Bitcoin Will Not Be Outlawed

Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy said yesterday that given that it is not a currency, Bitcoin will not be outlawed, therefore government intervention is one more threat to Bitcoin’s continued rise that can be discounted, leading to the number one cryptocurrency dominating the 21st century. 

In an interview on Kitco News yesterday, Michael Saylor laid out his thoughts as to why Bitcoin had no “existential threats”, and why this would allow it to dominate as a store of value in the coming years and decades. 

Saylor told Michelle Makori, editor-in-chief of Kitco News: 

“I think that Bitcoin is going to be the emerging strong money store of value asset in the 21st century,” And “There are 8 billion people that need a strong money or a monetary asset. If they’re going to live a decent life, that asset needs to be digital.” 

According to Saylor, the word “cryptocurrency” is perhaps problematic. He says that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies should be regarded as “crypto assets”. 

“Money can be decomposed into a currency component and an asset component. And these aren’t really cryptocurrencies, they’re crypto assets. And Bitcoin is a crypto asset,” he said. “And I think that if you look at comments, probably commentary by Jerome Powell, by Christina Legarde, by the Deputy Governor of the Chinese central bank, by Gary Gensler, they’ve all commented that this is a digital asset. It’s not a digital currency.” 

Saylor goes on to use the recent example of Turkey and how even though the Turkish authorities banned crypto as a form of payment, they did not restrict it being used as an investment. 

“In the example of Turkey, they didn’t want people use it as a currency. That’s no different than what the IRS said in 2014 in the U.S. when they actually taxed it on transfer, they also effectively said, you can’t use it as currency. So, basically stating that we don’t want something to be used as currency because it threatens our currency is not the same as depriving people of an asset. And even the Turkish central bank hasn’t deprived, or hasn’t limited Turkish citizens from owning the asset,” 

Finally, Saylor remarked that stable coins could be what concerns governments more, given that they enable the transfer of large sums. 

“They’re going to be concerned about stable coins, like the ability to move billions of dollars of euros on a crypto rail, or the ability to move billions of dollars of us dollars on a crypto rail. That’s going to draw the interest of the banks because currency is the provenance of the bankers and the government. And they’re going to be concerned about controlling their currency,” 

Contributed by CryptoDaily.