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Cryptocurrency war?

September 21, 2017 | Expert Insights

John McAfee, anti-virus software giant and a proponent of cryptocurrency, has said that there is going to be war between sovereign nations and cryptocurrencies in the immediate future.

Background

Cryptocurrency is a digital asset (in other words a form of digital money) that is designed to stay secure. It uses cryptography to secure its exchanges making it nearly impossible to counterfeit. Cryptocurrency in particular is classified as a subset of digital currencies.

Bitcoin was the first decentralized cryptocurrency. It was first created in 2008 by either an anonymous programmer or a group of programmers under a pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto. “Nakamoto” released Bitcoin in 2009 as an open source software. It is not controlled by any government and is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies in the world. Litecoin, Peercoin, Namecoin and Ripple are among the other cryptocurrencies available.

Initial coin offering (ICO) is a means of crowdfunding through the use of cryptocurrency. This form of crowdfunding is not regulated as cryptocurrency is unregulated. Despite the inherent risks, ICOs have become increasingly popular, especially with companies in Silicon Valley.

Analysis

These digital tokens are traded only in unofficial online markets. Due to Bitcoin’s bullish performance in the market, the value of all Bitcoins in the world is now more than $56 billion. The value of Ripple has also exponentially increased. Earlier it was valued at $500 million but in the span of less than a year, it’s value soared up to $35 billion at one point.

Recently, China announced that it had called a freeze on all fundraising through initial coin offerings. The country has also shut down exchanges with hopes of completely undercutting cryptocurrencies. In addition, three of the nation’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, OKCoin, Huobi and BTC China have issued statements noting that they will shut down trading between Bitcoin and Huan in the span of few weeks.

John McAfee, anti-virus software giant and a proponent of cryptocurrency has said that the battle between sovereign governments and cryptocurrencies has begun. He said, “Today will go down in history as the beginning of the war between the proponents of cryptocurrency and the world governments. If governments aren’t able to know what the movement is they will be unable to collect revenues. That’s going to cause panic in some countries. China sees it already.”

One of the concerns that nations have regarding cryptocurrencies is dealing with problems like money laundering. ICO offerings have become particularly popular in China. In 2017 alone, there were 65 ICO projects completed. This resulted in raising US$398 million.

Experts have noted that China’s announcement will not deter the growth of cryptocurrencies.

Assessment

Our assessment is that the current cryptocurrency war is designed to eliminate the currency that opposes the tendrils of Big Data mining and launch a chosen winner that central banks can best utilize. We believe that a new cryptocurrency known as Ethereum backed by 30 large banks including JP Morgan Chase, Citi Bank has made the debut in this business. We sense that global elites including central banks are using cryptocurrencies to store Dollar in order to prevent hyperinflation and take the place of the Petro Dollar if and when it collapses.