The room heaved a few sighs when they heard the price of the first purchase ever made with a cryptocurrency: 10,000 bitcoins for… two pizzas. At the time, in 2010, a token was valued at $0.004. On Friday, it traded at around $21,600. So the order would be worth $216 million now. The public attended the broadcast of the documentary The Bitcoin Revolution, broadcast at the Surfin’Bitcoin show which is held until Saturday in Biarritz. Enough to make curious people who come to this free session want to convert (“red-loot”, says the community).
However “Bitcoin is an extremely risky asset”warns Yves Choueifaty, president and founder of the management company Tobam, which created the first fund invested in cryptocurrency. “Risk should decide the size of the investment, but it’s the investment thesis that you have to look at to know whether to go for it. » And he summarizes that of Tobam: “ Bitcoin has the fundamental and empirical characteristics that could potentially make it a standard of value. »
Like gold, it’s a rare asset, but it’s capped at 21 million tokens, while the precious metal continues to be mined. He admits, however, that if that fails, bitcoin “could drop to zero”but “If he succeeds in being a stallion, he will be valued well over a million dollars”. At what deadline? He does not say so, and it is still a mere hypothesis. But the vast majority of speakers at Surfin’Bitcoin (this is also why they come) think that the first of the cryptos still has resources, despite the recent fall in the price. Since its record, in November 2021, at 69,000 dollars, its price has plummeted by almost 70%.
Four-year cycles
“Bitcoin price responds to four-year cycles”notes Claire Balva, blockchain director at KPMG, without making any predictions. “This is because of the halvings that occur around this frequency. » The production of bitcoins is indeed decreasing with each halving, as planned in the protocol, which restricts the supply over time to support the value: from 50 tokens every ten minutes originally, to 6.25 since the last halving, in 2020. The next one is scheduled for 2024.
Asset manager Filip Karadordevic is very optimistic – his talk was simply titled “Why I’m a bitcoin bull”. He castigates the ” violence “ central banks and states that “The bond market is no longer reassuring”. He believes that when people educate themselves a bit in macroeconomics, they necessarily come to cryptocurrency.
Round table “The trap of trading and the fantasy of 1,000%” with Owen Simonin, Rogzy, Nicolas Chéron, Emilien Dutang and Grégory Raymond.
| Photo credits: RD / INVESTIR
Emilien Dutang, a well-known self-employed trader, thinks it is likely that the price bottomed out when it dipped below $18,000 in June. “It can still go down, but I don’t see it below $15,000-17,000”, he confides. Emilien Dutang considers that the strongest variations of previous bubbles are good indicators. In 2017-2018 bitcoin lost up to 80%. We are not far from it, but he notices something else: “The more time passes, the more the multipliers up or down reduce. » Which leads him to conclude that “the price is currently attractive for a five-year investment”.
Over the next six months, influencer and entrepreneur Owen Simonin considers that there is “no visibility”. Without being categorical, he anticipates “a stagnation or even a decompression”. But, he warns: “The job of trader is clearly full-time” and therefore dissuades neophytes from embarking on short-term investment.