Today I want to address some of the shit press Bitcoin has been taking lately, mainly articles like this:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/13/bitcoin-fraud-jp-morgan-cryptocurrency-drug-dealers
Or like this: https://www.coindesk.com/brazil-central-bank-chief-compares-bitcoin-pyramid-scheme/
Now I would never say that the president of the central Bank of Brazil doesn´t know his way around world economy. I bet he could teach us some things even if he was looking at spreadsheets totally drunk and blindfolded. However, as a member of the grandpa-variety economists, I bet he would say that a smartphone has "no real use, its mainly for playing games. I´d just stick to regular old plain phone." Here´s the thing with old people: most of them never understand new technologies even if you explain it to them.(Remember how long it took you to teach grandpa how to write an email?). So obviously he is going to compare Bitcoin whith the only thing that he knows that involves lots of people investing on something virtual with no traditional backing: a pyramid scheme. The funny thing is that even the mighty us dollar is a FIAT currency, which by definition means that the dollar’s value is not linked to any specific asset. And it had been that way since
FDR took the dollar off the gold standard in 1933.
Gee, that sounds a lot like bitcoin! How do I arrive to this conclusion? Well if you ask sites like google "what is the US dollar backing?" it will tell you that its backing is mainly the confidence the US government projects by always paying its debts(like a good Lannister) and the political power the U.S. projects in the world. With bitcoin, you have a protocol that paying the transfers its implicit in the protocol, meaning that bitcoin ALWAYS PAYS ITS DEBTS, so trust is implicit, like in the case of the US, we can check that with a marker. Also, the PRACTICAL POWER the cryptosphere projects(there are literally dozens of applications already operating on blockchain technology and more coming each day) assures that even though if there are times of extended bear markets(downtrends), the practical uses of blockchain money and apps GUARANTEES that they will always have value.
Now, I´m not even get into the shady deal that was reported right after that article, I´m not even gonna say it. Click on this link and read it for yourselves
But what I´m gonna say concerning JP Morgans´ article that claims Bitcoin a fraud and a bubble, only fit to use in the real world "if you were a drug dealer, a murderer, stuff like that": I would tell Mr. Morgan(or more accurately, Mr. Jamie Dimon) to look at all the economies that are being crypto fueled right now, INCLUDING STEEM. I guess we here at steem are a nice group of drug dealers, murderers, etc. /SARCASM
It is totally not real that JP Morgan is integrating blockchain technology into its enterprises while totally badmouthing the "bitcoin competition", isn´t it?
The only thing that makes the drug dealers and murderers prefer bitcoin over cash is that cryptocurrency by definition is data. Millions can be carried just on a pendrive. That is indeed a problem for regulators, but we wouldn´t ban the internet just because drug dealers can use email to communicate, we wouldn´t even blame the internet for that. I´m sure there are a lot of regulators in the world who are inventing a lot of software to track bitcoin transactions. Oh, that exists already? So why are regulators complaining as if they were so behind the curve that they couldn´t see what to do? Right, it´s because they need to magnify the crypto frauds to get things like patriot act for cryptos going. Now, I´m not saying that regulation is super bad, and they´ll get there eventually, but governments have a tendency to be control freaks kinda like helicopter dads, exaggerating each and every danger just to get more oversight over us all. Yes, there are several fraudulent companies and individuals out there in the crypto world, but why would you blame bitcoin for that? It´s as stupid as blaming the US Dollar for each fraudulent bank, and nobody even tried that on the 2008 financial crisis.
About the bubble thing: is bitcoin in a bubble? Even I accept that to an extent, since just like the dot-com bubble in 2001, I am seeing some coins are WAY overvalued. But even then, companies which actually offered great real possibilities to the market, continued operating and recovered from the crash. Should we have banned or frowned upon all dot-com companies in the year 2000 just because a crash was coming? Ebay survived, Cisco and Qualcomm survived. Amazon survived and later even surpassed his bubble stock price. Or isn´t it better to give a word of caution to the people to invest smartly and be careful? I like my bitcoin just like I like my wine: bubbly, it makes smart investors and traders a lot of money that way, and because of that when one mainstream cryptocoin will be massively adopted for microtransactions and payments, it won´t surely be bitcoin, but rather one of her younger sister coins(pardon me for that bitcoin), probably one that has protocols for stability built into the code.
The problem is that the middleman, in this case bankers, are increasingly becoming aware that they are becoming obsolete. They are like the blockbuster shops in a world dominated by the internet. I would say to them: "Adapt or become really obsolete. The future is in descentralized institutions. They are a lot harder to manipulate, and with much of the human factor taken out of the equation, they become a lot more trustworthy, since you KNOW a shady exchange owner can´t just shut down, pack and leave. The institutions in the cryptosphere that still have problems due to corruption or manipulation are the centralized ones. Descentralized platforms, like STEEM, enable you true freedom from the 9-5 grind, and you can even take your work with you while you travel the world. That kind of possibilities are the future for most people."
See? Today Steemit was down and I really wanted to do this post, so I redacted it in busy.org, another steemit frontend. My point is that in descentralized networks like steem, even if one gateway to the blockchain(the steemit homepage) comes temporarily down, another one can always be used. Centralized apps can´t beat that by a longshot.
Note: In case you didn´t notice, blue phrases are news LINKS, you can click on them for more info.