Ep. 44 – Unpacking Bitcoin Featuring Danny Masters from CoinShares

In a year that witnessed the price of oil diving from $65 to below –$40 per barrel, we have also seen the price of bitcoin advance from $3,915 in March to a new all-time high above $28,365 this week. A host of extraordinary factors contributed to these outcomes. Our sense is the value drivers in digital assets remain far more mysterious for most observers.

To help unpack what is going on in bitcoin and why, we are fortunate this week to be able to draw on the expertise of Daniel Masters. Danny is the Executive Chairman of CoinShares, a pioneering firm in digital asset management. CoinShares launched the world’s first regulated bitcoin investment fund in 2014, offered the world’s first bitcoin-based securities on a regulated exchange in 2015, and regularly publishes white papers on the digital asset ecosystem to help educate the public.

In this fascinating conversation, Danny explains why digital assets are better thought of as networks and utilities, rather than as mere ‘digital gold’. He elaborates on how these tools are presently achieving a new level of maturity and what that evolution holds for the future of payment systems and physical logistics worldwide.

Mr. Masters is no stranger to the land of commodities. Earlier in his career, Danny traded oil for Shell and Solomon Brothers and served as Global Head of Energy Trading at Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, now J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

Colin Fenton sets the table with some charts that situate bitcoin’s valuation relative to technical signals and the trillions of dollars in new debt that have been deployed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thank you for watching this video, COBT’s final offering for 2020. As this challenging and historic year draws to a close, we wish everyone across the world a happy and healthy 2021!