Bitcoin will eventually be the world's 'single currency' says Twitter CEO

David Matthews

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Bitcoin has been on a bit of a roller coaster ride the past few months. After climbing to over $16,000 in December, the price of bitcoin has tempered a bit at $8,950 as of this writing. Despite the prospect of a major bust by economists, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey believes in about 10 years, it will be the only currency the world uses.

During a recent interview with The Times, he believes that the "world ultimately will have a single currency, the internet will have a single currency." He thinks it'll probably happen over the next ten years or perhaps sooner. Many might say that's a very...optimistic timeline even if bitcoin eventually becomes the leading world currency, supplanting the American dollar.

All of this talk about cryptocurrency and bitcoin in particular becoming a major currency isn't new for Dorsey. In an interview with The Verge last August, he predicted that blockchain would become the "next big unlock" and noted that blockchain itself is not something with simply financial applications but that the ability to “distribute and decentralize the ledger enables proof of work, and proof of one entity, in an untrusted network. There are so many problems we can help solve [with blockchain] that are not just related to finance, but finance is an obvious one.”

Now obviously, switching the world from thousands of different currencies to a single currency would be a seismic and monumental shift not only in economic policy but also political policy. While some countries such as Japan, the United States, and the European Union fully embrace bitcoin, other countries such as Bolivia and Cambodia either discourage or outright ban the cryptocurrency entirely. China allows private parties to hold and trade bitcoin but not financial firms like banks. Because bitcoin is decentralized, nations cannot technically shut down the bitcoin network or change how it works.

For Dorsey's part, he actually owns at least some amount of bitcoin and his other company, Square, added the option to buy and sell bitcoin directly from the Square Cash app. Major online retailers like Microsoft, Dell, and Newegg accept payments in bitcoin. However, because of high transaction fees and the relative high value of the currency, consumers may be unwilling to actually make purchases with bitcoin.

Despite those challenges, Dorsey believes they will eventually be overcome and bitcoin will be used to buy something as trivial as coffee and groceries. As the Internet and globalization continue to rise, perhaps bitcoin (or another rival cryptocurrency) will be yet another tie that binds us together.

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Cyber currency is suited only for a cyber economy and certainly most improbable on the Serengeti, Gobi, Sahara & Patagonian to say the least. The Sudan, Yemen and Dominican Republic would have little use either. Then you're between a rock & a hard place with TWO world currencies???

Sounds like the Dot-Bomb junk of the 80-90's to me.
 
In 10 years?! I would bet this guy my entire retirement savings and everything I own that in 10 years I will be able to walk into a store and pay with USD.

For the fun of having this thought experiment, let's say it could happen. The risk of having the entire planet on the same electronic system of money would far out-weigh any benefit. In fact- it sounds like the premise for a futuristic apocalypse movie.

He says it's a great idea and therefore everyone will do it is either insanely arrogant, insanely stupid, or both.

Or he just wants to get a news story about it, since until 2 mins ago, I couldn't have told you who Jack Dorsey was.

btw, Jack - they still have payphones, and that is a technology that everyone agrees is long-gone.
 
This guy is full of s. Cryptocurrency is by definition an open system, inviting all new players in.
 
I have a good friend who is a 40-year trader and now advises trading for one of the largest banks in America. This guy knows money and has a lot of wealth to show for that knowledge. I asked him his take on the whole Bitcoin thing. This was his response:

"When I look at cryptos, there’s nothing behind them. No standing military. No reserves. No ability to tax the populace. At best you could argue that some money launderer performed a transaction with them. But that was long ago. All the recent transactions on the block chain are trades among speculators in the Bitcoin. There’s not cars or refrigerators being bought with Bitcoin. Your local Lexus dealer wouldn’t take Bitcoin for a Lexus sale. Trades in Bitcoin can take hours to transact, whereas dollar cash is instant. Crypto exchanges can and do get hacked.

I had a friend call me in December asking what his son should do with his 60 Bitcoins he bought at $12 each when it first came out. I told him to sell all of it. At the minimum sell half and consider the rest playing with house money. He apparently started pulling $1,000 a day in cash from Bitcoin ATMs in San Francisco, but he was afraid to sell because of the tax consequences. Well his tax liability has been more than halved."
 
The boy is dreaming ..... having ANY currency that can flex as much as bit coin is disaster just waiting to happen. No economy would be safe from total collapse and as we've seen, it's far from safe from hacking ...
 
The thing is, he's probably got a lot in Bitcoin. He's a CEO of some company in the tech industry. Possibly these people may listen to what he has to say. Don't buy bitcoin because this guy says so, buy Bitcoin because you know there are people out there who actually may believe what he says.

I'm not a smart guy by any means. People in my daily life like to make sure I know it. I know you arent going to make a big profit on Bitcoin if you are buying in now.... so as long as you arent investing in money you are relying on when it drops down, you arent really hurting. Okay, okay... this is all probably common sense so I'll just shut up now... but just saiyan. If you could make a few bucks by playing with your phone, would you?

Edit: A few bucks every other week, give or take?
 
Don’t see wallet addresses becoming the mark of the beast, but the folks writing it off today will be the same ones buying the top tomorrow.
 
No. Bitcoin is going to wither and die. Not immediately, but it has major flaws that can't be corrected, and those flaws will eventually bring it down.

The most important flaw is that once information is encoded into the block chain, it can never be removed. Already, trolls have embedded a small number of child porn images into the Bitcoin block chain and a larger number of links to child porn, some of which are in the dark net. Those images and links are there to stay. That means that possessing the entire Bitcoin block chain, or any part of it that includes child porn, is illegal in nearly all jurisdictions worldwide. Bitcoin exchanges risk criminal prosecution, because they can't operate without the block chain. Miners have to have the block chain on their computers, too, and without miners, a cryptocurrency is on its last legs. Even ordinary users likely have a part of the block chain stored on their computers, and if their hunk of it is contaminated with child porn, they're vulnerable to prosecution. The only prophylactic is to delete the block chain and stop using Bitcoin - or legalize possessing child porn, which I don't see as likely at all.

There are powerful interests that are eager to see Bitcoin go away (especially major banks), and they *will* get around to attacking this vulnerability through law enforcement, over which they have considerable influence. Therefore, it's just a matter of time before Bitcoin is overtly criminalized and users of it will be liable to prosecution and prison terms.

A modified block chain-based cryptocurrency is in our future, I think, but it won't be Bitcoin, or any of the contemporary hundred+ rivals to it, which have the same vulnerability as Bitcoin's block chain and/or they're merely ponzi schemes with no serious intent to be used as mediums of exchange. The likeliest future is that the large banks themselves will decide to throw their weight behind a block-chain based cryptocurrency, with operating rules that preserve their privileges and prevent the block chain from being contaminated with extraneous information. Governments will get into the act, too, to make sure that cryptocurrencies don't enable tax evasion or hide criminal transactions.

As with any currency, criminal transactions will be possible - but transactions will not be hidden. Bitcoin currently permits some tricky maneuvers that enable anonymity: exchanges can bundle and split transactions to make it almost impossible to trace them. That won't be permitted in a bank-backed, government-sanctioned cryptocurrency. Transactions will be transparent.

Bitcoin exchanges have also been shown to be vulnerable to theft. The design of Bitcoin doesn't help much with preventing it.

We should view Bitcoin as a Gen 1 cryptocurrency that is hopelessly flawed. Gen 2 will get here eventually, and it will be safer to use, but you can forget about anonymity. As for the wealth that is represented in Bitcoin valuation, that's going to be flushed down the toilet. Not immediately, but betting on Bitcoin is a fool's game, be you an average Joe or a Twitter founder.
 
While I agree cryptocurrency will be the 1 end currency, it will not be bitcoin. There is a finite supply. You need one that can grow.
 
No it won't. Bitcoin's blokchain is already at the edge of capacity for reasonable transaction times, not to mention the energy usage (block difficulty).
Maybe some far descendant evetually will, but that's sci-fi for now.

This guy probably has some bitcoins to sell...
 
No it won't. Some other cryptocurrencies may be a world currency but Bitcoin is the worst crypto of all. Just because it was first doesn't mean its good.


This guy should put his head back up his a$$

That and it will cause financial problems all over the world, let other countrys have their currency and leave well enough alone ?
Its bad enough it is costly to create bitcoins then have cyber crooks go after your mined coins.
 
I'd argue that perfect/close to perfect never works in reality. a Global currency will never become mainstream and come close to the relative currency in each country. It'll always be volatile.. It could be an alternative currency, but would have to be monitored somehow.. to avoid illegal activity.
 
People like him are grossly ignorant or purposely ignoring the "powers that be" that use currency to manipulate the global populace/marketplace. There is no way they will allow cryptocurrencies to overtake currency unless they control it entirely.
 
Brave prediction.

Virtual currencies remind me of gold, except it's much easier to trade. If we used it as a currency it would come with most of the advantages and problems of the gold standard.

I.e. You can't control the supply in line with your rate of economic expansion, so it can hold you back if your economic capacity wants/needs to grow (e.g. wartime) If one entity owns too much of it, they can influence the growth of everyone else. Its too volatile in the short term to used as a reliable way to pay wages. It's a magnet for crime, money laundering and terrorism.

I think it will become popular for international and online payments, but it cannot replace fiat currency.
 
In the scientific community, saying something like in ten-years time is pretty much the equivalent of we really have no clue.
 
While I agree cryptocurrency will be the 1 end currency, it will not be bitcoin. There is a finite supply. You need one that can grow.

No, this isn't a real problem, Rippleman.

First, there *must* be a finite supply of any currency. Otherwise the currency inflates to infinity and becomes worthless.

Second, the supply of Bitcoins *is* expandable. That's what mining does. But there is a built-in limit as to how much can be economically mined, and that's a function of the value of Bitcoins and the energy and equipment costs to create more of them. This is a moving limit, because energy costs of mining are determined by the energy efficiency of mining rigs, which is improving over time, and the rising computational challenge of adding more Bitcoins - each new Bitcoin requires, on average, more computation than the last. Throw in Bitcoin valuation fluctuations and you'll start to see that whether the supply can be economically expanded is a moment-to-moment decision. When better hardware is introduced, you'll see a surge of coin creation; when Bitcoin valuations rise, you'll likewise see a surge; but it's self-limiting owing to rising computation requirements to create more Bitcoins. Limits are a feature, not bug. You don't want a cryptocurrency that has no limits on coin creation.

It's a clever scheme, but it's not, for the long haul, stable. The main problem isn't a lack of expandability. The main problem is the illegality of possessing the block chain. Vulnerability to theft and lack of transparency due to exchange manipulations are also concerns. All three of those problems paint a big target on Bitcoin's back, and it's just a matter of time before governments and banks sort out where their interests lie and act against it.

The uncertainty surrounding Bitcoin contributes to wild valuation fluctuations, which is also not a good thing for a worldwide currency.

A mature cryptocurrency will hold its value without large fluctuations. Bitcoin will never achieve that level of stability.
 
In ten years' time, Bitcoin will be something you delete from your hard drive to make room for the next version of Grand Theft Auto.
 
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