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Is Wall Street Surrendering at Bitcoin’s Feet?

bitcoin - criptomoneda - El American

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As we well know, it was possible, according to the Bible, that David, without any weapon of certain power or “sharpness to do damage”, managed to defeat Goliath by himself, in a certain battle against the Philistines. But the point here is that, once again, this has been reproduced in real life, and yes, in technological matters.

We already said at the time, with some conviction (or optimism, if that is the more accurate term), that the so-called open-source and free software solutions were not doomed to the absolute, but quite the opposite, as evidenced by Redmond’s “latest assumptions” and the configuration of most servers around the globe.

The same can be said about blockchains, not only in monetary matters, since this paradigm is also being applied to other sectors of activity, with projects already underway for, for example, the coordination of emergency health consultations or the management of freeway tolls.

Anyway, here the question is that one of its most famous applications (lately with some relevance in the press and in the general list of Twitter trending topics), the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, seems to become a phenomenon that Big Banking must take seriously.

Goldman Sachs won’t exclude Bitcoin from exchange market

The uptrend in the value of Bitcoin (BTC) suffered a small fall in February that took it away from the maximum of $50,000. But this was, from a certain perspective, nothing more than an anecdote, a “sporadic and punctual variation.”

On the first Monday of the current month of March, according to Cointelegraph, a new stimulus of psychological optimism was reproduced among the investors of these cryptocurrencies as the market found its bullish momentum and the alternative currencies “rose again.”

Proof of the above would also be the fact that BTC again experienced an increase that took it to those previously highlighted levels (for the better), being the percentage variation, in positive terms, of 16.6 %, starting from its low of $43,505 on February 28.

And perhaps in the face of these good data, “suddenly”, Goldman Sachs, one of the commercial banking entities (once financial, until the economic crisis of 2018, the fruit of the artificial expansion of credit, led it to request authorization from the Federal Reserve to change its category of services) of Wall Street, has decided to reconsider cryptos.

Thus, they would have already started to put back into operation their cryptocurrency trading service, which will allow transactions on futures contracts and other non-tangible products with BTCs. This actually started in December 2017, but at that time, the value of bitcoin was not going through its best times, according to Peter Brandt.

Wall Street still skeptical of crypto

It is true that, despite its decentralized paradigm (indeed, very antithetical to the generalized statist trend, not reversed by the actors to be mentioned), certain institutions that contribute to increasing debt, expanding bureaucratic pressure and inflation have taken an interest in blockchain.

For example, even before 2020, the European Commission was working on a pro-blockchain strategy that would finance certain projects based on this technological paradigm, promote certain standards and study its use in “pan-European” administration.

Similarly, certain central banking financial institutions would be working on the digitization of the means of exchange they issue. This is happening with the European Central Bank, the US Federal Reserve, the Swedish Riksbank and the People’s Bank of China.

But digitizing does not imply changing the underlying operating paradigm, but rather incorporating their service provision into the increasingly developed digital ecosystem. Coin issuance would continue to depend on the servers of the IT infrastructures of these central banks (there would not be a wide network of nodes scattered across a “wide” environment).

In fact, the emergence of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin has always caused them headaches. In view of this, action plans have been considered based on the tight control (not only in systems with eminently minimal economic freedom) of the possession and transactional use of means of exchange such as Bitcoin.

In principle, the pretext of the “need to prevent fraud” is often put forward (not necessarily fiscal, but also actions that could still be feasible insofar as computer security attacks are perpetrated while cybercriminals are more and more expectant of security breaches).

But it is also true that the value of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin is not defined by a single person at a central or higher point (as is often the case with fiat money, being common in these times that interest rates fall too much and increase, with political criteria, the artificial units of payment in circulation, with no real value).

Its price is determined by means of an orderly spontaneous process based on natural laws of supply and demand, thanks to those who participate in the buying and selling operations (the users), influenced by other factors such as the transactions made at that moment.

In fact, the transactions involve the so-called cryptocurrency miners, whose validation tasks are not strictly unipersonal, since it has to be a network of nodes that has to agree on the approval, which would finalize the corresponding monetary transfer.

Thus, as can be seen, the value does not depend on a single entity. And this does not please the big financial corporations either, which usually participate in the so-called crony capitalism, apart from not disapproving of the current and hegemonic fraudulent fractional reserve system.

What is more, the digitalization of money that interests them is more focused on suppressing, without further ado, cash. But this would not be to avoid contagion (the coronavirus crisis may help to make the population aware of this), but to prevent a smaller proportion of money from escaping state control.

In my opinion, the bank mergers on the table on the European continent are along these lines. This has nothing to do with mere voluntary agreements that are to be expected in a free market (in fact, the Eurocratic authorities often “put their finger on the wound”), but with the fact that strong banking competition complicates oligopolies and controls.

Reality and spontaneous forces end up imposing their will

After all that has been said in the previous section, one might not understand why an entity from a network that is rather allied to the skeptics of non-centrally managed cryptocurrencies has taken on this reviled medium of exchange, but it is not saying that its political-economic worldview criteria have changed.

What is happening is that the expectations for the future of cryptocurrencies (not just bitcoin) are growing, and other market participants will have to adapt (as is the case with digitalization itself, or with cabs in the face of the “collaborative economy” phenomenon).

In fact, it is likely that one day, in the not too long term, it will be close to one million dollars. Recall Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk’s recent $1.5 billion bid (not for research and development purposes, but for the corporate treasury).

In any case, in closing, let’s remember that the tallest towers have fallen and will continue to fall. We’ve seen it with GameStop’s stock following the actions of small Reddit users. And we have to see this with a good eye, as cryptos can defy interventionism and save our “money properties.”

Ángel Manuel García Carmona

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