Most news is old news; what I'm interested in is the news that shapes the crypto future.
China plans to utilize blockchain in a controlling way: Tim Draper
Well... yeah! What else did you expect?
This isn't actually brand new news, but rather harks back to an interview with Tim Draper on BlockTV. Have no idea why this is now being recycled, except perhaps to confuse people with a plethora of worthless predictions. The same interview is also being recycled for Draper's prediction that Bitcoin will hit $250,000 in 2020, or 2022, depending on who you read - he actually said 6 to 12 months after the "halvening".
Anyway, I have diverted myself. Diversions are good; the path to procrastination is strewn with diversions.
Hence, I started listening to the above interview. One key point made in favour of Bitcoin is that credit cards charge some 2.5-4.0% per transaction. This is true, but the charge does not appear to the consumer - it is hidden as charges to the merchant. In contrast, actually spending BTC for a purchase incurs a fee to the consumer. To the purchaser, this just smells like another sales tax. The only way around this is for merchants to absorb the fees by issuing immediate fee-rebates or free transactions.
There are also far better coins for this than BTC - STEEM being an obvious example with free transactions at the point of sale.
Back to China.
The topic of "decentralisation" is a hornet's nest of confusion. The use of a single word to describe something that is multi-faceted means wasting a huge amount of time talking at cross-purposes. The internet itself is decentralised in the sense that if one router goes offline the traffic is rerouted to still arrive at its target. This kind of decentralisation improves the robustness of the network. This is the kind of decentralisation that the Chinese, and many other authorities, like because it eliminates single points of failure in any blockchain currency.
However, when we talk about decentralised forms of governance then this is where the Chinese authorities stop. Indeed, they are not alone in this and every central bank in the world is loathe to cede control of monetary policy. They would be suiciding their whole primary function. This means they all wish to retain some central authority over the management of any central bank digital currency.
Every authority wants to retain authority.
For the individual, I see no way of avoiding being part of any future national digital currency within your own country. Every transaction within such a system will be logged and monitored. So much for crypto-utopia.
Many believe that such official currencies will help the emerging, truly decentralised, coins from gaining adoption. I am less optimistic. How will an individual be able to buy a cryptocoin when every transaction is monitored? Unless, of course, that national authority gives you permission to make such transactions; perhaps as forms of investment.
And thus we come to a game that is already in play: pumping those cryptocurrencies that are actually quite easy to control. With enough logic and money, many current coins are prone to re-centralisation. This is even more dangerous for the individual, as such coins may appear to be decentralised when they are actually not.
This is not the far future, but will play out within the coming decade.
[BUY MAXUV] - [READ MAXUV]
Cryptoeconomics
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