As the Christmas and New Year holidays of 2021 approach to yet another crazy year in the digital currency space, it has become quite clear to me how the space must mature to establish true economic legitimacy in the global economy.
In the current world of .jpeg NFTs, re-branded ICOs, promises of soon and non-existent enterprise and government adoption (other than institutions that Bitcoin was supposed to deprecate adopting it in order to pump the price), the true goal of P2P commerce seems to be forgotten.
This is primarily because the main attraction of cryptocurrency is ‘Number go up’—the concept that speculators should be able to pick any coin and have greater than 100% gains within a matter of days.
Never mind that before 2015, a reasonable return for a year in the traditional markets was expected between 4-7%—a stark contrast to how those in crypto want crazy returns, and they want them now!
As the controlled demolition of the world’s economy continues by governments in response to yet another virus variant, those with less are struggling to find returns to keep up with the resultant inflation of their country’s actions. ‘Investing’ in cryptocurrency has been an answer to some to fight said inflation—and I write some because we all know that people only post their W’s online, not their L’s.
Thus the incentive has been to ‘ape-in’ to that new monkey jpeg, or a coin promising to achieve more than any company in the S&P 500, or the coin that claims to be ‘government-friendly’ and ‘enterprise ready’ despite zero evidence of adoption by those entities to date.
Of course, the response to this will be ‘soon.’ Soon that NFT’s secondary market’s floor price will be hundreds, if not thousands—no—millions of dollars! Soon that token you bought will go to the moon. Soon enterprises will adopt Bitcoin in some meaningful way, that is not just an IOUs on their internal ledger. Soon governments will crack-down on allegedly the largest counterfeiting operation in U.S. history, and the increasingly rogue nature of <insert food here>swaps.
All these imply something outside of the individual’s control occurring that suddenly makes them wealthy overnight. Furthermore, these concepts destroy the original premise of Bitcoin, which was peer-to-peer, digital cash. Because the concepts highlighted rely on how these digital ‘assets’ are priced in the current financial system, they have a dependency on that system’s unit of account—fiat currency.
If Bitcoin is successful because its fiat price is high, then Bitcoin is a failure if its price is low.
We know this is not true because the network was developed and continues to function outside of the government and banking system.
This is why its early pioneers are all now government and establishment cheerleaders instead of free market advocates. They are so afraid of the government cracking down on Tether and regulating the digital currency markets that, to preserve their high prices that they not only accept but protect a centrally planned digital pet rock with high fees that can only execute 7 transactions per second.
In terms of the original goal of Bitcoin, hardly anything has been achieved. Yes, Bitcoin has the highest returns of any asset in human history. What has been built with it?
If true commerce had been developed using Bitcoin as cash, there would be nothing to fear from governments. Yet, as government continues to capture the incumbent financial institutions (as well as crypto exchanges) with requirements to dox their customers, require 1099 forms, and report transactions over certain thresholds we have these people that have supposedly obtained financial freedom from Bitcoin begging the government to ‘please stop!’ instead of doubling down on their constitutional rights and leveraging the wealth this system has given them to fight back.
BITSQUAD: it's time to call your State Senators. Call and leave a message saying you support the Lummis-Wyden digital asset amendment in the Infrastructure Bill.
This is time-sensitive and we need the support for crypto in the Senate now!https://t.co/Y5xzxeJFQr
— Ben Armstrong (@Bitboy_Crypto) August 6, 2021
The reality is that if Bitcoin is used as cash across the world, then these regulatory actions do not seem so dire, perhaps even futile. But to those who have been enriched by this asset it is so very clear that they have lost the plot in terms of what this system was meant to achieve.
Watch: Dr. Craig Wright’s presentation at CoinGeek New York, Set in Stone: What is a Commodity?
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