Bitcoin economist and author of The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking calls foreign exchange markets a “technological step backwards.”
In a recent tweetstorm, Saifedean Ammous says currency markets are essentially a casino sanctioned by governments. He calls Bitcoin the only viable alternative for the international transfer of value and says that’s the main reason banks like JP Morgan are against the leading cryptocurrency.
“A Bitcoin Standard removes the need for an FX market by having one universal neutral money. Bitcoin trading is just hastening the replacement by taking all the gambling away from rigged inefficient central bank proprietary platforms to real free markets.
The inefficiencies in the FX market are enormous because licenses for international correspondence banking are an oligopoly assigned by central bank. Bitcoin is the only working alternative to the monopoly on international value transfer. This is why JP Morgan hates Bitcoin.
When critics dismiss Bitcoin as ‘just gambling’ they miss that most FX markets are also ‘just gambling’. Bitcoin needs more liquidity to grow into a global monetary standard, and eating FX makets’ inefficient government-run gambling is a good start.
Economic reality doesn’t care about your value judgment on gambling. Gambling adds significant liquidity to any monetary asset in the FX casino and Bitcoin is no different. Deeper liquidity increases Bitcoin’s salability, the only quality that matters for money.
FX markets are a technological step backward from the international gold standard, recreating barter across international border. We did not invent new moneys in 1914 by going off the gold standard, we regressed to a primitive form of barter so governments could rob their people.”
In a fireside chat with veteran Wall Street investor Tone Vays earlier this year, Ammous explores the history and future of money.
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