This past week I went to the BTC Prague event, which is a Bitcoin conference held in Prague, Czech Republic. The event had many companies from the field showcasing their products and big Bitcoin people like Michael Saylor and Jack Mallers to name a few and the great legend Adam Back who is one of the few known and living individuals that has traded e-mails with Satoshi Nakamoto.
Since this was a European event, most of the attendees were from Europe, and I met a few other participants from the USA, and some small groups from South America. One of the questions that was the main conversation starter was of course: “How and when did you get into Bitcoin?”.
For me the answer for how: “I came from a country where we had hyperinflation during my childhood and two figures inflation during my adult life so when I heard about a deflationary asset, I became interested in it immediately.” For when: “In the bull run of 2017 I entered at the top (somewhere around 17k USD), when it felt like 70%, I felt awful and thought it was a scam but thought that if there were so many smart minds involved in this, that I had to at least study the technology even if not involving money in it.
Anyways, one thing that very surprising for me was that most of the people that I spoke with had entered later, during the COVID-19 crisis and the irresponsible governmental spendings at the time additional to the forced lowering of interest rates. This was the first time European folks on their 30s and 40s had heard about inflation and the corrosive power of governments and the fiat currencies.
Reflecting on these conversations, it came to my mind a few memories from my past. In Brazil, we always compared how volatile our currency is, in relation to the US dollar. We had an economic plan in 1994, called plano Real, which triggered to end our country’s hyperinflation and it worked – so far. In the beginning each real was worth a dollar, so 1 = 1 exchange. Currently we are on a 5.6 real to a dollar which is not great, but it is not awful compared to currencies such as the Argentinian peso or the Turkish lira.
I remember talking with my father when I was a teenager, complaining that the US dollar was too high on the – at the moment – 2 reais to a dollar. And my father told me: “The dollar is not expensive, if you add inflation since 1994, it is much over 100%, therefore, the price of how many dollars you can buy with 1 real, is under the inflation rates of the country.
That did not make any sense to me at the time, however, now I understand it clearly. Inflation ALWAYS counts and has always to be part of the math. With this and the conclusion for this whole story, are we really hitting the all-time high for Bitcoin in 2024 if we add inflation since the last all-time high in 2021?
The answer is no, there is a little more to run to get there. The last all time high was on March 13, 2024 - 75,857.44. For the Bitcoin buyers and hodlers, this is great news, since we have not reached the ATH levels yet! Keep stacking folks! You do not sell your sats!