Bitcoin; A Danger to the Established Financial Institutions
Disclaimer
This is in no way, shape or form, fluid and function, an analytical, qualitative or intelligent compte rendu. There is absolutely no financial advice here because the only financial advice I can give is to research, research, and research. This "idea" is much more a historical op-ed and a greater review of the global financial system, and how Bitcoin is playing a role in that. This is highly subjective, and I am not going to give all the sources I absolutely should for this, as that would take an astronomical amount of time for me on something that I really am shy on giving, which is this:
Bitcoin is the clearest and most present danger to the economic sovereignty of the United States, the global world powers, and the shadow financial institutions that run their own pseudo-government of business and industry. That isn't conspiracy speak, that is simple economic theory.
Thesis
There are much more intelligent and eloquent authors in the world that could take any one segment of what is contained here, but as none of them were available to write this, this author humbly requests the reader's patience. Also this author asks that the reader entertain the concepts to follow, not to trust wholeheartedly and accept as their own beliefs, but to think about a little bit, critique it, tear it apart, take the good and bad, and just read. This is a lot of economic theories condensed and cut up and spliced together in wacky ways combined with historical elements that seemingly have little to do with each other, but I aim to draw the lines.
The first topic is the US dollar as the global standard of currency for trade(dollarization), pushed forth by the United States of America as a demand for their blanket allegiance to the allied powers in the rebuild of the world post WW2. There are a lot more steps involved in this, and some fascinating history, including near wars between allied powers and some really scummy backstabbing by the US that may or may not have led to current Middle Eastern issues, this author highly encourages interested parties to research the Bretton Woods System. The immediate steps following this were how trading was going to be done between the major global powers, and in turn shoveling it right down the throat of every other country, forcing the entire world to buy the dollar.
This is going to be the second topic, because it is not thoroughly explained in any sort of finance class, where they focus on explaining the market in terms of the dollar, but not the dollar in terms of the market, or market psychology. There is an actual market for the dollar, that is to say, various global financial institutions, and national banks, and international banks, all try to buy up and sell various national currencies. The mechanics behind all of this are rather boring and long, they essentially amount to speculation on any specific nations economic future as current economic upturn or downturn. If that sounds extremely corrupt and messed up to the point that any reader questions their fundamental understanding of it, don't. This is an extremely dangerous game that allows any economically worthy participant to play.
As demand for the dollar rose, the United States profited off of their ability to actually print it, first based on the promise of its worth in gold, gold and silver, and then nothing (enter the term fiat, as it currently stands fiat is currencies, like the dollar, without any real backing). Of course this led to a dramatic decrease in the demand of the dollar, and some very angry customers who were keeping their gold in the US Federal Reserve during WW2 and after, but all eventually settled when the United States of America made it very clear, America does not care about any opposition. The dollar is backed by the US boot heel. It would be an understatement to suggest that a number of secretive and public conflicts the US has been involved in were centered on this proof. The G7, that is to say USA and the major European powers, got in line very quickly with this, as they all ended up needing to agree to the system as the hyperinflation post war led to an economic growth output greater than actually capable as backed by any sort of gold or material standard.
And that is the third topic. The dollar had to be removed from any material standard because there was not enough to support the global economy as it grew post-WW2. This author writes a bit too much about hyperinflation, and this article is certainly not meant to focus on that, although the growth of cryptocurrencies YOY is a little hyperinflationary. This third topic is also a crucial aspect to the cryptocurrency-existence argument. Bitcoin is backed in the same way the United States Dollar is, that is, faith and trust. While the USD was forced down the world's throat with violence, and some very predatory interests, Bitcoin is grass roots. It doesn't feel that way now, but cryptocurrency is not a question of if, but when and how far.
While most economic theorists, and financial analysts might disregard the psychological implications of the system participants, there is something to say that they fail to accurately predict, let alone understand. This author relies on their intuition and their understanding that the system is full of individuals, and that individualism is to be fostered, as that is true economic and societal growth, and not just in a hippy dippy way, happier workers are better workers, more creative, more relaxed, less constrained to tunnel vision, etc. However, in this case, the individuals are the countries that have been getting raped, and that word is not being used lightly, by the American and European governments in their own corner, the Russian in its', and in turn now China. This is evident enough by El Salvador adopting Bitcoin as a legal tender, followed by Paraguay, Panama, Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina (1) having major government deputies support publicly (on twitter) their own countries adopting Bitcoin as legal tender. If any country knows the economic despair the United States can bring upon a nation without any major news organization giving it the time of day, it is these.
Enter the fourth topic, shadow economic war. This is the simplest, in that it is the same as any other war. One entity wants something from the other, and is willing to fight for it. Capitalism at its base requires a fight, a winner and a loser. Due to the economic scope of the G7 compared to any other nation, their rules were the world's rules. Any party not interested in playing had to either deal with some terrible amount of intranational tragedies, got invaded in the name of democracy, or just got sanctioned into submission. A large amount of this is due to the ability of the G7 to strangle that nation, and it's business elements, from US dollars so that they cannot perform global trade; and by refusing to buy their currency, they create a massive supply with very little demand. Say a country, like Venezuela, doesn't want to play by the rules, doesn't want to buy a lot of US Dollars just to trade with some other country. Or say they don't want American businesses to own their national resources. Well, what could happen is that no major country will buy Venezuela's currency, thus driving the demand to zero, and its buying power. Next, they won't sell them any USD, not like they could afford it anyways. Of course this author uses this as a completely hypothetical scenario to illustrate the theoretical capabilities of this system for power and control.
Following up with another simple topic, control. That is to say, control is power, especially in the economic sense. If Latin America is willing to adopt Bitcoin, or any other cryptocurrency as legal tender, and this legal tender has real value that is ~uncontrollable, then the G7 has lost its power. They are now able to trade with any other nation, or business accepting Bitcoin itself. While most UN-sanctions would prevent trade being done with this country regardless, the country has a very easy black market accessible compared to now. Furthermore, there is no need to go from El Salvador's currency to USD to Mexico's, and vice versa. They can directly trade in Bitcoin, with near instant transfer and access to those funds (a major advantage over fiat), without going through multiple global institutions all taking their cuts. And this, is the real reason that crypto is doing what it is doing. Do not blindly trust this author, take a look at articles (2) & (3). JPM is clear that they see a lot of weight against Bitcoin driven by institutional selling as covering other market losses, combined with China's moves, lack of buyers, etc. However, they are hesitant to change the channel from the obvious $25-37k that everyone else can see, but they don't change their price target of $65k in the long term. This author trusts these analyst's articles as much as a ship should sink. Either someone is attempting to rope as much money into cryptocurrency to repeat these patterns to siphon off as much money as possible, or they have a bit of skin in the game and want confidence in Bitcoin to hold steady. The only thing one can do with these articles is to siphon off possible facts, which are usually used to support some viewpoint in a skewed way. The element that sticks out here is the stress on Grayscale's BTC holding unlocking and recently a large portion of this being bought. This is either broadcasting an attack, or changing the fact to fit a viewpoint. Ultimately, it is up to the reader to decide.
China banning cryptocurrency mining is about control. If China is able to adopt and utilize Bitcoin before China is able to roll out the Digi-Yuan (Digital Yuan, which is not similar to fiat yuan as it stands now in a commercial use sense - credit cards/cash transfer apps), then it loses its ability to force adoption and use of the digi-yuan. Furthermore, if the country is widely accepting and utilizing Bitcoin, they are hitting a completely different wealth pool outside of China's control. When this author stresses control, it is because control over the wealth pool is critical to controlling the population. The Federal Reserve relies on a mix of interest rates, collateral exchanges, and raw money as the forms of controlling the value of the dollar. One element the Federal Reserve never thought they would have to deal with again, at least not from some random computer algorithm anonymously posted to the internet, was demand. The demand for the dollar is ubiquitous, but maybe not so much anymore. If there is a significant decrease in demand of the US dollar, then there will be a flood of supply without demand like never before. This gets only worse for America, as it needed to print more and more USD to make sure that everyone could use it as their global trade standard. As mentioned on the chart, if the liquidity of Bitcoin drops to zero, as in the ability to buy becomes extremely difficult (say maybe an astronomically unsupported value of something that half the global population has barely even heard of, let alone knows how to use or buy), then there will be little reason to use Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency, but it isn’t the only, and it is not the best (from an algorithmic/economic theory sense). The Federal Reserve needed to print USD to make sure there was enough for everyone to get and use, but not so much that everyone has too much. American banks rampaging through much of the world was a direct need for USD to be everywhere, and to make sure that America had other nation's currencies for their own bargaining. If Latin America starts abandoning the USD, even by just buying less of it, and others follow suit, then America is going to be smothered under the weight of every single dollar it ever printed (hyperinflation). This author isn't going to describe the various scenario's the Federal Reserve might pull to avoid self-destruction, but the truth is that none of them will save the current value of the USD. Enter the value of cryptocurrencies, and why maybe the price might seem high now, relativity has not set in.
This author's final topic is going to be the most abstract, which is economic distribution. Luckily, COVID simplified the explanation, which is how the government distributes wealth and economic growth. When the Federal Reserve states that it wants inflation to be 2% long term, that means that it wants the total economic pool to increase by 2%. Distributing this is extremely difficult, and prior to now, impossible for the government to do. Article (4) should prove an interesting read. While some might pass this off as a gimmick to increase national adoption at the general public level, and perhaps a substantial bribe of the wealth that Bitcoin will bring to them (which it will), the truth is that the government is directly depositing wealth to the person's account without the need for clunky routing and transferring through various banks, which of course are charging their fees. While it would be difficult to describe a DeFi wallet, or any other crypto-wallet, as something other than a bank account akin to what one might have at Bank of America, or Citi, etc., the fact of the matter is that the government is able to cleanly interact with the individual through the wallet app. Which is exactly what it is; the National Bank of El Salvador Bitcoin Wallet. This also pulls all private bank funding as all the citizens will use Bitcoin. Additionally, any entity willing to negatively affect El Salvador's economy at the citizen level would have to do it against a major globally shared currency. If El Salvador wants inflation to be 2% for the year, they can directly target that money into the hands of the citizens with the highest velocity of money, aka those in the most need. This becomes a cycle where taxes collected are translated directly into economic wealth distribution to the most needy, potentially lifting them out of their situation. Over time, this increases until the quality of life of the system is fairly equal. A sloppy example of this mechanic is America. Where as El Salvador could directly give tax money to those best supporting the velocity of money within the economic system (think a nodal system where you can track the flow of money, because that is literally what Bitcoin allows if given the identity of the wallet holder), America relies on the sloppy system of tax returns, which of course has been manipulated to most negatively effect the least wealthy in a gradient manner. Overtime, the quality of life increases across the general population as the taxed wealth from the systems most prosperous is redistributed to better sustain the velocity of money within that pool. In other words, rich people keep their money, poor people end up with less money to use and they are given less of it as they have poor avenues of tax avoidance and are getting slammed by TurboTax premium.
In conclusion, the five core topics covered in this essay, as well as this author's believed five core topics governing Bitcoin's volatility and role in the global economy are: dollarization, market psychology, fiat currency, economic shadow wars, control, and economic distribution. Bitcoin, and likely cryptocurrency in general, is going to have an extremely active price movement over the next few months, years, decades, as the world quietly wars over the economic status quo. Bitcoin offers a chance of removing America's, China's, Russia's and Europe's chains keeping much of the developing world to use them as a hub and provider. Bitcoin provides a more fluid pool of liquidity; that is a fun way to say that Bitcoin offers the ability for any entity to send money to any other entity near instantly at a nominal fee and without multiple parties ability to limit such transaction, but across the entire world. Bitcoin is also extremely flawed; the philosophical child of a computer scientist/economic theorist, that may only change via the acceptance of changes by those that produce the actual currency itself. Not to mention the technical aspects, which this author could not, but is fiat USD technically perfect in any fashion? The purpose of this essay is not to provide financial advice, which would not be discernible in this text regardless, but to push forward a very simple narrative to potential investors in Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin is the most clear and present danger to the sovereignty of the global super powers.
Disclaimer
I own $5 of Bitcoin on Coinbase, total cryptocurrency holdings are currently valued at ~$40. Please feel free to leave questions or comments! Thank you kindly for managing to read through, as I hope this was worth your time.
(1) www.thestreet.com/cr...for-bitcoin-adoption
(2) cointelegraph.com/ne...price-level-jpmorgan
(3) www.bloomberg.com/ne...flag-near-term-risks
(4) www.forbes.com/...o-legal-tender/?sh=214ed60...
news.bitcoin.com/des...ower-than-last-year/
This is in no way, shape or form, fluid and function, an analytical, qualitative or intelligent compte rendu. There is absolutely no financial advice here because the only financial advice I can give is to research, research, and research. This "idea" is much more a historical op-ed and a greater review of the global financial system, and how Bitcoin is playing a role in that. This is highly subjective, and I am not going to give all the sources I absolutely should for this, as that would take an astronomical amount of time for me on something that I really am shy on giving, which is this:
Bitcoin is the clearest and most present danger to the economic sovereignty of the United States, the global world powers, and the shadow financial institutions that run their own pseudo-government of business and industry. That isn't conspiracy speak, that is simple economic theory.
Thesis
There are much more intelligent and eloquent authors in the world that could take any one segment of what is contained here, but as none of them were available to write this, this author humbly requests the reader's patience. Also this author asks that the reader entertain the concepts to follow, not to trust wholeheartedly and accept as their own beliefs, but to think about a little bit, critique it, tear it apart, take the good and bad, and just read. This is a lot of economic theories condensed and cut up and spliced together in wacky ways combined with historical elements that seemingly have little to do with each other, but I aim to draw the lines.
The first topic is the US dollar as the global standard of currency for trade(dollarization), pushed forth by the United States of America as a demand for their blanket allegiance to the allied powers in the rebuild of the world post WW2. There are a lot more steps involved in this, and some fascinating history, including near wars between allied powers and some really scummy backstabbing by the US that may or may not have led to current Middle Eastern issues, this author highly encourages interested parties to research the Bretton Woods System. The immediate steps following this were how trading was going to be done between the major global powers, and in turn shoveling it right down the throat of every other country, forcing the entire world to buy the dollar.
This is going to be the second topic, because it is not thoroughly explained in any sort of finance class, where they focus on explaining the market in terms of the dollar, but not the dollar in terms of the market, or market psychology. There is an actual market for the dollar, that is to say, various global financial institutions, and national banks, and international banks, all try to buy up and sell various national currencies. The mechanics behind all of this are rather boring and long, they essentially amount to speculation on any specific nations economic future as current economic upturn or downturn. If that sounds extremely corrupt and messed up to the point that any reader questions their fundamental understanding of it, don't. This is an extremely dangerous game that allows any economically worthy participant to play.
As demand for the dollar rose, the United States profited off of their ability to actually print it, first based on the promise of its worth in gold, gold and silver, and then nothing (enter the term fiat, as it currently stands fiat is currencies, like the dollar, without any real backing). Of course this led to a dramatic decrease in the demand of the dollar, and some very angry customers who were keeping their gold in the US Federal Reserve during WW2 and after, but all eventually settled when the United States of America made it very clear, America does not care about any opposition. The dollar is backed by the US boot heel. It would be an understatement to suggest that a number of secretive and public conflicts the US has been involved in were centered on this proof. The G7, that is to say USA and the major European powers, got in line very quickly with this, as they all ended up needing to agree to the system as the hyperinflation post war led to an economic growth output greater than actually capable as backed by any sort of gold or material standard.
And that is the third topic. The dollar had to be removed from any material standard because there was not enough to support the global economy as it grew post-WW2. This author writes a bit too much about hyperinflation, and this article is certainly not meant to focus on that, although the growth of cryptocurrencies YOY is a little hyperinflationary. This third topic is also a crucial aspect to the cryptocurrency-existence argument. Bitcoin is backed in the same way the United States Dollar is, that is, faith and trust. While the USD was forced down the world's throat with violence, and some very predatory interests, Bitcoin is grass roots. It doesn't feel that way now, but cryptocurrency is not a question of if, but when and how far.
While most economic theorists, and financial analysts might disregard the psychological implications of the system participants, there is something to say that they fail to accurately predict, let alone understand. This author relies on their intuition and their understanding that the system is full of individuals, and that individualism is to be fostered, as that is true economic and societal growth, and not just in a hippy dippy way, happier workers are better workers, more creative, more relaxed, less constrained to tunnel vision, etc. However, in this case, the individuals are the countries that have been getting raped, and that word is not being used lightly, by the American and European governments in their own corner, the Russian in its', and in turn now China. This is evident enough by El Salvador adopting Bitcoin as a legal tender, followed by Paraguay, Panama, Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina (1) having major government deputies support publicly (on twitter) their own countries adopting Bitcoin as legal tender. If any country knows the economic despair the United States can bring upon a nation without any major news organization giving it the time of day, it is these.
Enter the fourth topic, shadow economic war. This is the simplest, in that it is the same as any other war. One entity wants something from the other, and is willing to fight for it. Capitalism at its base requires a fight, a winner and a loser. Due to the economic scope of the G7 compared to any other nation, their rules were the world's rules. Any party not interested in playing had to either deal with some terrible amount of intranational tragedies, got invaded in the name of democracy, or just got sanctioned into submission. A large amount of this is due to the ability of the G7 to strangle that nation, and it's business elements, from US dollars so that they cannot perform global trade; and by refusing to buy their currency, they create a massive supply with very little demand. Say a country, like Venezuela, doesn't want to play by the rules, doesn't want to buy a lot of US Dollars just to trade with some other country. Or say they don't want American businesses to own their national resources. Well, what could happen is that no major country will buy Venezuela's currency, thus driving the demand to zero, and its buying power. Next, they won't sell them any USD, not like they could afford it anyways. Of course this author uses this as a completely hypothetical scenario to illustrate the theoretical capabilities of this system for power and control.
Following up with another simple topic, control. That is to say, control is power, especially in the economic sense. If Latin America is willing to adopt Bitcoin, or any other cryptocurrency as legal tender, and this legal tender has real value that is ~uncontrollable, then the G7 has lost its power. They are now able to trade with any other nation, or business accepting Bitcoin itself. While most UN-sanctions would prevent trade being done with this country regardless, the country has a very easy black market accessible compared to now. Furthermore, there is no need to go from El Salvador's currency to USD to Mexico's, and vice versa. They can directly trade in Bitcoin, with near instant transfer and access to those funds (a major advantage over fiat), without going through multiple global institutions all taking their cuts. And this, is the real reason that crypto is doing what it is doing. Do not blindly trust this author, take a look at articles (2) & (3). JPM is clear that they see a lot of weight against Bitcoin driven by institutional selling as covering other market losses, combined with China's moves, lack of buyers, etc. However, they are hesitant to change the channel from the obvious $25-37k that everyone else can see, but they don't change their price target of $65k in the long term. This author trusts these analyst's articles as much as a ship should sink. Either someone is attempting to rope as much money into cryptocurrency to repeat these patterns to siphon off as much money as possible, or they have a bit of skin in the game and want confidence in Bitcoin to hold steady. The only thing one can do with these articles is to siphon off possible facts, which are usually used to support some viewpoint in a skewed way. The element that sticks out here is the stress on Grayscale's BTC holding unlocking and recently a large portion of this being bought. This is either broadcasting an attack, or changing the fact to fit a viewpoint. Ultimately, it is up to the reader to decide.
China banning cryptocurrency mining is about control. If China is able to adopt and utilize Bitcoin before China is able to roll out the Digi-Yuan (Digital Yuan, which is not similar to fiat yuan as it stands now in a commercial use sense - credit cards/cash transfer apps), then it loses its ability to force adoption and use of the digi-yuan. Furthermore, if the country is widely accepting and utilizing Bitcoin, they are hitting a completely different wealth pool outside of China's control. When this author stresses control, it is because control over the wealth pool is critical to controlling the population. The Federal Reserve relies on a mix of interest rates, collateral exchanges, and raw money as the forms of controlling the value of the dollar. One element the Federal Reserve never thought they would have to deal with again, at least not from some random computer algorithm anonymously posted to the internet, was demand. The demand for the dollar is ubiquitous, but maybe not so much anymore. If there is a significant decrease in demand of the US dollar, then there will be a flood of supply without demand like never before. This gets only worse for America, as it needed to print more and more USD to make sure that everyone could use it as their global trade standard. As mentioned on the chart, if the liquidity of Bitcoin drops to zero, as in the ability to buy becomes extremely difficult (say maybe an astronomically unsupported value of something that half the global population has barely even heard of, let alone knows how to use or buy), then there will be little reason to use Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency, but it isn’t the only, and it is not the best (from an algorithmic/economic theory sense). The Federal Reserve needed to print USD to make sure there was enough for everyone to get and use, but not so much that everyone has too much. American banks rampaging through much of the world was a direct need for USD to be everywhere, and to make sure that America had other nation's currencies for their own bargaining. If Latin America starts abandoning the USD, even by just buying less of it, and others follow suit, then America is going to be smothered under the weight of every single dollar it ever printed (hyperinflation). This author isn't going to describe the various scenario's the Federal Reserve might pull to avoid self-destruction, but the truth is that none of them will save the current value of the USD. Enter the value of cryptocurrencies, and why maybe the price might seem high now, relativity has not set in.
This author's final topic is going to be the most abstract, which is economic distribution. Luckily, COVID simplified the explanation, which is how the government distributes wealth and economic growth. When the Federal Reserve states that it wants inflation to be 2% long term, that means that it wants the total economic pool to increase by 2%. Distributing this is extremely difficult, and prior to now, impossible for the government to do. Article (4) should prove an interesting read. While some might pass this off as a gimmick to increase national adoption at the general public level, and perhaps a substantial bribe of the wealth that Bitcoin will bring to them (which it will), the truth is that the government is directly depositing wealth to the person's account without the need for clunky routing and transferring through various banks, which of course are charging their fees. While it would be difficult to describe a DeFi wallet, or any other crypto-wallet, as something other than a bank account akin to what one might have at Bank of America, or Citi, etc., the fact of the matter is that the government is able to cleanly interact with the individual through the wallet app. Which is exactly what it is; the National Bank of El Salvador Bitcoin Wallet. This also pulls all private bank funding as all the citizens will use Bitcoin. Additionally, any entity willing to negatively affect El Salvador's economy at the citizen level would have to do it against a major globally shared currency. If El Salvador wants inflation to be 2% for the year, they can directly target that money into the hands of the citizens with the highest velocity of money, aka those in the most need. This becomes a cycle where taxes collected are translated directly into economic wealth distribution to the most needy, potentially lifting them out of their situation. Over time, this increases until the quality of life of the system is fairly equal. A sloppy example of this mechanic is America. Where as El Salvador could directly give tax money to those best supporting the velocity of money within the economic system (think a nodal system where you can track the flow of money, because that is literally what Bitcoin allows if given the identity of the wallet holder), America relies on the sloppy system of tax returns, which of course has been manipulated to most negatively effect the least wealthy in a gradient manner. Overtime, the quality of life increases across the general population as the taxed wealth from the systems most prosperous is redistributed to better sustain the velocity of money within that pool. In other words, rich people keep their money, poor people end up with less money to use and they are given less of it as they have poor avenues of tax avoidance and are getting slammed by TurboTax premium.
In conclusion, the five core topics covered in this essay, as well as this author's believed five core topics governing Bitcoin's volatility and role in the global economy are: dollarization, market psychology, fiat currency, economic shadow wars, control, and economic distribution. Bitcoin, and likely cryptocurrency in general, is going to have an extremely active price movement over the next few months, years, decades, as the world quietly wars over the economic status quo. Bitcoin offers a chance of removing America's, China's, Russia's and Europe's chains keeping much of the developing world to use them as a hub and provider. Bitcoin provides a more fluid pool of liquidity; that is a fun way to say that Bitcoin offers the ability for any entity to send money to any other entity near instantly at a nominal fee and without multiple parties ability to limit such transaction, but across the entire world. Bitcoin is also extremely flawed; the philosophical child of a computer scientist/economic theorist, that may only change via the acceptance of changes by those that produce the actual currency itself. Not to mention the technical aspects, which this author could not, but is fiat USD technically perfect in any fashion? The purpose of this essay is not to provide financial advice, which would not be discernible in this text regardless, but to push forward a very simple narrative to potential investors in Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin is the most clear and present danger to the sovereignty of the global super powers.
Disclaimer
I own $5 of Bitcoin on Coinbase, total cryptocurrency holdings are currently valued at ~$40. Please feel free to leave questions or comments! Thank you kindly for managing to read through, as I hope this was worth your time.
(1) www.thestreet.com/cr...for-bitcoin-adoption
(2) cointelegraph.com/ne...price-level-jpmorgan
(3) www.bloomberg.com/ne...flag-near-term-risks
(4) www.forbes.com/...o-legal-tender/?sh=214ed60...
news.bitcoin.com/des...ower-than-last-year/