The politicians are the ruling class of the society. It changes in distinction from being a republican constitutionalism to full-blown dictatorship. But given this phenomenon, they are supposed to be smart is guessing the undercurrents of evolution. Again ‘supposed to be’ but are not. The regular chiding that I constantly indulge in here against our political classes around the world is an annoying and tiresome exercise. But they keep providing new ammunition, I promise you.
The constant trope on which the entire political class around the world keeps coming at cryptocurrencies are based on an addictive premise of Bitcoin being the safe haven for money launderers and terrorists. As if banks have not already managed to achieve this remarkable feat. As if fiat currency is issued by Archangel Michael in heaven destined with bringing order and justice in the world while Bitcoin is somehow the Lucifer incarnate hell-bent on bringing chaos to the Eden they have concocted on earth.
This myth was burst this week when a research forwarded by Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Center of Sanctions and Illicit Finance with Elliptic, a Blockchain company tracked the prevalence of illicit funds in crypto market especially Bitcoin between 2013-16 and concluded that the share was less than 1% and declined after its widespread popularity since 2017. In contrast, stands the 2-5% of global GDP almost between $1-2 trillion that was laundered in, yes you guess right, in US dollar that is a fiat currency issued by the government of United States.
Politicians are targeting cryptocurrencies because they are easy to target given the need to cash in fiat currency in order to use them and nature of blockchains and public exchanges. If one is not using an altcoin like Monero which are extremely bent on privacy concerns, they are relatively easy to monitor. The whole point of blockchain is that everything is recorded transparently on the ledger and thus it is easy to monitor the movement of large sums of assets especially if they are stolen as it was demonstrated by NEM executives who targeted the exchanges this week to track the stolen assets from hack committed against them.
So the next time, a politician opens up his or her mouth to regurgitate convenient lies, don’t put up with it. From British PM Teresa May to US Treasury Security Steve Mnuchin, its time for our politicians to try not to act like technological Luddites for a change.
Is it too much to ask for?
