The threat to Bank and Government: Crypto

Crypto, a great way to make a little extra and in some cases, a lot but, what is really happening below the surface of it all, is there more to it? Yes, a lot more in my opinion and even though I am no expert in finance or geopolitics but I do like to think about some of these things.

Many seem to think that the threats are going to be from competition among alt coins and new platforms combined with the threat to the existing competition but, this is only a small part of the story. There are so many threats to governments and banks that will have a larger effect adoption of crypto increases, at least from what I see.

There are fundamental problems with crypto if you are a bank or a government, as well as many upsides. For them, legislation is going to be an attempt at maximising control without stifling the upside potential of the varying technologies. But, this is going to tread a fine line as there are many potential threats to their existence, at least as they stand today.

This is no expose, no in depth analysis, just a few thoughts of mine for people who may not have thought much about it at all so far. You should though, it is going to potentially get bloody in various ways.

Death of a banker

People like to talk about the richest people in the world, Gates, Bezos, Bloomberg, The Kochs but, as individuals they are actually largely insignificant when you consider the size of the funds that the banks control and, the banks also have control over large portions of the Billionaire assets too in different ways. they don't keep it under mattresses I assume.

But, cryptocurrency threatens this as it puts money management and (importantly) transfers into the hands of users. Sure, currently the market cap is relatively insignificant compared to the 150 Trillion yearly world gross product value but, in time, it will be possible for the largest of companies and users to transfer the largest of sums without ever requiring a bank. That alone is a massive blow to the bottom line.

Combine that with the ability for an everyday investor to become a millionaire without ever crossing into a bank database and suddenly, the all powerful banks have significantly less capital at their disposal to perform all of the manipulative things that have done for the last 4 or 500 years. Major headaches for them are coming so it is no wonder they are doing all they can to FUD the system and buy in at the dips, create artificial noise and warn everyday Joes to stay away.

Essentially, cryptocurrencies will slowly offer a much more self-managed system that puts control back in the hands of the user. Banks are unlikely to be impressed considering it is their business to take control away from the user by offering false security as a trade off. If it wasn't false security, they wouldn't have caused so many economic meltdowns through their greed and centralization of control and lobbying.

But again, the banks are only a fraction of the problems to come also, albeit a significant fraction as they work hand in hand with their pals, governments.

A loss of control

Governments are set up with laws and once across borders, agreements with other nations. These agreements cover all kinds of things including economic policy. For all intents and purposes, if they were businesses, this would be classed as collusion. For the most part, even when they disagree publicly, the underlying agreement of 'maintain control over the populace' holds true. This can also be hacked and manipulated when nations choose to FUD another nation.

But, cryptocurrency does not care about these borders, does not care where it was generated or where it is spent. It doesn't care about exchange rates set by an arbitrary authority as the rate is set by the market itself. It also doesn't care if, where or how the taxes are paid.

Remember General Qaddafi from Libya? Do you know why he was killed? You may think it was because he was some evil dictator who oppressed his people and perhaps that is part of the story but, he had been there decades without opposition. What changed? He was planning to set up an african currency that he would back with the gold they held.

"Qaddafi's government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver ... This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA)." -Sidney Blumenthal

You might remember Sidney from many of the Hillary Clinton leaked emails.

What does it matter if there is an independent currency in Africa, well, nearly all trade is done in US dollars (especially oil) which creates demand for the currency. You know what happens when people demand STEEM? Imagine if STEEM was the currency to buy and sell oil with... The US would miss a large slice of pie, very large.

But, more importantly than that was the idea that he had, not the actual implementation of it. What he did was prove that a, poor, small, independent country could finance itself without outside assistance. Essentially, they were creating a an expanding network of self-reliance in Africa. Sound familiar?

The risk of Free folk

Independent people are notoriously hard to manage aren't they? There is a quote somewhere about wrangling cats that likely suits for this. Nations are constantly on a matrix of knife edges where they are trying to balance all of the functions they must take care of such as infrastructure and education whilst still increasing the wealth of the conglomerates, banks and investment funds.

What happens when larger and larger sums of capital are crossing the invisible borders to be spent in places with large discrepancies in tax law, if there is a tax at all. How can a government balance the books when they can't know, track or easily manage the funds in and out? Countries currently struggle with black money economies, what happens when that is the majority of transactions?

Sure, they can impose laws but the problem will come when we the people are unwilling to handover what is ours to middlemen providers who do what we can do ourselves with much less efficiency. About a year ago, my daughter was sent $100 dollars Australian for her account, it cost $16 in bank fees alone. And took days.

Those days are over soon as more and more make invisible transactions across invisible borders many times almost instantly. Sure, they may not be invisible for long but here is another major headache to come for bank, government and corporations between. Transparency. If they can track us, can we track them?

They definitely will not want such a radical notion as transaction transparency at the highest levels. How will they fund their blackops? Of course, they will find multiple ways around this in practice but there still lays the problem that cryptocurrencies will be able to perform many of the functions of the middlemen cheaper, faster and with much more individual sensitivity and control.

Why then would we give up financial freedom and control and pay more for it? And this is the problem. They already have almost complete control of us and how we use and transfer our funds and they benefit massively from it. Why would THEY give up control willingly?

There are so many sides to this and so much depth and conjecture to what is happening, what could happen and more importantly for us all, what will happen in the long run. My point of writing this though is so to introduse that there is much more at stake here than crypto being just an extra revenue stream.

It is going to get potentially very bloody in time and the economic systems are going to take a pounding when that arrives and potentially one where the tradition or the crypto won't survive. The threat to Bank and Government from the ideals of freedom from authority has never been greater than this point now.

Be prepared. Learn about possibilities. Don't rely on an authority to protect you, they can't, they won't, they haven't.

Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]