Illinois Is Venezuela

If you think this is all futurist theoretical BS, read up on the devastating effect hyperinflation is having as it transforms what was once South America’s most promising economy into a hellish nightmare.

The reason I’m so much fun at parties is that my idea of a good time is to lecture everyone on cryptocurrency. I can pretty much talk bitcoin and blockchain with Hamiltonian fervor all night.

Ever since I began writing about cryptocurrency in general in 2013—I believe this story I wrote for Esquire in fall of that year was the first ever mainstream media mention of Ripple (on whose board I now sit)— I have been making one point to anyone who will endure my “what is cryptocurrency” lecture. People are all wrong about the difference between cryptocurrency and “real money.”

By real money, people invariably mean fiat currency issued by a government. To counter the argument that “real money” is somehow safer than crypto I’ve pointed to Argentina’s 40 percent inflation rate, or the Weimar Republic, and its famous wheelbarrows full of money to buy a loaf of bread (which was arguably intentional as Germany sought to repay Treaty of Versailles debt with devalued deutsche marks). And of course the world has watched in horror as Venezuela has devalued the bolivar to the point of meaninglessness.Continue Reading this Article

These are not hypothetical examples. If you think this is all futurist theoretical BS, read up on the devastating effect hyperinflation is having as it transforms what was once South America’s most promising economy into a hellish nightmare in which people are eating their pets. Governments constantly, reliably, invariably and maddeningly ruin their own currencies by giving in to the temptation to overprint it. The beauty of bitcoin is that, like gold, the entire supply of it that will ever exist on earth (21 million coins), is known about, finite, and will never increase.