Are Cryptocurrencies Inflationary?

There’s a debate raging over what, exactly, bitcoin and the thousand or so other cryptocurrencies actually are. Some heavy-hitters are weighing in with strong, if not always coherent opinions:

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon did not mince words when asked about the popularity of virtual currency bitcoin.

Dimon said at an investment conference that the digital currency was a “fraud” and that his firm would fire anyone at the bank that traded it “in a second.” Dimon said he supported blockchain technology for tracking payments but that trading bitcoin itself was against the bank’s rules. He added that bitcoin was “stupid” and “far too dangerous.”

One of the best-known among the bears, investor Peter Schiff, is now making his case in even stronger terms for why bitcoin has advanced ever farther into bubble territory.

Schiff, who predicted the 2008 mortgage crisis, famously referred to bitcoin as digital fool’s gold and compared the cryptocurrency to the infamous bubble in Beanie Babies.

Moreover, the recent run-up in bitcoin hasn’t softened Schiff’s view: If anything, it’s reinforced his sense of impending doom.

Schiff told CoinDesk: “There’s certainly a lot of bullishness about bitcoin and cryptocurrency, and that’s the case with bubbles in general. The psychology of bubbles fuels it. You just become more convinced that it’s going to work. And the higher the price goes, the more convinced you become that you’re right. But it’s not going up because it’s going to work. It’s going up because of speculation.”

“What it comes down to is that bitcoin ain’t money.”

“Libertarian-minded crypto fans saw this was a way to liberate people from the government,” he said, concluding:

“I think it will have the opposite effect. People are going to lose money. This could really backfire, giving libertarian ideals a bad name by making fiat look good. The downside can be really spectacular.” 

Hedge fund manager James Altucher: Cryptocurrencies Could Be Worth $200 Trillion One Day
I’m not exaggerating when I say cryptocurrencies are the biggest innovation since the internet. We’re on the ground floor of an enormous trend that’s going to change the world.

Cryptocurrencies are currencies with no government in the middle. No bank in the middle. No organizations in the middle keeping track of all your payments, or taking advantage of your spending so they can invade your privacy, and on and on.

Cryptocurrencies solve trillions of dollars’ worth of problems, which is why they will be worth trillions of dollars one day.

Consider the potential:

There is currently $200 trillion in cash, money and precious metals used as currencies in the world. Meanwhile, there’s only $200 billion in cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are eventually replacing traditional currencies.

So that $200 billion will eventually rise to the level of currencies. And probably sooner than we can imagine.

Ask yourself, why does the world need multiple currencies? There’s actually no real reason. The only reason we have a U.S. dollar and also a Canadian dollar is that in 1770 the people in Canada decided not to join the U.S. So an artificial border created two currencies. It’s all dictated by artificial borders.

In the past, an ounce of gold would be accepted almost anywhere in the world. In that sense, unbacked modern fiat currencies are a step backwards.

But in cryptocurrency world, there are what I call “Use Borders.” Every currency is defined by its use. For instance, Ethereum is like Bitcoin but it makes “smart contracts” easier. Contract Law is a multi-trillion dollar industry so this has a huge use case. Filecoin makes storage easier. It’s a $100 billion industry. And on.

Studying the “use” cases, and the effectiveness of the coin to solve those use cases can help us make investment decisions confidently.

This is the great promise of cryptocurrencies and why they will change the world. It’s just getting started.