Confidence in the traditional financial system is rapidly crumbling, making the call for alternatives ever greater. Bitcoin is a potential alternative, with which people are no longer dependent on the health of banks and in principle can always access their money. The big question is whether the world is ready for a Bitcoin standard and personally I don’t think so.
Too early for a Bitcoin standard
It sounds fantastic in theory, of course, to throw aside everything that is currently bad about the financial system and switch to Bitcoin, which has an absolute scarcity of 21 million units. This would also give savers better protection against inflation. In the long run, I’m all for putting Bitcoin a little more central to the financial system, but right now it’s too early.
The problem is that we are currently still too deep in the current financial system. If we decided now to completely switch to Bitcoin and leave the debt-based system behind, the entire economy would collapse.
If the Federal Reserve had decided not to guarantee the balances at Silicon Valley Bank, for example, the entire US economy might have been in trouble. Unfortunately that is the reality we are in right now, there is no alternative and the central banks are really trapped in that regard.
Central bankers are not crazy either, they also see that inflation is the only way to keep the system afloat. The gigantic mountain of debt can only be maintained with even more debt. That’s a shame, but that’s the reality and Bitcoin doesn’t fit that at the moment. A Bitcoin standard would cause too much misery at the moment.
When?
In my view, it is much better if the adoption of Bitcoin goes step by step and turns out to be a process of years or even decades. In this way, the entire economy can slowly arm itself for a transition to a system in which governments and central banks are more bound to the discipline of an asset with a shortage.
At the moment that discipline is not there and you see what the result is. We are up to our necks in debt, effectively borrowing wealth from future generations. Incidentally, we not only borrow wealth, but in this way we also pollute the planet for future generations.
We’ve created a lot of artificial wealth that probably wouldn’t have existed at all if the system was bound by scarcity. In that respect, it would not be at all wrong if Bitcoin plays a central role in the financial system in 20-30 years.