Bitcoin has risen to $58,700 at the time of writing from a recent low of $55,600 in a bounce or reversal that coincides with Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State and presidential candidate, suggesting bitcoin might become a reserve currency.
“I hope nation states start paying attention to the rise of cryptocurrency,” she said. “Because what looks like a very interesting and a somewhat exotic effort to literally mine new coins in order to trade with them, has the potential for undermining currencies, for undermining the role of the dollar as the reserve currency, for destabilizing nations perhaps starting with small ones, but going much larger.”
The past retirement age 74 year old, born in 1947, did not elaborate further on how bitcoin can be so mighty as to do all these things, or how geeks sharing jpegs will “destabilize” nation states.
The only one that has done that is her and her government when she was in charge, staring with the unforgettable mess in Syria that then destabilized Europe itself. She further added Libya to that whole mess which hopefully has now ended, although where the latter is concerned maybe for the better in the end now that they have a somewhat stable-ish democratic framework.
Bitcoin could have stabilized a country like Lebanon. Their money is pegged to the dollar, they spent the dollars, and their money is now worthless. If the Lebanese people had put some of their money in bitcoin, they may have had a life boat.
Bitcoin could have lessened the devastation of hyperinflation in Venezuela. Argentinians and Turks have learned from that, with Turkish citizens in particular enthusiastically adopting the life boat.
Americans are too because their base money has increased by 40% in two years and government spending now amounts to 50% of the GDP.
You don’t need a masters in economics, neither Karl Marx nor Hayek, to understand that when you’re spending twice more than you’re taking in, there’s some problem.
You do however need sophistry. The government is not the same as a family budget, deficit spending is good because we can just print the money, the government can not go bankrupt.
You can also seize the means of production, but we know how that played out. Some however don’t seem to know, with this Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) risking changing inflation expectations if it gains more prominence because the dollar, and its reserve status, is ultimately a trick of confidence.
It does have some substance. Arabia has to sell their oil in dollars. Putin said Russia doesn’t have any plans to move away from that dollar commerce. Iran though perhaps doesn’t quite have much of a choice but to try something else. Since they don’t use dollars anyway, what that something is, is irrelevant.
Why do we still reee at Iran, however, is relevant. To the millennial generation they haven’t quite done anything. They say they fund this and they do that, also mulas, but it is also that we have in charge people who are living in the 60s and the 70s, goners from a long gone age.
It is in their prime when the decision was taken to remove any anchor to fiat money, and presumably when they grew up they heard from people in their 70s, whose prime was in the 1930s, about how gold is bad. Even though the industrial revolution and the enlightenment before it or the renaissance and the 10-20% yearly GDP growth before the 70s, was all running on gold.
You take away such constrain on the government, and what’s to keep us from falling into communism? De facto, if not overtly. A communism that usually comes with authoritarianism, so we can’t even resist without raising the pesants.
A communism that also comes with stagnation and then regression. To someone like Clinton that’s good, keeping the peasants poor, needy, and in their place. For ambitious and aspiring young men, however, who might even think long term until they too are 70, such misery is to be fought and overturned.
Peacefully, we do afterall live here, but it is time for our dads and moms to realize that they should mind their own business. They had their lives, they did what they did, it’s now our turn.
Not least because they’re no longer quite the adults in the room with their mental decline that comes with age. We are now in charge, de facto if not formally, and we know what has to be done as we look to the future and not the past.
On that, grand grandma would perhaps be happy to learn that the USD reserve currency status is not quite under threat by bitcoin, but their tendency and ambition to be control freaks is under threat.
The prohibition on investments for example is not just under threat, but it has largely been overturned. They can go cry now on corporate media about how people are resigning to go fund innovative startups as we break the barricades that kept the population under wage slavery and effectively under communism, while the Clintons could capitalism all they please.
This is what she means, not the currency, not the nation, but the system of communism for all and capitalism for the very rich where capital itself is concerned.
Getting rid of that and bringing capitalism to all isn’t something Clinton likes, or Trump who pretty much said the same thing in stating “I feel bitcoin hurts the United States currency.” They ra ra at each other on TV, but they’re on the same team.
No you’re the puppet. We all know both are puppets, in this case to banks that tend to put up a list of candidates they want in the new administration when there are transitions.
Bitcoin threatens that control of banks on capital, and thus threatens the control of the few over politics, as peasants learn how this game works and play it by forming their own game to compete.
That way, although we may have 70 year olds formally in charge, it’s the millennials really ruling where the economy is concerned. It’s Zuk that makes them tremble, and it’s bitcoin that makes them shake.
They terrified of it because it gives freedom and it ruins all their plans to slowly and steadily take over the entire economy with the institution of authoritarianism that follows.
Because it isn’t quite the government that is spending 50% of the GDP, it is banks that are owning it with printed out of nothing ‘money’. And if they wanted to, and one day they may well do, they can bring that government to its knees by demanding payment and by no longer marketing its bonds. Just as they did in New York in the 70s.
Cryptos however would give such government the opportunity to tap into crypto markets, to go to the public directly which you’d think would answer their call in such situation, resolving the crisis and preventing banks from pretty much formally taking charge as they did in NY.
They’re scared thus that the disruption tech has brought to the likes of Blockbuster, is coming to banking. And that means a disruption to banks choke hold over the economy, and over these politicians, both the Clintons and the Trumps.
Without bank financing, Trump wouldn’t have built those towers and he would not be able to maintain them. Without the flowing ‘donations’ from banks, the Clintons would be nobodies.
So they’re defending the rigged system that keeps the populace chained, but if there was anything they could do about this new competition, they would have done it long ago.
Unfortunately for them, the more ambitious and smart young bankers don’t go to Goldman Sachs anymore. They go to a defi startup, or launch their own, because there’s a lot more money to be made as the public happens to very much like freedom.
So just buy some bitcoin Ms Clinton and hedge your bets because you never know who you might have to answer to in a decade as crypto ‘donations’ are already starting to flow.
To other Democrats with a microphone, this space is politically neutral. It has many bitcoiners or cryptonians that lean Democrat. Consider how your comments might play when it comes to vote, as ultimately it isn’t quite the banks fully in charge even if they pay your check, it is the voting public.
