(IJCH) Revisiting Government Policy and Bitcoin - The Motives Behind The Rhetoric
(IJCH) Revisiting Government Policy and Bitcoin - The Motives Behind The Rhetoric
IJCH - Inside JaiChai's Head (meaning: My warped, personal opinions and musings)
From the Author:
Salutations.
I am JaiChai.
And if I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you before, I'm delighted to make your acquaintance now.
I invite you to interact with everyone, learn, and have as much fun as possible!
For my returning Steemian friends, "It's always great to see you again!"
A Tale of Two Asian Countries
Embracing Bitcoin - The Philippines
I've lived in the Philippines for many years now.
And in all that time the Philippines has always been cryptocurrency friendly.
A lot of that is due to the large OFW population and huge amount of remittance returning to the country.
The plight of OFWs and the corrupt centralized international money transfer corporations is a topic that is too broad to discuss in this article.
For many greedy reasons, the legacy money transfer entities charge the highest fees to transfer money to the poorest countries! WTF?
Suffice it to say that decentralized alternatives are a Godsend for the Filipinos!
Many years before Bitcoin was on the public radar in the U.S., Filipinos began building the infrastructure for using it.
All major banks came onboard and anyone (bank member or not) could scan his Bitcoin QR-Code and trade Bitcoin for Philippine pesos (PHP).
Online Bank/Bitcoin Wallets like Ron Hose's coins.ph makes it extremely easy to buy/sell bitcoin and recieve PHP at a variety of different shops, malls, stores, pawn shops, and banks.
See:
Experiencing a place where "Bitcoin Convenience" is Not a Fantasy.
Currently, the coins.ph wallet supports Bitcoin, Ether and PHP - with recent pleas from a growing number of Filipino Steemians to support SBD and Steem.
I have personally used coins.ph to convert Steem into Bitcoin and sent it straight to my girlfriend's Bank/Bitcoin wallet on coins.ph.
See:
(IJCH) Why & How I sent Steem for the First Time - Objective: Cash Out in Foreign Fiat...
The Philippine Government is striving to align its Cryptocurrency Policies with most other Crypto Friendly Nations to facilitate crypto-fiat compatibility with surrounding countries.
Platforms like Stellar and OmiseGo have been quietly working out of the limelight and creating some impressive business relationships here.
The People are Willing But... (Vietnam)
The Vietnamese Government has a history of publicly criticizing cryptocurrency; while the population love it.
And it seems that it will be that way for quite awhile.
Why?
Because telling the average, young Vietnamese citizen to stop using cryptocurrency and stick to the Vietnamese dong (the nation's fiat) is like telling them that eating bread is forbidden and that all law-abiding Vietnamese shall only eat rice.
Both edicts are ludicrous and could never be totally enforced on the streets in real life.
On my last visit to Vietnam, my U.S. dollars were much more welcome at vendors than the Vietnamese dong. So, the acceptance of alternate currencies is by no means a foreign concept.
And the young people I associated with are simply gaga over Bitcoin and all things cryptocurrency.
Disclaimer: Forgive me if I appear culturally callous. No disrespect is intended.
The fervor of the Vietnamese over Bitcoin evokes the same feelings I got when - for the first time - I heard an overly passionate, heavily Japanese-accented rendition of John Denver's "Country Roads".
The awkwardness was only matched by my urge to bust a gut laughing. Of course, out of respect, I remained as polite as possible.
But I nearly passed out trying to suppress my grins and giggles. In the end, I was severely punished by the "Beer Gods" with a burning egress of my beer through my nose!
Oops, sorry. I've strayed off-topic.
Ok. Off tangent and coming back to the present now.
However awkward they may appear, the Bitcoin Fanboys from years ago got nothin' on these Vietnamese young adults! Seriously, it resembles a cult following; an underground religion complete with hallowed priests and arcane rituals.
Continuing onward with my original food analogy...
Because of Vietnam's past French influence bread is still considered "classier" - possessing a measure of prestige appeal because it can cost way more than "the common man's rice".
Doing a "Prohibition" style crusade against the consumption of bread will surely yield the same result as the original attempt to criminalize alcohol consumption.
In a word. Failure.
So what's all this got to do with governmental acceptance or banning of Bitcoin?
Simple.
No matter which stance is chosen, it's a win/win for the government.
Think of it.
Because of Bitcoin's decentralized nature it will be very costly to police Bitcoin users. Pandora's box has been opened and now it's impossible to "un-Bitcoin" the world.
Suppressing its growth and punishing known supporters will cost more governmental resources that many of the poorer countries can not afford.
Besides, any semi-successful attempts at suppression will only move it underground.
The best ploy for any poor governnment is to use the Bitcoin issue as a means towards political gain. Yes, a government could catch the odd, token careless Bitcoin user, reap a little fine and show their strength by incarcerating the offender.
But the real value of exploiting the Bitcoin controversy is crafting the nation's image to enhance future negotiations and alliances with other nations.
Again, think of it.
Japan, Korea and many other Asian nations are receptive to Bitcoin, while other nations are outwardly anti-Bitcoin and covertly mining the crap out of Bitcoin.
China flip-flops whenever it suits them, while Russia says "Nyet!" to Bitcoin, use our CryptoRuble!
Iran: "Oh yeah? Well take your sanctions and shove it!"
Iran will always play the "Bad Boy" spoiler - at least until the U.S. publicly apologizes for its economical hanky-panky and political manipulation of Iran in the past and does a token show of restoration efforts.
Yeah, right. Like that's gon'na happen in our lifetime. Or maybe if another Halliburton-in-sheep's-clothing sees a great opportunity to make a buck?
Iran has steadily gone behind the U.S.' back for their country's resources; effectively neutering any trade sanctions and accelerating the devaluation of U.S. fiat.
Nowadays, Iran can easily trade with other, favorable nations for everything they need or desire, but is currently unavailable within country (including atomic grade plutonium).
Consequently, embracing Bitcoin should not be a surprise to anyone. The policy is fully aligned with their trademarked antogonistic posture and ongoing Anti-American campaign.
Hell, they're probably doing the happy dance as we speak!
As a side note, I predict a lot of the wealth from future Bitcoin play will probably be set aside for the next energy war. And it won't be over oil. It will be over the Solar kilowatt. But that's for another rant...
So, do you see that the current scenario is a win/win for Iran?
They not only jump on the Bitcoin train earlier than other major players upon the world stage, they get to thumb their noses at the U.S.
Bottom Line?
Cryptocurrency is here to stay and governments know it.
And whatever stance individual governments take is not based on lofty ideologies or technological phobias.
The position a nation takes on the Bitcoin issue is based solely on the presence (or absence) of sufficient economic resources to technologically compete.
Follow the money and you'll see how any nation will squeeze as much social currency from the Bitcoin controversy; hence, revealing the political posture they've decided to be in their best interests.
By JaiChai
(This article contains excerpts from: https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@jaichai/ijch-government-policy-and-bitcoin-behind-the-rhetoric-prompted-by-an-excellent-post-from-rok-sivante)
Thanks for stopping by.
About the Author
Believing that school was too boring, he dropped out of High School early; only to earn an AA, BS and MBA in less than 4 years much later in life – while working full-time as a Navy/Marine Corps Medic.
In spite of a fear of heights and deep water, he performed high altitude, free-fall parachute jumps and hazardous diving ops in deep, open ocean water.
After 24 years of active duty, he retired in Asia.
Since then, he's been a full-time, single papa and actively pursuing his varied passions (Writing, Disruptive Technology, Computer Science and Cryptocurrency - plus more hobbies too boring or bizarre for most folk).
He lives on an island paradise with his teenage daughter, longtime girlfriend and three dogs.
"Inside JaiChai's Head"
hahaha I love it :)
upvoted
ps your titles are quite hard to read. consider removing things like "(IJCH) ". Title need to attract attention. Yours is not.
Great read as usual. The only problem I see is that bitcoin is never going to amount to anything much. It's pretty much just dial-up internet that people still believe to be something worthwhile. There really isn't a future for BTC. There will be stable currencies like Bitshares smar assets (bit USD, bitEUR etc.) and scalable currencies with real governance and great tech like Dash and PIVX that also offer privacy (which BTC is an utter failure at. https://www.dashforcenews.com/what-bitcoins-civil-war-taught-me-about-media-manipulation-on-both-sides/
I'm also really interested in NEM, NANO and ZenCash.
Thanks so much for visiting. And I agree, compared to the rest, Bitcoin hasn't got much utility. It's almost as inconvenient as gold to spend.
Namaste, JaiChai
Great post! It's funny to so how governments feel the need to have control over crypto when they are pretty clueless about how and why it works.
I agree.
Thanks for visiting, commenting, and of course, your kind praise.
May you and yours be well and love life today.
Namaste, Jaichai
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Cryptocurrency has come to stay. Countries fighting it should spend their energy and resources building facilities to help them.