Post
Topic
Board Speculation
Re: Does the bitcoin have a future?
by
Phyton76
on 17/07/2018, 12:15:33 UTC
 base on my research, Is the bitcoin craze another in a series of history’s most infamous bubbles, or is it a genuine harbinger of a new global financial architecture? In spite of recent market turbulence, its champions see bitcoin (and its cryptocurrency peers) as an ideal market-generated solution as questions arise about the future viability of paper currencies in a global economy characterized by sky-high indebtedness and bloated government/central bank balance sheets. The enthusiasts behind cryptocurrencies produce debt clocks that relentlessly tick over to get us to believe that a Weimar–style hyperinflation is imminent. By creating an alternative store of value outside the control of easy-money-peddling central banks, and their corrupt Wall Street handmaidens, they assert that bitcoin offers a way out of this looming destruction of our savings.

Certainly one can appreciate the appeal of anything that purports to prevent an economic Armageddon. No less a figure than Frederick Hayek, the Austrian Nobel prize-winner known for his work on the theory of money and demigod of free-marketers, called for the elimination of state-controlled money and the abolition of “money-printing” central banks. He considered fiat currencies and the inflationists predominant in the post-gold-standard policy-making world as the root causes of destructive financial bubbles.

If bitcoin and its equivalents could deliver what its champions promise, what’s not to like? Even allowing for the recent gyrations, if you had bought $100 in bitcoin back in 2011, your investment would be worth millions today. But intuitively, it hardly seems believable that an instrument that bears many of the hallmarks of a classic speculative bubble realistically represents a cure for the ills described by Hayek. Having risen to a high of around $20,000 by mid-December, the price has recently fallen by almost half. The real question now seems to be whether this fall will have broader implications for the economy as a whole.