Making money: what the experts think

Tulip warning

Bad news if you work for J.P. Morgan and have a penchant for trading bitcoins, said the Daily Mail. The Wall Street bank’s boss, Jamie Dimon, is so down on the digital currency that he has threatened to fire anyone trading it “in a second”. Dimon said that the rise of bitcoin – which has jumped in price from just over $2 a unit in 2011 to a high just below $5,000 at the start of September – reminded him of “tulip mania” in 17th century Holland, when speculators made, and then lost, huge fortunes bidding up the price of bulbs. The price could shoot to $20,000, said Dimon, “but it will eventually blow up. I am just shocked that anyone can’t see it for what it is.”

China calls a halt

The bitcoin price fell by 10% after Dimon said it was a “fraud” that only drug dealers, murderers and North Koreans should buy, said Rupert Neate in The Guardian. But a Chinese crackdown has hit much harder still: the price plunged below $3,000 this week “after Beijing ordered cryptocurrency exchanges to stop trading” on fears that the bitcoin bubble “could spark wider financial problems”. Is this a lethal blow? Don’t bank on it, said James Mackintosh in The Wall Street Journal. “After all, behind every bubble is a good idea bursting to get out.” But although there’s certainly demand for “a digital currency without borders”, bitcoin is “so badly designed” that it will never be up to the task. “Is a single coin worth $500,000, $5,000, $500 or $0? I’m inclined to side with Dimon and say $0.”

Green giant

“What better time to unveil a merger between two environmentally focused fund managers than at the start of Climate Week,” asked Antony Currie on Reuters Breakingviews. But there are other reasons Aim-listed Impax’s $52.5m buyout of the US firm Pax World seems “savvy”. The sector, after all, “has the wind at its back”. Rising temperatures, and a one-third increase in the planet’s population by 2050, will require “trillions of dollars of investment in everything from alternative power sources to water and agricultural efficiency” – all grist to the mill for this combined duo, which will have $13bn under management. The only question is whether that figure “is big enough” to capitalise on all the action in the sector.