Why we should stop comparing BTC to USD and start counting in Euros
I'm Dutch, which means I use euros to pay for day to day goods. So do inhabitants of 19 other EU countries and approximately 340 million people. At the time of writing 1 euro exchanges to almost 1,20 U.S. dollars which is quite a price gap, especially if you look at the bitcoin price.
Monday September 18, 20:40 (8:40 PM) CET:
1 BTC ~ EUR 3391,77
1 BTC ~ USD 4050,01
(source: Bitcoinaverage.com)
I've been looking at bitcoin price charts for quite a few years now, mainly to discover that 'I should have…', but okay. It always made me wonder: why do Dutch news media use dollars when it comes to bitcoin?
Mainstream Media
Whenever something more extreme happens in Bitcoin land — the well known ups and downs — mainstream media will write about it. Heck, even your 92 year old neighbour talks about it these days.
"Hey, have you heard? This Bitcoin thing is now worth 4000 dollar!" (neighbour)
"$1275" (headline Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, March 4 2017)
"$4880 record…" (De Telegraaf, September 16)
But other news media tend to do even worse:
"Bitcoin value under 3,000 euro … The bitcoin recorded more than 5,000 euros in early September, the coin is in a free fall since Thursday." (Nederlands Dagblad, September 16)
Eh, 5,000 euros? Haven't seen that. A fat 4,000. Yes, but… it was close to 5k in dollars almost two weeks ago. So the editor for that final piece was somewhat lost. Why?
Why not just in Euro?
It's so simple, to me. I don't do well calculating in dollars. They're sometimes almost euro's (like December 2016: EUR/USD ~1/1.04) but not anymore. Not even close.
So, I propose: stop using $ signs for translating bitcoin prices into 'normal' money for laymen. Just use, unless you're not in the EU, Euro's. I am aware that BTC-USD trade is almost 8 times larger than BTC-EUR, but after price correction it's so close, it makes no sense except for publications on finance and economy.
Januari 1, 2017: 1 BTC ~ 961 USD | 1 BTC ~ 914 EUR
September 18: 1 BTC ~ 4,000 USD | 1 BTC ~ 3,400 EUR
Percentage: 316 % | 271 %
But if you correct dollars to euros (the first column of the schedule above):
Januari 1: 1 BTC ~ 913 EUR (correction: 1,04 USD = 1 EUR)
September 18: 1 BTC ~ 3352 EUR (correction: 1,19 USD = 1 EUR)
Percentage: 266 %
Obviously: the charts and price indexes I used (World Coin Index and XE) are probably too rough for a precise comparison, but it shows that it makes no sense to use USD in regular news coverage within Europe.
I pressed 'Publish' and a comprehensive study on the use of cryptocurrency has just been published by Cambridge University stating that 65 percent of exchanges uses USD and 49 percent supports EUR.
