QUESTION: It certainly seems that the cryptocurrency world has its flaws and may even be worse than traditional bank accounts and credit cards. They keep getting hacked. So they are trying to defeat central banks but may be running into the arms of scammers and thieves. I read one guy even claimed Bitcoin would be the new reserve currency. I really do not understand these fools. How can Bitcoin become the reserve currency? Where does this really end?
EP
ANSWER: I really do not know. The dollar is the reserve currency BECAUSE it has a $20 trillion debt that is used globally to park money. Europe never created a single debt market and that is why the euro never managed to compete with the dollar. There is just no way Bitcoin can become the reserve currency. That is really la-la-land. Where does this end? The technology may be absorbed by governments and perhaps you end up with a single electronic currency for each country. As far as circumventing central banks and governments, they can shut it down whenever they want by simply declaring cryptocurrency is for criminals as Australia is trying to do with cash.
With respect to the hacking, well easy come easy go. For the second time in just a few days, hackers launched a raid on a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange. The hackers had captured in one night about €27 million euros, the trading platform Bithumb had to admit. This is number six worldwide in terms of trading volume for cryptocurrencies. Bithumb announced that it would compensate its users.
The prices of most cryptocurrencies fell after the second South Korean incident within a few weeks. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, fell 2% that day. These attacks are starting to wear down the cryptocurrency market, and we may yet see a decline further into July.
