The cryptosphere is already aware of the disruptive potential of Bitcoin and crypto-assets monetary and economic systems. However, it is still quite surprising to see that now even a large American bank, such as Morgan Stanley, is doubting the omnipotence of the dollar against the king of cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin, the only serious contender for the throne of the dollar king?
Since the end of World War II and the Bretton Woods agreements, the US dollar has established itself as the world’s reserve currency.
Ruchir Sharma, as Head of Global Strategy at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, shares an interesting reflection on this in the Financial Times. The banker evaluates there competitors who could replace the dollar as the global reserve currency.
Past the euro of the European Union and the renminbi of China – which do not seem to him to be sufficiently reliable competitors -, Ruchir Sharma comes to consider the case of Bitcoin (BTC):
“The dollar’s reign is likely to end when the rest of the world starts losing confidence that the US can keep paying its bills. […] Money printing is likely to continue, even when the pandemic passes. Trusted or not, Bitcoin will gain from widening distrust in the traditional alternatives.”
With the coronavirus crisis, the already huge debt of the United States has become more than worrying. This makes the Morgan Stanley expert say that:
“The dollar’s reign is likely to end when the rest of the world starts losing confidence that the US can keep paying its bills. That is how dominant currencies fell in the past. “
If Bitcoin goes from the status of an investment to that of a medium of exchange …
… It would be Game Over for the dollar. This is in summary what Ruchir Sharma thinks since, according to him, even if bitcoins are more like an investment for the time being, the banker sees a change underway :
“Bitcoin is also starting to make progress on its ambition to replace the dollar as a medium of exchange. Today, most bitcoins are held as an investment, not used to pay bills, but that is changing. Smaller businesses are starting to use bitcoin in international trade, particularly in countries where dollars can be hard to come by (such as Nigeria) or the local currency is unstable (Argentina). And in recent weeks PayPal and its Venmo subsidiary have started storing bitcoin with an eye towards accepting it as payment next year.”
Even among those who are most skeptical of the technological news that digital currencies are, gold is preferred over the dollar, as the precious metal has been recognized as “protection against the decline of state currencies for hundreds of years. ‘years’ .
Ruchir Sharma concludes his presentation by saying that the current bitcoin and cryptocurrency rush should “serve as a warning to government money printers”, especially in the United States.
Without wanting to, the Morgan Stanley chief also ends with a sarcastic tone toward governments that intervene to regulate the digital currency boom saying:
“And stepping in to regulate the digital currency boom, as some governments are already considering, may only accelerate this populist revolt.”
