QUESTION: Hello Martin, been reading your passages for a few months now. I had a question for you.
What currency do you think BRICS will use to settle trades in the future and if that he bitcoin could be a viable option? Since you don’t see the USD being the world currency by 2035.
Thanks for the wisdom.
ANSWER: The only benefit of Bitcoin is that it is neutral. But it is insufficient for world commerce because it cannot be used for lending or credit, or you end up in the same situation where it is just leveraged – the very complaints about fractional banking. You deposit $100 in a bank, and they lend out $92, and then two accounts show the same cash. The money supply can be multiplied many times through credit. The nonsense that Bitcoin would replace the dollar as the reserve currency only shows that those people do not understand the world financial system. To accomplish that, you will destroy everything – mortgages can no longer be made, and the entire world is plunged into a truly monumental depression, sending us back to the Dark Ages.
The primary argument against the dollar is that the Neocons have turned it into a political weapon by sanctioning Russia and removing it from SWIFT. That woke up many countries, who then realized that the dollar had become a weapon and no longer an impartial currency in world commerce.
The de-dollarization is NOT economic-based but POLITICAL. Wake up! This is not the standard fiat money nonsense. This is about political power to force countries to do the bidding of American Neocons or else!
The more practical neutral element would be gold. But there cannot be a “GOLD STANDARD” whereby you fix the price. With time, such a system will collapse, as did Bretton Woods. A monetary system MUST float, as does the economy and everything else. During a depression or recession, people sell assets and run to cash. In inflationary booms, you buy assets and get rid of the cash. LOOK – I am NOT an academic! I advise on trillions of dollars and have watched how capital responds for about 50 years. It is always self-interest – not theories of equality.
400 oz Central Bank Gold Reserves
I have been called in by central banks worldwide BECAUSE we have been the largest institutional adviser since we have focused on capital flows and currency markets. I can tell you that central banks are NOT buying gold because they think it will go up. That has absolutely NOTHING to do with such decisions. They are buying gold because it is NEUTRAL, and you can no longer trust the dollar, British pound, or the Euro, no less the Yen, etc. All Western currencies are now subject to political intervention as we enter the mere risk of war and Neocon intervention.
The only way to create a neutral, NON-POLITICAL world currency would be one where international transactions are carried out in gold – BUT on a FLOATING RATE – not fixed. During the 14th century, even Florence had a two-tier system where gold was used for international transactions and silver for domestic transactions. The more practical monetary system would be for each country to maintain its own currency for domestic use, and the international settlements would be in NON-POLITICAL gold.
This is the problem with the Euro. They eliminated the currencies to end the fluctuations between the member states. Still, the refusal to consolidate the debts meant that the volatility that once existed in the currencies was merely shifted to the bond market where each member’s debt trades according to their credit rating, as is the case among the 50 states in the USA.