The bursting of bubbles can make insutries stronger.
Bitcoin and Blockchain
What Bitcoin and other blockchain-based cryptocurrencies do is allow transactions to happen in places where trust previously would not have been possible.
Think about how many brilliant ideas may have been squashed because a would-be inventor was either turned down by traditional gatekeepers of funding, or because they lacked the network or social capital to even initiate the process.
Had the state-backed systems of money and payments been working properly, and had been upgraded to work in the digital age, there would have been no need for crypto in the first place. This is the point that official organs will never admit.
A few years ago, Bernie Sanders uttered a passing comment that elicited howls of laughter among believers in competitive markets. “You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants," he said. Today, many people are saying the same thing about cryptocurrencies. Why so many? What's the point? Why not one only or, actually, what not just stick with the dollar? The point is that we need a rivalrous process with free entry to discover the better way to do money. And we need this process to run forever.
Much progress has been made. And, yet, there is still much room for improvement.
Nobody should celebrate a system of money and finance in which government controls the on-ramps and off-ramps based on political loyalties. That’s proven to be a very dangerous system. What we need is a censor-proof technology that can make prosperity possible for ever larger swaths of humanity. That’s not “evil”; it’s gloriously good.
The bubble in comparing Bitcoin to the tulip bubble has gotten out of hand.
We place our trust in financial intermediaries because they have made costly investments over time to engender that trust. Processing payments on a blockchain essentially avoids these costs.
From the time Bitcoin was introduced, it faced ridicule, disgust, smears, and anger. Incredulity would naturally greet a technology that achieved something never before thought possible.
There are many intermediate cases where Bitcoin has value for specific applications, without “replacing” the dollar, gold, or any other major underpinning of the global financial system.
Mass adoption of cryptocurrencies is unlikely to take place unless there is “significant monetary instability” or “government support” (fat chance, at least with bitcoin).
There will probably be a downturn at some point. But we can expect that the most functional cryptocurrencies will remain.
There’s a lot of talk about bitcoin futures markets these days. And for good reason.
Banning Bitcoin might have the unintended consequence of causing the average citizen to think a lot harder about why governments have a monopoly on currency in the first place.
Forget about the price of Bitcoin. The value of digital currencies should be measured in economic freedom and opportunity.
The price of bitcoin has soared and many are left scratching their heads.
Why do some commentators, all smart and competent economists, investors, and journalists, reach such vastly different conclusions about Bitcoin and blockchain technology?
Is bitcoin based on a Marxist theory of value?
We should not delude ourselves with notions that our small enclaves of devotees of this or that new technological miracle will make us invulnerable to government coercion. They will not.