Once the efforts of central banks in many countries to boost liquidity by printing currency notes amid the Covid crisis falls apart, traditional fiat money will be replaced by its digital version. But decentralised blockchain alternatives like Bitcoin could actually be much better than that centralised global cashless society system, says Simon Dixon.
“Fiat currency is going to be 100 percent digital very soon. The interesting thing that people confuse is that they often think the central bank digital currency is the same thing as what we’ve already got because the money is already digital and there’s a war on cash and cash has virtually disappeared anyway.
“But there is actually a major difference. When a country actually creates a central bank digital currency, they issue it into the economy, and it’s going to be an awful effect on your privacy, your freedom to spend your money as you choose, it’s going to be intersected with compulsory vaccines, the anti-money laundering regimes and automated tax collections. So that’s where Bitcoin really comes in, it gives people an opt-out and an exit option,” the crypto evangelist told Kaiser Report podcast recently.
Another subject that came up during the interview was the legality of cryptocurrencies in several countries. Dixon quipped that the more stringent measures against virtual currency, the more it’s prices will go up.
“We already have seen cases, we’ve seen that China banned (crypto) exchanges and it pushed the price from USD 3,000 to USD 20,000, and now we’re starting to stabilize a bit more. So, I think we’d be very naive to think that governments wouldn’t try to ban Bitcoin when they start to realize and it becomes a political power play, we already saw that you know with gold in the past,” he said.
“When a country actually creates a central bank digital currency, they issue it into the economy, and it’s going to be an awful effect on your privacy, your freedom to spend your money as you choose… that’s where Bitcoin really comes in”
According to the founder of bnktothefuture.com, while crypto currencies would be perceived as an enemy by some economies, many others would see it as an opportunity.
“For instance, in countries like Lebanon, I think they’re going to have an opportunity to accumulate Bitcoin and then announce it as one of the reserves on their central bank. So, fortunately the competitive forces I think will make it where if one country makes it illegal, another country will see that as an opportunity,” he said.
Dixon describes Bitcoin as “your own bank”. “So, what happens in a post post-fiat world like how much entrepreneurship a flourishing of like fraud free or certainly reduced fraud environment like what happens I don’t think we’re gonna see a post-fiat world i think fear will survive and it would just be in a different format, it’s fear that you’re going to see is going to have less freedom, less sovereignty, less privacy and lots of really horrible features built into it.”
“If banks go past, it’s not that the banks go away is that the banks have a choice of either adjusting to the central bank digital currency they don’t get a super subsidy they they are no longer too big to fail because the central bank can just let them fail and there’s a way of you know auctioning off all the debt and replacing money with a central bank digital currency. So, it actually drives banks to be more honest ,” he said.
At the end of the interview, Kaiser describes Dixon as “futurist”.
