Words matter, we know that even when they're mashed up, twisted about, and tortured by the likes of Donald Trump: on Saturday, he promised to end the "persecution" of cryptocurrencies, provided he wins in November (of course), and regardless of whether anybody or anything, is being persecuted at all. But words matter, and on the back of that particular word mash, the price of Bitcoin rose by 3% on Monday, as soon as the markets opened. The now slightly battered poster boy of crypto reached $69,745… its highest traded price since June, all on the premise that Donald Trump will make the United States a regulatory honey pot for cryptocurrencies by January next year.
But just listen in for a moment on Trump's "pledge"…
"I pledge to the bitcoin community that the day I take the oath of office, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's anti-crypto crusade will be over … If we don't embrace crypto and bitcoin technology, China will, other countries will. They'll dominate, and we cannot let China dominate. They are making too much progress as it is."
Does that sound particularly rational to you? And come to that, who or what exactly is the "bitcoin community? It was enough to move the market, though, combined with a promise to sack the Head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) on day one of Trump's Presidency because the Head of the SEC, a fellow by the name of Gary Gensler, is seemingly now the arch enemy of cryptocurrencies in Trump World, and positive poison for the "bitcoin community"…or is he really?
Fact Checking
Could this, for example, be the same Gary Gensler, Head of the SEC, who innovatively authorised Exchange Traded Funds (EFTs) in the United States last January, and could these same EFTs be a basket of assets capable of being sold as traded equities…tracking the price of Bitcoin and making it easier to trade Bitcoin? In a word, "yes": it's the same Gary Gensler and the same EFTs, and Mr Gensler did more to pioneer gateway Bitcoin regulation in North America than almost anyone else…certainly more than Donald Trump, and probably more than any member of the" bitcoin community" come to that.
No, Gary Gensler's sin, it seems, was to characterise Bitcoin as "speculatively volatile" in a January 10 statement launching those very same EFTs (www.sec.gov/newsroom), but who's seriously going to argue he was wrong? "Speculative" and "volatile" are precisely the words that spring to mind when you think of Sam Bankman Fried and FTX, which collapsed spectacularly into bankruptcy in November 2022: Sam was, in turn, convicted of seven counts of wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering, and is currently cooling his heels for 25 years in Mendota Penitentiary. It all sounds pretty volatile to me, as is the fact that Bitcoin could go up in value by 3% on a single trading day because Donald Trump (of all people) wants to make himself Master of the Universe.
What Blockchain Wants…
It's a febrile, curious conundrum: Bitcoin has the potential to make Blockchain work, and when Blockchain works (as it's starting to do already), it has the raw potential to change the way we do business for the better. Just like the internet has done: cutting out the financial middlemen, making transactions less costly and more efficient, and delivering assets and services where they're needed most. That's why the Indian Government has been working so hard to embed Blockchain at the heart of its public service programme, but what India has already achieved (significant as it is) is a mere fragment of what can be done in future. And Bitcoin can play its part in making that happen.
So, this is no time for hollow promises and insidious threats of the sort Donald Trump has mastered since 2015: rather, it is a time to look steadily to the future and assess, with a clear-eyed sense of reality, what part Bitcoin and Blockchain will play in it.
Just like Gary Gensler did in January and just like Narendra Modi is doing now…but not, by any stretch of the imagination, like Donald Trump is doing, so, here we go then: fingers crossed for the future…
Executive Overview
Bitcoin and Blockchain are too important to turn into political trading cards. Let's keep our eyes on the future.
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Red Ribbon Asset Management (www.redribbon.co) aims to harness the full potential of fast evolving and emerging technologies to meet the needs of global communities as part of a circular economy, fully recognising the compelling demands of planet people and profit.
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