In this latest piece by Jim Rickards https://dailyreckoning.com/global-elites-secret-cryptocurrencies/, Rickards says "Libertarian supporters of blockchain celebrate the lack of government control. Yet, their celebration is premature, and their belief in the sustainability of powerful systems outside government control is naïve."
Rickards says the IMF together with other major agencies such as JPMorgan, Davos, the IRS, and the SEC would join forces to shut down the blockchain ecosphere and replace it with a controlled and "permissioned" ecosystem.
He concludes that Big Brother is coming to the blockchain.
By coming to such conclusions, Rickards fails to understand the very nature of the blockchain.
While it is true that governments are embracing blockchain to further their motives of control, govt knows it cannot control blockchain, so if you cant beat 'em, join 'em. Smaller govts are also embracing the technology to get ahead.
Governments, Taxes, and Blockchain
That said, govt underestimates the power of blockchain to decentralize power structures. Taxes are what fuels governments. 5 cryptotechnologies that allow individuals to hide assets and profits have already skyrocketed in value into the billions.
Govts are probably very concerned about this so are taking action to prevent a slowing of tax revenues. At this 11th hour (Ed Seykota's 39th day / Martin Armstrong's global sovereign debt crisis), Armstrong says governments are dead broke and hunting for money. They will stop at nothing. Meanwhile, central banks continue to print money at record levels. Ultimately, it's a race to zero between the dollar, the euro, and the yuan. The world has never been mired in so much debt. If 5000 years of recorded human history is any guide, governments have never been able to pay back the debt. The debt consumes much like a cancer, the system collapses, and rebuilding takes place. The most famous example is the rise and fall of Rome.
A Catastrophic Ending?
As some of the most respected minds (Greenspan, Jim Rogers, Martin Armstrong, Ed Seykota, Bill Gross) have said, this will have a beyond catastrophic ending. But the counterbalancing force against total collapse is blockchain which decentralizes power structures while empowering the individual. After a series of email exchanges, Ed Seykota agrees with my assessment. Blockchain does this by way of diminishing tax revenues via these cryptotechnologies while giving the individual total privacy. Meanwhile, existing paradigms are turned on their heads, to be replaced with decentralized systems which are far more efficient and transformational.
The Revolution Will Not Be Centralized: The Rise of the ICO
Already we see ICOs offering a decentralized CPU (Golem), decentralized storage (Filecoin), decentralized gaming marketplace (Dmarket), decentralized insurance (Etherisc), decentralized exchanges (Bitshares), and decentralized web hosting (Substratum). We also have ICOs bridging crypto- and real economies by tokenizing shares of any asset (LAToken), unbanking the banked (OmiseGo), and banking the unbanked (HumanIQ).
Blockchain Can Co-exist With Government
That said, I don't believe blockchain will eliminate government or vice-versa. I believe some sort of equilibrium will be established between government control and new freedoms afforded to the individual. Satoshi created bitcoin as a way to prevent future financial collapses such as the one in 2008 and also to prevent governments from printing their own currency to fund their wars.
In time, perhaps government power will fade out or, as General Macarthur once said, "Soldiers never die; they just fade away."
Humans Cannot Be Trusted
Blockchain is trustless. This means nobody has to trust anybody else in order for the system to function. Every form of digital currency before bitcoin required a central authority that you had to trust in order to use the currency. This was the weakness that ultimately spelled the end of the currency. With blockchain, multiple users collectively agree and digitally attest that a certain transaction took place without the need for a central authority.
The End of Corporations?
This has vast implications. Amazon, Ebay, and many other companies act as middle men. Blockchain will push these middle men platforms into obsolescence. This is why I've said, and Naval Ravikant agrees, that 90% of jobs on Wall Street will be gone in 7 years.
The End of Governments?
Government is one massive middle man operation. You can connect the dots to see where blockchain may lead humanity. A world without wars, without invasions of privacy, trillions of dollars saved on surveillance, trillions of dollars saved on weapons of mass destruction.
George Orwell may stop rolling in his grave... in time.
(͡:B ͜ʖ ͡:B)
About Dr. Chris Kacher
Dr. Chris Kacher has appeared on major television, radio, and print programs and is the bestselling author of "How We Made 18,000% in the Stock Market". He founded Creative Trading Ltd, a company aimed at helping others invest in cryptocurrencies. He is currently launching a pro bono cryptocurrency fund and has been an investor in various cryptocurrencies starting in 2013 including STEEMIT when it was founded in 2016. He is the co-founder of http://www.virtueofselfishinvesting.com and has co-authored several books in investments as well as over 100 scientific journal articles in the nuclear sciences. He helped to discover element 110 on the Periodic Table of Elements as well as confirm the discovery of element 106 which his team named Seaborgium after his UC Berkeley Ph.D. thesis advisor Professor Glenn Seaborg. His music has also charted on the iTunes music charts twice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Kacher
big brother created the blockchain imho
Excellent post, very well articulated. Your articles are always helpful - thank you so much. I'll have to retain this in my brains memory banks.:)
You're most welcome (͡:B ͜ʖ ͡:B)