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How Bitcoin has been reaching all-time highs against several currencies including the Lebanese pound, Turkish lira, Argentine peso, Egyptian pound, Pakistani rupee, and Nigerian naira
The world is still waiting for Bitcoin to reach a new ATH against the US dollar, but we’re still far from the $69K that Bitcoin reached in November 2021. The USD is the current reserve currency of the world, and because of that fact, most people track Bitcoin’s price against it. There are many other currencies, however. And, believe it or not, some of them are crashing even harder than the US dollar. That’s causing Bitcoin to experience ATHs against them, a counterintuitive effect that’s worth an article.
Everything tends to zero against Bitcoin and, all in all, 2023 was a great year for the network. It resisted a major crash to less than $17K and ended the year around $42K, which is equivalent to a 147% growth. According to Pantera Capital, this means that BTC as an asset outperformed every tech company except Meta, which grew 172% in 2023. In any case, going back to Bitcoin, the price is still 39% behind the already-mentioned ATH.
Tides are high and inflation is rampant all over the world. It’s Bitcoin time. When it crashed, critics piled on the only relevant cryptocurrency, arguing that the turn of the tide meant that BTC couldn’t be considered a store of value because of its volatility. A few months later and here we are again. Bitcoin is slowly gaining legitimacy and breaking records worldwide.
In December, the legendary Tahinis, the original Bitcoin restaurant, brought light to the ATH situation.
“A combined population of 725 MILLION people. Try to convince them Bitcoin is not useful,” Tahini claimed before dropping the mic. Let’s go through each case to see what we uncover.
In Lebanon’s recent past, their pound has gone through two high-caliber devaluations. The first one was during the civil war, which was between 1975 and 1990. The second one is recent, we could place it between 2019 and 2020, when Lebanon defaulted on its debt for the first time in history. The reasons are many and the story is complicated, but we could summarize it in three words: rampant money printing.
Once upon a time, Lebanon was known as the Switzerland of the Middle East. Nowadays, according to the UN, three out of four Lebanese live under the poverty threshold. Not only that, Reuters reports that “the banking system has been largely paralyzed since the start of the financial crisis that has frozen depositors out of their savings and sunk the Lebanese pound by 98% since 2019.” Since then, the government devalued the Pound by 90%, breaking an “official rate that has remained unchanged for 25 years.” However, “The shift from the old rate of 1,507 to 15,000 is still far off the parallel market, where the pound was changing hands at around 57,000 per dollar on Tuesday.”
That’s an ideal scenario for Bitcoin adoption. The Lebanese need a strong currency that can hold value over time, and there’s only one candidate for the job. Not only that, the diaspora sends $6B in remittances every year. Imagine how much can they save by cutting out banking intermediaries and sending transactions straight to their families.
On January 7th, 2024, the BTCLBP rate reached an ATH of 706,751,037. At the time of writing, the rate is 645,790,207 Lebanese pounds per Bitcoin.
Turkey hosts the fourth-largest crypto market in the world. However, in 2021, the country’s central bank issued the “Regulation on Non-Usage of Crypto Assets in Payments” and started working on its own CBDC. As it turned out, the central bank didn’t have authority to ban Bitcoin as a medium of exchange, and whitin its regulations, there wasn’t an enforceable prohibition or penalty for people willing to acept it as payment.
Also in 2021, The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) “placed the country on its so-called grey list of countries at risk of money laundering and other financial crimes.” According to Reuters, “Turkey's digital currency boom was fuelled by years of double-digit inflation, which hit 85% last year and was at 61% last month, and a more than 80% drop in the lira versus the dollar over five years.”
A story as old as time. A story that screams Bitcoin adoption. On January 8th, 2024, the BTCTRY rate reached an ATH of 1,400,407. At the time of writing, the Bitcoin/ Turkish Lira rate is 1,314,296.
Before Milei entered the picture, Argentina was suffering one of the continent’s biggest economic crises. According to the government’s numbers, annual inflation was at 143%. After Milei took over, he devalued the official peso from 400 to 800 per dollar - getting it closer to the blue market unofficial rate - and told everyone to prepare for austerity because there was no money. Will Milei’s economic plan work? The jury is still out on that one.
We at Blink already analyzed the case and theorized about what it could mean to Bitcoin, so we’re going straight to the ATH numbers. On January 8th, the BTCARS rate reached an ATH of 38,401,623. At the time of writing, the Bitcoin/ Argentinian Peso rate is 35,599,090
On January 8th, the BTCEGP rate reached an ATH of 1,452,138. At the time of writing, the Bitcoin/ Egyptian Pound rate is 1,330,670.
On January 8th, the BTCPKR rate reached an ATH of 13,268,839. At the time of writing, the Bitcoin/ Pakistani Rupee rate is 11,925,830
Nigeria is the biggest economy in all of Africa, and its story might sound familiar. At the beginning of 2021, the Nigerian government prohibited banks from doing business with cryptocurrency exchanges. As usual, that didn’t work because the local currency was melting and people needed alternatives. In 2023, the Nigerian Finance Act tried to simplify everything by just charging a 10% tax on all crypto earnings. Will this new plan work? The jury is still out on this one too.
That doesn’t stop Bitcoin, though. The only relevant cryptocurrency keeps breaking records worldwide, and Nigeria is no exception. On January 29th, the BTCNGN rate reached an ATH of 61,446,028. At the time of writing, the Bitcoin/ Nigerian Naira rate is 53,890,020.
Which currency is next? Believe it or not, Bitcoin is nearing a new ATH against the Swedish Kronas!
As the tweet says, “Everything goes to 0 against Bitcoin!” It’s just a matter of time.
