|
I'm guessing we are well and truly still within the "too soon to tell" phase of next-generation currencies.
Bitcoin is still a gigantic experiment hindered by poor transactional speed/cost and insane price volatility that hinders its use as a mass means of exchange.
Facebook's Libra(now Diem) remains stillborn after a LOT of noise(everyone joined to see what it was), then everyone(well..most) bailed because they don't trust Facebook. Facebook is committed to NOT launching until they receive regulatory approval starting with the US. Which means never or with suffocating conditions keeping it stillborn.
Digital Yuan contines it's relentless incremental movement towards a broader launch. Trials of free currency in select locations in China continue. The Digital Yuan is NOT a distributed/decentralised currency, it's a digital offshoot of existing Yuan. NO WAY would the CCP/PLA ever let their currency go free.
What crypto will win?
Who knows.
I would bet everything I own that we need to sort ourselves out ASAP.
Why?
Humans in the near future, especially in the developing world, will be conducting most person-to-person and person-to-small-business transactions on mobile payment systems.
3 years ago I spoke at DEF Aus talking about blockchain applications for defence(boring stuff like logistics) and prefaced that the talk wasn't about Bitcoin and don't buy any Bitcoin(it had gone ballistic, peaked and started a long fall 3 days later) for a laugh as it was in the newscycle. Afterwards, 3 people in the audience asked me about buying Bitcoin......
Last year I was a semifinalist for a US Army TRADOC Mad Scientist writing compeititon. My fictional entry was super boring....very little action, my story had China winning the future thru economic warfare.
China already has 40X the volume of mobile payments of the US.
Forget "One Belt, One Road" think "One Platform, One Network" with WeChat and Digital Yuan in the developing world.
We certainly don't want to get shafted by Big Left Tech and government.
But we really don't want to get shafted by the CCP/PLA's Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and Huawei.
Freedom, Innovation, Privacy
|