There is (almost) nothing I love more in the world than a deadpan, matter-of-fact take on Bitcoin delivered by a central banker.
The reason it’s so entertaining when the monetary gods weigh in on cryptocurrencies is precisely because these are the people who, to let the crypto crowd tell it, are super-concerned about the purported “threat” to their monopoly on money.
Of course central bankers aren’t any more “concerned” about cryptocurrencies “challenging” their control over money than Jamie Dimon is “concerned” that Bitcoin somehow imperils his job and the future of JPMorgan.
Everyone with any goddamn sense knows Bitcoin and the rest of these things are worthless and everyone with any sense also knows that central banks and governments can shut the whole thing down virtually overnight by subjecting the exchanges to strict regulation and/or making convertibility into dollars, euros and yen a crime.
If you’re wondering why that hasn’t happened yet, it’s not because governments don’t know they can do it. Rather, it’s because they’re worried about what the short-term fallout from that might be for all of the people who have been duped into “investing” in these things and also because they’re watching to see how it plays out, probably in an effort to learn something about how to incorporate the technology and the basic premise into an government-issued variant or, to use the BIS’s preferred nomenclature, a “CBCC”.
Well speaking of central banks, Bitcoin and also “CBCCs”, you might recall that late last year, “rumors” were (again) circulating that the BoE was working to devise their own cryptocurrency. They played down that speculation quickly, but the fact that the possibility was even bandied about in the first place makes the following even more amusing than it already would be. Here’s Reuters from a piece out on Monday afternoon:
Bitcoin has failed as a currency measured by standard benchmarks, and is neither a store of value nor a useful way to buy things, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said on Monday.
“It has pretty much failed thus far on … the traditional aspects of money. It is not a store of value because it is all over the map. Nobody uses it as a medium of exchange,” Carney told students at London’s Regent’s University.
Tell us what you really think, Mark.
He also noted that Bitcoin’s “underlying technology may still prove useful as a way to verify financial transactions in a decentralised way.”
Right. The ubiquitous nod to the “underlying technology” which, as more than a few people are starting to suggest, may be utterly fucking useless too because after all, no one has figured out a real compelling use case for it after damn near a decade of trying.
Oh wait, I take that back.
I forgot about the burgeoning “flying urban tax market”…
Tracking supply chains and financial accounting are the most straightforward use cases. Also the deployment and management of smart contracts.
RE: Your link to Kai Stinchcombe’s article “Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain.”
Kai’s right, of course, and his article is funny because it’s true. But the dozens of programmers (discounting the thousands of crypto miners) that responded to Kai are also correct, when they basically retort that TCP and the Internet were originally planned as DoD networks and not a means, for example, to shoe string a macro economic service readily accessed globally. Even though you are very good at it and it is funny. Perhaps, something like Ripple comes along and does the opposite of anonymous, and distributed, and puts some of these blockchain ideas to relevant use? Or maybe some of the ideas are taken by financial firms, also doing the opposite, to automate back office transactions? Or, perhaps the whole idea is trash. Either way, thanks for the link to Kai’s article I didn’t get an opportunity to see it until you l linked it!
To make matters worse…..there is a Bitcoin crime wave. Criminals love the stuff…..put a gun to a Bitcoin owners head and have them transfer millions to an anonymous account. Sounds like a lot of fun.