Robert F. Kennedy Jr
@RobertKennedyJr
Powerful insight from @DA_Stockman about what is holding back crypto. He is commenting on my recent statement:
"I am going to support making direct ownership of Bitcoin tax-free. The conversion of Bitcoin back into dollars will be a non-reportable transaction to the IRS and not subject to capital gain."
David says:
The significance of the bolded phrases cannot be overstated. The problem with Bitcoin and all other crypto-currencies today is that they are effectively incarcerated on a monetary reservation surrounded by Federal cops and tax collectors. Accordingly, they have developed no meaningful “use” case or attributes of “moneyness” because Bitcoin is quasi-inconvertible: the risks of bringing wealth stored in Bitcoins back across the tax and regulatory ramps to the banking system world of dollars are just too severe.
As a result, the crypto-world’s state-erected monetary reservation resembles a gambling casino in the otherwise uninhabitable Nevada desert. Capital goes there to wager and punt, but not to operate, invest and settle. And that, in turn, blocks crypto’s capacity to evolve into a usable and stable non-state money that can function both as a store of value and a transaction medium for everyday commerce.
... The violent trading range of Bitcoin just in the last few years... is not evidence of a new money aborning. It tracks the frolicking of Wall Street punters enabled by cheap carry-trade funding and emboldened by the Fed Put under risk asset markets generally.
That is to say, the Fed’s unremitting corruption of the dollar and the Wall Street trading venues has generated an endless search for new wagering opportunities. Not surprisingly, therefore, Wall Street quickly turned crypto-currencies into yet another “asset class”, which is now being aggressively traded by chart-monkeys and algorithms based on factors that are purely intrinsic to the vibrations of the electronic trading pits.
Accordingly, the market cap of Bitcoin currently stands at $1.347 trillion and the 2,400 outstanding cryptos as a group are valued at $2.45 trillion. Yet all of this “value” has been generated without even the bother of price discovery on the appropriate cap rates for non-existent earnings, dividends, other returns on capital, or even at least some evidence of value-added in main street commerce.
That is to say, hemmed in by Federal cops and tax collectors and dominated by Wall Street speculators, these virtuous candidates for badly needed non-state money have metastasized into gambling chips, mainly owned by the 1% and their wanna be imitators among the homegamers.
Meanwhile, with cryptos cordoned off in the gambling pits, this variation of Gresham’s Law works its will. By driving out good money from daily commerce, the central bankers ensure that depreciating dollars remain the spending medium of the main street economy.
2024-08-05T18:49:30.000Z