Forget bitcoins, turn to real coins as an inflation hedge

As the recent bout of craziness in the cryptocurrency markets shows, bitcoin isn’t much of a hedge against anything. So as the price of all physical things starts to climb, a better bet might be real, collectable coins instead, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

Gold five-guinea coin
The gold five-guinea coin – a standard buy for collectors
(Image credit: © Hoberman Collection/Universal images Group via Getty Images)

If there was only one newspaper and it was only published once a decade, what would the headline be?

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.