United States will not be able to ban Bitcoin, US Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo said during a Senate hearing last week. “I’m pretty confident we could not succeed in doing that,” Crapo said in a U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs hearing on crypto currency and blockchain technology regulation. In the same time, also last week the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK has warned potential crypto investors that bitcoin and crypto currencies in general have “no intrinsic value”, prompting some analysts to speculate that western governments, including the UK, are planning ways to ban the use of bitcoins and other digital currencies altogether.
Dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb! Jeebus H Christo, normally I'd say I cannot imagine something so stupid. But from uneducated, frightened little legislators seeking wedge issues on which to rally the rabble to re-elect them and place them back in their precious little seats of power from which they may 'lead' us, I suppose I can imagine it. Any attempt to stuff the genie of the these Digital Assets back in the bottle through legislative fiat order by Western Governments would be an enormous mistake of gargantuan proportions. Among many other catastrophic ramifications of doing something so foolish as to restrict the use of, or perhaps outlaw any further VC funding or public/private R&D in this vast space would be to open the door to other 'not-so-friendly' global powers to embrace this tech which would obviously limit our smartest, most engaged minds to influence development of this burgeoning ubiquitous tech. Lest anyone still believe that the very basic Ver 1.0 blockchain asset, Bitcoin $BTC is still some sort of plaything, one need only look at a chart of it over the last 7 days as the low was ~$9,100 and the high was ~12,000. Anyone can see from the attached chart $BTC acts better than Gold does in times of capital controls and flight. As media outlets report of the citizens of Hong Kong fight gallantly against the Chinese State for their own version of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, everyone chooses their own path in such a struggle but price action is obvious. During the last 7 days, Gold has increased in price by ~5% whereas Bitcoin increased by ~30%. Easy of access and pseudonymity are but two of thousands and thousands of use cases for this most basic iteration of Digital Asset. Though, Ver 2.0 and Ver 3.0....Ver N.0 of different types of consensus protocols and other Digital Assets will yield a currently unimagable amount of use cases. Western Governments should do and say less about almost everything. This is no different as we're on the cusp of a major new technological revolution led by new types of Digital Ledger Technologies #DLT's and digitized assets. Even though I was a very early adopter of $BTC once it experienced the manic and parabolic blow-off top in Dec '17 I sold and moved on. Soon as more and more people experienced the so-called "crypto winter," and the scam dogs moved into the area with all their ICO bullshit and $BTC Ver 1.0 blockchain never lived up to the hype of its Core Devs I became a gloating Bear about the entire space. But this Spring I was introduced to newer, next-generation consensus layer protocols, from which a whole new generation of revolutionary tech is now emerging. I'm proud to admit I'm back in the fold as a born again digital asset and #DLT prodigal son. In April, I did something I never thought I'd do. This hardened, crusty $BTC Bear bought back into it once it became clear to me it had won the "store-of-value" use case. If for any reason you haven't taken the time to cut through the hype, snake oil and bullshit that runs so thick in the space, please do yourself a favor and take all the time required to do so. You'll be pleased you did. BTW: If anyone needs/wants to talk about this to shorten your journey just hit me up. Be glad to talk. Even though I invest heavily in the space both directly into certain projects and protocols, and through my VC partners I have nothing to sell...promise. G/L
I think the real problem will be when monopolies like Facebook (or maybe even monopolistic behaving Companies like Amazon) try to float a cryptocurrency. There is NO WAY the US or EU would go along with that. It's probably also prudent to assume that while major Countries may not be able to outright ban or outlaw cryptocurrencies per se - as we have seen their Central Banks can sure as hell make life difficult for citizen crypto users.