Tag: #bitcoin

For Crypto to Live, It First Must Die

Governments hate stuff they can’t control.

The beauty and promise of cryptocurrency is that Bitcoin and Etherium truly became the worlds first fiat monies divorced from any government backing. Yes, use of fiat is blasphemy to crypto die-hards, but for crypto currency to succeed as a global currency, we need to have an honest conversation about what fiat really means, and how crypto must kill off it’s government independence if it wants to truly reach its full potential.

Fiat currency is a medium of exchange that has no intrinsic value, unlike gold and other precious metals, that have industrial and artistic use with value apart from its circulation as money. Fiat currency has value because we believe it has value, and thus becomes a store of value and medium of exchange. Fiat currency to an economist is money that only has value because we have faith in it, and it has no use otherwise.

In this way, crypto currencies are true Fiat monetary systems in a pure way. Divorced from any government backing, and with an alternative use case of zippo, they truly are a medium of exchange that is divorced from everything. And therein lies the rub.

Governments hate stuff they can’t control. And Bitcoin/Etherium are far from their reach. The Satoshi’s and Buterin’s of crypto built their systems in such a way that governments can never, ever control them. And that is beautiful when it comes to creating the perfect fiat currency. No more printing money when you need it (looking at you Zimbabwe), and all the other money mischief devised by central banks that protect governments and hurt everyday people (for a good read on the various ways governments have done this, Milton Friedman has a great read by the same title if you click the link).

Governments have thus far reacted to crypto with what John Gottman recognized as one of the ultimate forms of rejection and contempt: stonewalling. This is when you just go quiet. Say nothing. Sit still. Ignore. The epic lack of regulatory interest in crypto is accomplishing its purpose: killing crypto silently.

Crypto currency’s promise, to have a stable system of exchanging stuff divorced from government mayhem, will never be realized until governments learn to accept that the future of currency is out of their control, but within their regulation. And this is where crypto lovers weep: regulation must happen for crypto to reach its full potential. In this way, crypto dies so that it can live.

In a world where we buy stuff and pay our taxes in Bitcoin and Ethereum, governments need to have rules around how money can be used. These rules include how to get paid back if you’re ripped off, how to track money to protect us from dark forces, and how to make sure people aren’t manipulating crypto markets and hurting consumers by restricting supply and demand. The public benefits of crypto currency are many, but only if the beast is trained to avoid destroying our freedom with its own.

And here lies the root cause of our current dilemma. A US Congress so old it might as well be a nursing home, led the way with the oldest White House leader ever, means that US leaders are too far removed in history to address modern problems they do not understand. Joe Biden remembers world war two as a kid. Ponder that and honestly ask yourself if he’s ready to suggest ways government can adopt the future of money. Yeah, I didn’t think he was doing anything either.

What the world needs right now is visionary leadership from a new generation of forward-thinking monetary leaders. Sadly, I’m not sure we have them right now, at least not outside of the developer community. Ouch.

What Every #Bitcoin Investor Should Learn From a Dictator Named “Awesome”

Bitcoin investors should learn a lesson from Awesome, a dictator who lost his life introducing the one of the world’s first fiat currencies

Bitcoin investors should learn a lesson from Awesome, a dictator who lost his life introducing the one of the world’s first fiat currencies.  A fiat currency is a form of money to exchange goods and services that has no intrinsic value.  For example, a gold coin is not a fiat currency, because it is made of gold, something that has value in, and of, itself.  Paper currency, like the US Dollar, is a fiat currency because the note has no intrinsic value.

Bitcoin has a lot in common with early fiat currencies, so let’s take a second to review fiat currency and take a quick history lesson from one of its early adopters.

First off, how does fiat currency get its value?  Fiat currency has value when:
1.  It has limited supply
2.  People believe it has value
3.  It can be easily transferred to facilitate economic transactions

Right now, Bitcoin meets all three of these standards. There is limited supply due to its unique block-chain encryption standards, people believe it has value from the increasing rate of exchange to the dollar, and it can be transferred easily to facilitate economic transactions using online Bitcoin wallets.  So how did fiat currencies get started and what can we learn from these early currencies about the future of Bitcoin?

In 1294 Gaykhatu (literally, “Awesome” in Mongolian) was the leader of one Hoard of Mongols ruling over what is now Iran, Iraq and Southwest Asia.  Taking his name a little too literally, Awesome decided that he needed fiat currency like that introduced by his distant cousin Kublai in China. 

Awesome was in the middle of a crippling drought in his territory, and after several years of expending all of the royal treasury building a seriously sweet palace (still unfinished, of course), he was broke. When he heard that Kublai was just printing his own money, he saw his path to riches and summoned the Ambassador from Kublai’s court, demanding to see the new paper currency.

So smitten with this idea, Awesome copied the idea and printed his own money.  He liked the notes printed by Kublai so much, he even copied the Chinese characters on them.  He demanded that everyone accept these new notes as currency.  However; Awesome had competing currencies.  He didn’t think about confiscating all the gold and silver currency in circulation and soon discovered that no one wanted his paper money (Kublai at was smart enough to make some of his Chao out of copper to help with the perception of value).

Awesome also launched his new currency during the worst cattle plague his realm had ever encountered, and printing new money at such a tumultuous economic event was just poor form.  Needless to say, no one thought Awesome was awesome.  Riots and violence broke out around his kingdom.

Topping it off, Awesome himself emptied out his treasury of the notes he printed for himself, buying lavish materials for his palace from merchants foolish enough to accept his worthless piles of paper.  Awesome was bankrupt, his markets frozen from the lack of a credible medium of exchange.

In the end, he was pelted with all manner of foul, medieval produce without refrigeration, and openly mocked over the irony of his increasingly worthless name.  His cousin was so angry, he didn’t stop there, he killed Awesome by strangulation with a bowstring and took over his kingdom. Yeah, that ended badly.

So, what does this have to do with Bitcoin?  Bitcoin has value only from the drug dealers, money launderers, illegitimate governments, and black market moguls who see Bitcoin as a valuable exchange to conceal their dirty doings. Like Awesome, these neer-do-wells created a virtual currency that can’t be traced to support their palace building.

And like Awesome, this party will crash back down to earth.  There are two primary structural problems to Bitcoin that will undermine its ability to satisfy all three standards for a fiat currency.

First, quantum computing stands to make any encryption 100% worthless in the next ten years.  We are rapidly approaching a future where there will be no secrets stored on computers, because no computer can encrypt itself sufficiently to prevent a quantum computer from hacking any and all methods designed to protect it, end of story.  This means that the encryption protecting Bitcoin itself, Bitcoin wallets, and any and all servers that are used to process and secure its ownership rights, will all be broken and worthless.  This destroys the fundamental premise of value, to say the least.  Goodbye limited supply!

Second, governments can block people from using Bitcoin as a measure of exchange.  Why would they do this?  Because Iran, North Korea, drug cartels, tax evaders, and money launderers are using Bitcoin to evade sanctions, bank laws, taxes, and pretty much violate every lawful economic law on the books.  They are already starting to do so, in China and South Korea, and the impact of this on Bitcoin value is just beginning.

At the end of Bitcoin, no governments will allow an asset class that has a primary purpose to undermine the faith of their regulated, lawful financial system and allow untraceable and untaxable exchanges of value between two parties.  In short, all these ICOs are a threat to the established global financial system, so the governments who created this system will not permit Bitcoin to stand.  You can’t fight city hall, let alone every major world government.

When these governments begin to go to war against crypto-currencies in earnest, belief that Bitcoin has value will plummet, the ability to use it to exchange goods and services will evaporate, and its demise will be the latest chapter in fiat currency collapse.  When this happens, I hope the Winklevoss twins have good security.  I’d hate to see them go the way of Awesome.

Joe Merrill is an Austin-Texas based venture capitalist at Sputnik ATX and Linden Ventures. Follow his blog at http://www.econtrepreneur.com or on Twitter @Austin_VC