that [cryptocurrencies] are only used by criminals and terrorists,’ says Arthur Hayes, the co-founder of BitMEX, a bitcoin derivatives exchange based in Hong Kong. ‘The real currencies that finance terrorism and crime are the dollar and the euro. The cryptocurrency movement will only expand. It is a digital currency version of “I don’t trust the government”; the analogue version being gold.’

It has emerged that even JP Morgan has routed customer orders for bitcoin-related instruments, although the bank does not take positions on this with its own cash. Emad Mostaque, co-chief investment officer at hedge fund Capricorn Fund Managers in Mayfair, says, ‘I can bet you JP Morgan’s wealth customers are asking, “Why don’t I have bitcoin?” It doesn’t move with other assets, so it’s a good hedge.’ Mostaque adds that savers can even buy bitcoin in their ISA: ‘If you could put one per cent of your ISA in it, and it can return 10 times that or it can collapse, what would you do?’

The main worry about bitcoin, Mostaque explains, is initial coin offerings, the latest financial fad. ICOs are where ‘tokens’ in a new digital currency that promise future goods and services are sold as a way for a company to raise cash. This is where it starts to look like a bubble. Ethereum is a cryptocurrency, but also a platform for apps, allowing developers to sell a stake in the app by issuing tokens with ICOs. In June, one raised $30,000 in half an hour; purchasers were buying a token called ‘F***’ (described as ‘a social cryptocurrency that aims to help everyone around the world give a F***’). There’s even a prostitution cryptocurrency, Lust, for sex workers and their customers.

‘ICOs are like when companies floated in 1999 with a website address and a smile,’ says one Square Mile cynic. ‘Same thing, different way to throw your money away. People are basically selling air.’ Scammers can use blockchain technology to create ICOs that perhaps look promising but are essentially flimflam. More than £1.3 billion has been raised in ICOs this year. Where is the money coming from? Analysts say it is often from those who bought bitcoin on the cheap some years ago and are now millionaires. The UK watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority, warned that anyone thinking of buying coins in an ICO should only do so if they are prepared to lose everything. One banker likened it to the South Sea Bubble of the 1700s, where a company bought up the rights to trade in the South Seas, then sold shares in its company which eventually become worthless.

There are echoes of other crises too. In 1929, millionaire Joe Kennedy sold his stocks after a shoe-shiner gave him share tips, the theory being that by the time the boy on the street is telling you what to buy, values have become inflated. The Wall Street crash followed. ‘This time, it’s bankers hearing their teenage nephew has bought bitcoin,’ says that same sceptic.

So what’s the problem with bitcoin? ‘The main issue is that established currencies have a legal footing in each country whereas bitcoin doesn’t,’ says a banker who asked not to be named. ‘Governments can clamp down on trading in it, like in China, saying it is circumventing capital controls.’

Governments have reason to fear bitcoin. It removes the role of government as the central issuer of money — and guarantor that money is real. As another banker notes: ‘There’s a huge amount of power in controlling the money supply, such as using quantitative easing to pump cash into the economy. All the Western economies are based around an ever-increasing money supply. Bitcoin has a fixed supply of currency — that hasn’t ended well in the past, like when Britain came off the gold standard in the 1930s. If a government can’t print more money, it can’t run a budget deficit.’ As the founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty probably didn’t actually say: ‘Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.’ This is why China — where most of the biggest bitcoin miners are — has cracked down heavily on cryptocurrencies. ‘China is afraid of anything it can’t control,’ Hayes explains. ‘But it can’t stop people using bitcoin — you can’t shut off the internet.’

Bitcoin’s fans argue it will have the most profound uses in countries where the money system is broken, such as in Zimbabwe and Venezuela. It could also benefit the 2.5 billion adults who don’t have bank accounts, and enable immigrants to send remittances home more cheaply than services like Western Union do. As such, fans believe bitcoin could help create a more equal world. ‘In the region we work in — emerging economies — banks don’t provide services for the majority,’ says Hayes. ‘Bitcoin allows people to invest, to participate in a global phenomenon.’

When the central bank of Cyprus seized savings, citizens downloaded bitcoin apps on their phones. Others believe Brexit could make bitcoin take off in Britain — although it’s probably too expensive to trade (there’s an $8 transaction fee, so you’re not using it to buy a Starbucks mocha). Still, the technology is likely to become more sophisticated, ironing out flaws and making a future cryptocurrency viable — a bitcoin 2.0. If there is a crash, something sustainable could emerge from the wreckage.

That could still be used for nefarious purposes. In Lionel Shriver’s most recent novel, The Mandibles, she envisaged a dystopian future in which the US experiences hyperinflation due to a newly created international reserve cryptocurrency.

In the shorter term, if a crash is coming, ordinary investors who see bitcoin as a sure bet could be the worst burnt. It is the old Square Mile cliché: ‘caveat emptor’. Or as one investor puts it: ‘Bitcoin is like Catholic sex — you need to know when to pull out.’