Governments are one of the silliest things that Human civilization has come up in time. They really are.
It is one thing when people punish someone, namely, vigilante justice, it is another when governments do, namely, law. It is one thing when people take money out of your earnings, perhaps, ransom or extra-pay, purely illegal and pointless, legit when governments take it, in the name of tax. The government has had its reasons for the decisions it takes, the world has its reasons for the advent of it and through a series of theories of social contracts by Hobbes, Rousseau and Locke we know why we need them.
There would be anarchy without them, but, aren’t they being hostile and anarchical?
Bitcoin has never been spared, it was the first-born child of the blockchain famjam so it has always been super packed with the love of critics, haters, and trolls. Had it been government issued, it would have been a very different story, probably unacceptable for the skeptics, but, mostly applicable, expandable, enforced and organized. Things work if not efficiently then at least smoothly when under government jurisdiction.
Is A Govt Issued Stablecoin the answer to Adoption?
A state-issued stablecoin is an encrypted digital asset whose value is pegged 1:1 to a country’s fiat currency. Such an asset would be able to withstand the unrestrained volatility of cryptocurrencies today. Bitcoin, whose value has been on the inexorable rise, is still subject to large price fluctuations and this unpredictability makes it an unreliable store of value. Tokenizing local currency on the blockchain will fill this gap and restore market confidence, all while providing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies time to mature and stabilize.
Stablecoins change things from the fancy bitcoin-like currencies used and bought for fun, prestige, and play, to real life and everyday transactions like buying coffee and paying for the subway.
A national stablecoin will also enable a government to monitor transactions, thereby curbing tax evasion and money laundering activities. We already love the bitcoin goodness of low tax and low transaction fees, will this be changed through stablecoins? Perhaps. It is good then that the government is not working towards it, let’s ride the wave while it’s still native to the adventure lovers.
Is this antithetical to the initial goals of cryptocurrency and trustless decentralization? Hell yeah, it is.
Moreover, even if those issues can be addressed, full decentralization takes time; it is probably naïve to expect a fiat world to transform into a crypto one overnight. State-issued digital dollars would serve as the bridge for the fiat and crypto world, allowing for harmonious co-existence and mutual infrastructural support in the interim. Whether we can transition fully to a new world economy with just cryptocurrency remains to be seen. Poorer countries are trying to make it happen, we really do not know if that will be possible at all in the more advanced and arrogant first world nations.
