Crypto currencies are all the rage now and got another fresh boost the other day from Elon Musk, who decided to dump a bunch of money into buying Bit Coins.
As all my 1000’s of fervently loyal readers know, I like to take the long view on things. The fact that I’ve reached dodderhood and not likely to see my views come to fruition does nothing to dampen this tendency, and so, here’s how I see the future of crypto money: It’s happening.
Our money has been tending away from actual cash ever since credit cards were invented by Chevron Gasoline. You don’t have to have much money in the bank. If you have sufficient credit to own a credit card with, say, a $10,000 limit, you can buy $10,000 of stuff and pay it off over time using your smart phone to make payments based on your weekly paycheck that’s deposited automatically into your bank account, electronically, by your employer, who receives all his or her payments the same way. No cash changes hands.
Now how do you think our Federal Government would feel if we all started buying stuff with Euros instead of Dollars? Would they like that? Hell no they wouldn’t. The EU actually tried to get us to start using Euros, they wanted to replace the Dollar worldwide and our government took some serious steps to nip that little plan in the bud because it’s a direct threat against our economy.
Well, what do you think Bitcoins are? Or any of the other crypto currencies? The thing about Bitcoin is that there were only so many “issued” at the start, and the price has gone steadily up as more people bought into them, so now a single Bitcoin is around $50,000 and if you want to buy a loaf of bread with it, you pay about 1/20000 of a Bitcoin or so.
Some major financial institutions are now starting to accept Bitcoin as valid tender and the greedy bastards in DC must be looking at this a lot more seriously now and realizing that it’s a small step to making the Dollar into as fully ephemeral a form of exchange as any crypto currency with the immense advantage of being able to make as much more as they want anytime they want to, simply by adding zeros to what they say is the legal money supply.
If you think this won’t happen, by all means splurge on Bitcoin and God bless your little pointy head. But what do you think will happen to Bitcoin and the others when it does happen? They’ll be outlawed by our government, of course. The Feds were snarling at Bitcoin when it first came out, but then along came Trump. Trump is gone now and the snarlers are back in charge. Be warned.
What will eventually happen is the same thing that’s gone on with the Dollar, which is a constant battle for supremacy as the global monetary standard. The Chinese are trying to force the Yuan on the world, the EU wants everyone to use the Euro, and then there’s us. The first one to nail down common crypto currency usage will be the most likely winner, and this is a truly big deal in global finances because eventually there will only be one that wins.
A common currency is vital to the creation of a global government. The Dollar has a big lead and a CryptoDollar has the best chance. Now I’m just waiting to see if they blow the opportunity or not.