Crypto trading is a digital Wild West. Before governments and financial authorities take on the role of sheriff and cobble together rules and articles of law for trading bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies, they should scratch their heads.
It’s not worth the effort and money. If they are going to regulate, they are actually authorizing this form of wind trading as well. Investors in crypto are indirectly informed that they cannot really be bothered by this, because the government is watching.
If action has to be taken, the only measure is a total ban.
Not that it helps much. People will always look for means of speculation off the beaten track. Depending on the era, flower bulbs, stamps, works of art, whiskeys and NFTs (digital expressions) have served as hot air.
A message that a contemporary work of art has been sold for a ton leads to a work by the same artist being sold for a million a week later. Because nowhere is herd behavior as common as with the rich.
The drama surrounding the demise of the digital platform FTX should be a learning experience for people who join the sect that swears by cryptocurrencies. A billion dollars in real money would have gone up in smoke. But everyone knew the risks beforehand. They entered an unregulated market in which they were at the mercy of the pagans. If the government also regulates this market, it must regulate at every excess. Perhaps there will soon be a wave of speculation about old Hema underpants, for which rules will have to be made.
The most important thing is that governments and central banks are not afraid of all kinds of digital innovations that people want to invest their money in against all advice. Unfortunately, they feel put on the defensive. The US Fed is developing a digital dollar and the ECB is considering a digital euro. A digital euro would be a fast, easy and secure instrument for daily payments.
It’s both superfluous and nonsensical. Even without blockchain, money traffic is already digitizing. Cash is rapidly disappearing from society, because people pay en masse with plastic or smartphone. Sometimes a pin code is required for this, for small amounts this can be done contactless.
This is the only way to pay in many establishments. At most checkouts of supermarkets there are signs ‘only for debit card’. Anyone who goes out tomorrow with a banknote of 100 euros will now find it almost as difficult to lose it at a cash register as a snipe of 100 guilders. Central banks should not add their own cryptocurrency to the existing jungle of financial weeds. It will only be overgrown.
The best thing governments and central banks can do is get their hands off crypto completely and just say: ‘You’re in the Wild West, where there’s a price on your head, the sheriff doesn’t exist and there’s no central bank. who shoots faster than his shadow.’