Dear Reader

Welcome to your Bitcoin and Global Finance Newsletter for week ending 27th May 2022!

Things have been rough recently for pretty much everyone everywhere – and this week has probably been one of the worst so far this year.

The brutal school shooting in Texas reignited the inevitable arguments about rights versus children’s lives in America while the rest of the world watches in bewilderment.

I am actually old enough to remember the Dunblane and Hungerford shootings in the UK in the 1980s that led to the effective outlawing of private gun ownership here in the UK. I recall my dad surrendering his Colt 45 revolver and Tommy submachine gun in the subsequent weapons amnesty period. Although both were deactivated, it was simply not worth keeping them – and this turned out to be the right move. These days those weapons would have given the owner a mandatory five year minimum sentence.

Of course, that doesn’t stop a Brit like me being amazed at, and even seduced by, the sight of stacks of high powered weapons available for general sale to anyone over 21 in a store, like this one I visited last month in Texas.

And perhaps that’s the problem. If someone like me, who is entirely against private gun ownership, still finds myself wanting to go to a gun shop as a sort of “when in Rome” tourist activity like visiting a museum, how much stronger must that pull be for locals for whom ownership is normalized? It’s something that actually kept me awake the other night.

The acquisition of guns, of course, continues to be the main theme of President Zelenskyy’s addresses to various NATO countries via speeches that have increased in strength and tone in direct relation to the amount of territory the Russians are gaining.

That progress is slow and expensive in economic and human terms, but the knock on effect of the war is also starting to seriously bite on food supply chains, adding to inflationary pressures as well as threatening a global humanitarian crisis.

Very magnanimously, Russia has offered to allow access by sea to the grain sitting in storage silos but only if sanctions against the country are lifted. This seems odd because Putin has been maintaining that they’re doing fine with them in place. I’m not so sure that’s true.

In any case, markets continue to pummeled across all sectors and while Bitcoin struggles with support, spare a thought for those in alt coins. There has been a clear rotation from those to Bitcoin and Bitcoin dominance has grown steadily in recent weeks, now standing at 46 per cent as of this morning.

Nevertheless, the lower Bitcoin price has clearly encouraged some less profitable miners to switch off their machines and soften the hashrate resulting in a significant downward adjustment of well over four per cent this week. It looks like the next adjustment may also go the same way.

Of course, the network remains incredibly robust and while we hunker down and wait out the bad times, we should remind ourselves that not only is this the best time to build, what we’re doing with Bitcoin really can help fix some of these problems and help some of the most affected people.

And that’s an incredibly uplifting thought.

Have a great weekend!

Jason

PS There will be no newsletter next week as it's a bank holiday. If you're celebrating the Platinum Jubilee, enjoy!