Welcome to Finextra. We use cookies to help us to deliver our services. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you may change your preferences at our Cookie Centre. Please read our Privacy Policy.
For Finextra's free daily newsletter, breaking news and flashes and weekly job board.
Whilst it is easy to “mourn” the loss of US$600bn in cryptocurrencies “value”, let’s pause there for a second.
All the money in the world is backed by nothing but “full faith and credit” of the government that issued that money. That’s why it’s called “fiat money”.
Cryptocurrencies are a form of money, but not “fiat” – as there is not even a lame government “promise” behind any of them (“stablecoin” is a different story altogether). Cryptocurrency is not a “legal tender” either – as you cannot pay your taxes with it.
To re-phrase those famous quotes about the Devil, the greatest trick Bitcoin ever pulled was to convince the world it did exist…
So, let’s rejoice as digital bits few people even begin to comprehend are still worth over US$200bn – to put things into perspective, that’s more that Top 10 global airlines combined, with all their planes, pilots, stewardesses, ground facilities and other tangible real assets.
No brain. Pain. No gain.
Member since
19 Mar 2009
Location
Blog posts
5,550
Comments
5,832
This post is from a series of posts in the group:
Being a forum for blockchain ideas
Heather Lee
35 m 0
Paul Shumsky
13 h 0 2 1
Ralph Hazell
20 h 0 2
James Stickland
17 Sep 0