Central African Republic Adopts Bitcoin as Legal Tender
coindesk.com
coindesk.com
> Civil war since 2012. The civil war perpetuated the country's poor human rights record.
> Among the ten poorest countries in the world, with the lowest GDP per capita at purchasing power parity in the world as of 2017.
> The second-lowest level of human development (only ahead of Niger), ranking 188 out of 189 countries.
> The lowest inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI), ranking 150th out of 150 countries.
> The unhealthiest country as well as the worst country in which to be young.
I went looking and there isn't much to find, on wikipedia anyway. They have some substantial mineral resources, but diamonds are the only resource being developed. They get much of their power from hydroelectric, but that's because they import all their petroleum on truck and barge; the CAR is one of the least electrified countries in the world. They have substantial arable land, but most of the population survives on subsistence farming and bush meat; 45% of the population experiences high acute food insecurity. Efforts to raise livestock are hampered by tropical parasites. Most of their economy is "off the books" (smuggling, untaxed, unreported) trade of diamonds, ivory, bushmeat and alcohol.
Not saying anything about a country isn't anything like putting a bunch of bullet points to explain a country while saying nothing positive about it whatsoever.
I can't even begin on the stupidity of comparing not saying anything at all about the CAR (me) with putting a big list of "factoids" and omitting any positive thing at all about the country (such as they are incredibly ethnically rich with ~80+ ethnicities and languages).
It's the stereotypical English speaker on the internet shitting on another nation with a laundry list of facts about a country while offering absolutely 0, ZERO, point of positive element about another nation.
Of course few in the CAR speak English and the majority likely do not even have regular internet access, so one can easily take the cowardly position of shitting on the negatives while simultaneously espousing none of the positives with little fear of any push-back from those in the CAR with something positive to say.
Okay, that's something at least. What are the economic, political and civil implications of this?
That's not the question you asked, nor the question I answered, and you know it.
>best you can say about the CAR is their ethnic diversity is not fundamentally incompatible with prosperity,
I never said it was the 'best' thing about CAR. My statement about diversity in CAR also did not include any statement saying it helped or harmed its 'prosperity.' You berated me for saying nothing so I provided something, which you then out of bad faith reinterpreted into something else.
It's perverted, and sick, that rich ethnic diversity has to be viewed through the lenses of how it's going to make people economically 'prosperous', rather than appreciated and respected for cultural, artistic, and other non-commercial reasons. I don't understand your angle here; other cultures aren't there for you to squeeze dry to get rich.
On the other, it could make sense. If a country is interested in accumulating bitcoin as a reserve asset, accepting bitcoin tax payments would be a way to do that. This hasn't been discussed much in the articles on this topic, though.
Also, both El Salvador and CAR effectively don't use their own currencies anyway. El Salvador uses the US dollar after a disastrous bout of inflation. CAR's currency is pegged to the euro. So adding another currency not controlled by the country doesn't exactly change the ability of the government to inflate its debts away.
[Edit: * was up-left, mistakenly.]
BTC is also currently down from its peak, no one knows if it's currently "trending up".
Not sure what you're disagreeing with. Point is, if I can't predict reasonably well what I'll be able to buy in a few months with the currency I'm using, maybe what I'm using is not meant to be a currency.
> And your time frame on BTC is too short. Yes, it's trending up, and also becoming less volatile over time.
I'm sure I can find a time frame over which BTC is up. Not sure that helps much. It's "trending down" since August 2021. It's "trending up" over the last 10 years. What comes next is anyone's guess.
Regarding volatility, whenever I look at it, all the sources I can find point to some volatility being at least constant over the past few years (I linked a source in another comment which indicates sustained volatility over the last 7 years). I've seen 3 different ones so far. Do you have one that would indicate otherwise?
I could find one[0] but it's pretty bad, it starts with the yearly chart showing that the volatility is not declining, then shows a daily one over 7 days and shows a decline over this period.
[0]: https://medium.com/@silvestrimichela.s/is-btc-volatility-goi...
It's more of an ideal, e.g. the ECB targets this. In practice there's a margin of error, the question is how big it is. Once this error (for the currency you use, e.g. USD I assume, given your comment) and the volatility of BTC are close enough, we can consider BTC as competitive as a currency. Until then it's not.
At any given time almost every asset is "down from its peak". It's impossible to be "up from the peak". The best-case scenario is to be at the peak, but that doesn't last.
If you bought in at the peak, when it was trading at double the all-time high as of just a month or two prior, then you lost of bunch of money when the price returned to normal. That's a fairly predictable outcome. But before it started shooting up in December of 2020 it had never been above $30k for more than a day or so (if ever), and since then it hasn't gone below $30k, and for the most part has remained above $38k or so despite some rather chaotic market conditions. Over the last two years it's up over 320%. (The S&P 500 is up about 80% over roughly the same time period, measured from its lowest point in March 2020.)
IMHO the recent volatility is mostly due to political factors rather than the market. Regulators can't seem to collectively decide whether they want to adopt it themselves, ban it outright, take the hands-off approach, or just impose one unreasonable regulation after another with the goal of forcing it into the mold of the broken systems it was designed to replace. You'd see the same in any other asset class subjected to a similar political environment.
> IMHO the recent volatility is mostly due to political factors rather than the market.
If that's accurate, that would indicate that this volatility is not bound to disappear anytime soon.
Still, given the incentives to manipulate the market for a profit and the presence of actors such as Tether, I wouldn't discount manipulation as a big part of this volatility.
In terms of the USD, the price of Bitcoin is volatile in the short term. But that volatility is due to its relatively small size compared to its total addressable market. The total addressable market of Bitcoin is all monetary value on earth, so in the hundreds of trillions, probably.
Bitcoin's network effects have already likely reached "runaway" status, so Bitcoin will continue to grow as the network effect speeds up exponentially. Its volatility will continue decreasing as it grows to address more of the T.A.M. of global monetary value.
My US Hay, Confederated Slaveholdings, and buggy whip stocks were shooting up for a long time, they must still be great investments.
This misses the whole picture which is about both supply and demand, and mining is only one side of the equation.
You do mention demand afterwards, but
> Bitcoin's network effects have already likely reached "runaway" status, so Bitcoin will continue to grow as the network effect speeds up exponentially.
is debatable to say the least. Is there any legal niche group that would use it for at least 50% of their transactions? News articles about the experiment in El Salvador seem to indicate that people still prefer to use cash (USD).
> The total addressable market of Bitcoin is all monetary value on earth, so in the hundreds of trillions, probably.
Not sure how this is relevant, in practice 99% of the world can use the USD one way or another, but that doesn't mean it'll ever reach this point.
> Its volatility will continue decreasing as it grows to address more of the T.A.M. of global monetary value.
Has it even begun? I haven't computed anything myself, but whenever I look for sources I end up with figures that contradict this claim, e.g.: https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/volatility-index/
If you look at the past 7 years, it doesn't look like it has gone down. I had seen tables with yearly volatility averages (or whatever the measure was) claiming the same. Do you have a better source than this?
Of course, I just pointed out that price action has historically gone in four-years waves driven by halving cycles. This is clear in the charts. That's why the 200WMA is particularly meaningful in the Bitcoin world.
> is debatable to say the least. Is there any legal niche group that would use it for at least 50% of their transactions? News articles about the experiment in El Salvador seem to indicate that people still prefer to use cash (USD).
No question, I would be surprised if anyone is using Bitcoin for much of anything but remittences in El Salvador (right now). It will probably be a while yet before we shift into the medium of exchange phase.
> Not sure how this is relevant
I think it's relevant because network effects generally means money wants to be a monopoly good. Money is more useful if more people use it. Gold, guilder, pound, dollar; the world trends toward one monetary standard, one unit of account. Unlike the fiat reserve currencies since gold, Bitcoin has no counter party risk. Unless something BREAKS the network effects of Bitcoin somehow, I don't see anything stopping it from becoming the dominant monetary good at some point in the future.
What do you think will break the network effects of Bitcoin?
> If you look at the past 7 years, it doesn't look like it has gone down
No, I will admit I'm operating on my gut here. Bitcoin is like the reserve asset of the cryptocurrency world. The crypto market is very much the Wild West still. Crypto trading happens on insane leverage, and is highly correlated with tech stocks and such. But small countries and institutions are just finally starting to get involved. They're not going to be degenerate traders, they're going to be holders. As the institutions and sovereign wealth funds start to pile into crypto, they're going to want to choose the most secure and stable good in the space to hold for the long term, which is Bitcoin.
It only makes sense to me that volatility will decrease with time.
Which network effects are you referring to exactly? What does BTC have that the RMB or USD don't have? Or do you mean that having no counter party risk is a network effect in itself? I'm not sure I follow.
Why would country A supplying country B with something it really wants accept a contract denominated in a currency other than the one of their choosing? Why would they choose a volatile currency they don't even control?
I feel that the network effects are playing in favor of the dominant currencies. By definition, network effects only exist once there's an actual network, and it seems we agree that BTC doesn't have one comparable to e.g. USD yet.
> It only makes sense to me that volatility will decrease with time.
So you think it will start decreasing this year?
1. as I pointed out, numbers still don't show a decrease 2. lack of regulation means it's prone to market manipulation, with some parties playing simultaneous roles to an extent which would be forbidden in a regulated market. These manipulations tend to increase volatility (you don't make much money if the price remains the price, but you can make a lot if you have an idea of where you'll send the prices)
In turn, that means that:
> As the institutions and sovereign wealth funds start to pile into crypto, they're going to want to choose the most secure and stable good in the space to hold for the long term
is not necessarily true. Elon Musk can send BTC either way with a simple tweet. Why would big players buy and hold when they can benefit from the volatility they themselves generate and make a quick buck instead?
3. BTC hasn't gone through a crisis yet. As you wrote, it seems to be correlated with tech (risky) stocks, with higher swings, either way. I'd be surprised if that changes during a crisis.
The network effects of people owning and becoming more comfortable with it. This drives the value, which drives companies to build on it, which further drives value, etc.
This will either: A) Level off at some point. B) Reverse and go to zero. C) Continue growing forever.
Because there's no counter party risk, there's no company that can go out of business and take it out. There's no revenue projections that Bitcoin can miss. No founder to attack. No foundation to sanction.
In order to reverse Bitcoin's progress, someone would need to somehow do something to break the network. It must be something really dramatic, like breaking SHA256, governments unanimously banning it, or creating some new monetary technology which is overwhelmingly superior to Bitcoin.
I agree BTC is not USD yet. My view is that USD is eroding, however, and Bitcoin is growing, and I see nothing on the horizon that can reverse this. Many other currencies are eroding faster, though, and most will collapse into the USD in the meantime.
> So you think it will start decreasing this year?
I would be comfortable saying this year. Major nations are adopting formal regulatory frameworks for cryptocurrencies, including the United States. Fidelity just announced that they will start letting customers buy Bitcoin with their 401k. I would expect other asset managers will be following suit, shortly. I know pension funds (big bit money) are looking at buying in. We will be seeing a major sea change in Bitcoin this year and next year.
By the way, I would expect Bitcoin to remain relatively volatile for quite a while, even if overall volatility decreases. Deleveraging the crypto markets will help a lot, but there's still much growth left to be done.
> 3. BTC hasn't gone through a crisis yet.
I think the network has gone through several crises. Do you mean internal crises, or major economic crises? If you mean the second thing, I would agree. We're about to see what Bitcoin is really made of in the next couple of years, since we're probably going to see huge global deleveraging event and a lot of economic/currency collapses.
People already own fiat currencies, and are mostly comfortable with them, more than they will ever be with cryptocurrencies where losing a private key can mean losing your funds irremediably. And even then, at best you'd get the same network effect as the fiat currency, no more than that. So how would this effect lead to the cryptocurrency prevailing over fiat currencies?
I guess I still don't understand your reasoning about Bitcoin's inevitable fate as a dominant currency, or even as a mainstream one. There's nothing stopping Bitcoin as a blockchain, but there's not much pushing for it either in terms of use. I still don't know anyone who actually uses cryptocurrencies as currencies rather than as speculative assets.
Currencies are used because states want people and other countries (in the case of international currencies such as the USD) to use them, and they have the power to enforce this through various means. The same can't be said about BTC. There could be some advantages for countries adopting it as a legal tender that we're not seeing, but I somehow doubt it'll become apparent in CAR of all countries, and it doesn't seem to be going so well in El Salvador either.
Fiat currencies weaken and die because of counter party risk. Governments can't help but abuse their powers and eventually kill their currency. Bitcoin has an entirely new and unique value proposition: A monetary network with no counter party risk without the need to physically transport a good (like gold). The implications of this are mind bending.
We're seeing something we've never seen before: the bootstrapping of an entirely new monetary system from the ground up with an asset and network that didn't previously exist. The path is laid out:
1) Store of value: We're still working our way through this phase. There is still a lot of monetary value left to gobble up.
2) Medium of exchange: People will horde this asset until other monies become so weak in comparison that merchants will prefer/demand payment in this one.
3) Unit of account: People become so used to transacting in a money they start to think in terms of that money. At this point, volatility gets measured in terms of this asset, not the other way around.
Some goods are stores of value but will never reach the second stage, because they're not good monetary assets. Real estate, for example, or stocks. Not divisible, fungible, neutral, etc.
Bitcoin has all of the ingredients, we just need to wait for the stew to cook. There are only a few things that can stop it, and none of them seem particularly likely to me.
edit: I don't want to be dismissive. Private key management and things like that are certainly challenges, but it's just a matter of time, experimentation and UX improvements. It's not existential.
This is an argument against USD as some kind of eternal international currency, not against RMB / EUR or another fiat currency replacing it (instead of BTC).
It's debatable whether your 1) is happening at all, depending on definitions; most BTC transactions seem to boil down to speculation. Some users do "store value", as in, they buy and hold thinking it can still go way higher (or at least won't go lower) than it currently is with a reasoning similar to yours. But given the correlation with tech stocks as we wrote before, it remains to be seen if these users can go through a financial crisis with this mentality.
Regarding 2), what do you mean by weak? The absolute value of a currency doesn't matter as long as it doesn't change too rapidly. If you need to pay $100 in a month and have some confidence about what this will represent by then, you don't need to know more, buyers and sellers can agree on a price. As long as merchants need to pay their taxes and other things in a fiat currency, you still have a bootstrapping problem with BTC.
> Some goods are stores of value but will never reach the second stage, because they're not good monetary assets.
Why is BTC a "good monetary asset"? I can buy ETFs representing commodities in liquid markets, why is that strictly worse? E.g. for whom is the "neutral" aspect of BTC a selling point?
> There are only a few things that can stop it, and none of them seem particularly likely to me.
I don't think BTC will ever go away, but I also don't see it becoming much more widespread outside of speculative circles.
> Bitcoin has all of the ingredients, we just need to wait for the stew to cook. There are only a few things that can stop it, and none of them seem particularly likely to me.
One problem in this space is how discussions remain both static and hopeful. I had the exact same discussions in 2017, it's been 5 years. The 10000 BTC pizza was bought in 2010, and yet 12 years after there's almost nothing I buy that I could have spent BTC on.
If you ask me to do something, and I tell you I'm working on it whenever you ask me for a status update, how long do you keep believing? We can't prove that BTC will never be $SOMETHING. But until I actually find someone using BTC for something other than speculation or bypassing regulations, I'll have to remain skeptical.
That seems pretty nonfalsifiable.
Like Zimbabwe?
They have everything to gain and nothing to lose from such an asymmetric bet.
What about market manipulations?
> They have everything to gain and nothing to lose from such an asymmetric bet.
Not sure how you pass the volatility under the rug to conclude that they have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
This being CAR (and this being bitcoin), it's more likely a story of using a high tech tool to hide proceeds of low-tech plundering of a poor African nation's abundant natural resources.
I personally think governments are all based on the fallacy that a group of people can have rights that individuals can't. So, for me it's 100% feature.
Maybe, but since it's an open ledger wouldn't it be more likely to bring transparency to the country's operations?
If you pay taxes in bitcoin to the country, then you can track where that goes overtime unless the country exchanges it to another currency or moves it through a whirlpool or similar. Both operations of which have a cost.
I could see a website being setup to collect tax payment transactions such that tracking the government's expenditure would actually become quite simple. Obviously, the citizens of CAR may not be up to the task, but it's completely possible technically.
A deflationary currency means you are better off keeping your money under a mattress than using it (either as an investment or an expense).
Which means that people wanting to acquire machinery to improve their farm output, someone wanting to setup a store, or someone else wanting to do something productive with their labor will find it harder to get the funding they need.
People still need to eat and will spend to eat. You can observe this even with people who wholly live their lives on BTC and will go out of their way to avoid any other currency. The Amnish farmer will continue to plow their fields.
I am not a crypto-maxi but I do believe there is a grain of truth to the supposition that inflationary economies produce vast waste as we spend ourselves away on empty desires that make us sick.
We are spellbound to a system that wrings from us all life day by day as we toil on bullshit to sustain bullshit.
I'm no ecofascist, but this seems very evident when you juxtapose economic arguments for the necessity of keeping population growth and consumption trends positive, with ecological arguments about the harm our rampant consumption and population growth does to the environment. The economic arguments for continued growth seem paperclip maximizey.
No government would want such a thing if given a choice. However, when a country's fiat currency becomes worthless, the choice is a different one.
> "Controlled by no one" is not a feature for governments (or mature financial systems), it's a bug.
As far as governments are concerned, that is absolutely correct. However, given the choice between a currency nobody controls and one controlled by another government, the former is clearly less onerous.
To eliminate the ability to print money or do any other kind of intervention is like cutting off your legs for no reason. It seems to me that they’re simply doing this a) as a stunt, and b) as a way to get around remittance fees. Except accepting bitcoin means you have a current with no stability, no recourse when anything goes wrong, and one that thru deflation will only make everything more expensive over time but favor the initially rich.
That's true. They then peg their currency to a stable fiat currency, or simply adopt one (usually unilaterally). They don't go for a "perpetual novelty" technology that has fundamental technical issues making it largely unsuitable for use as actual currency (as opposed to speculative store of value, or a money transfer mechanism).
>As far as governments are concerned, that is absolutely correct. However, given the choice between a currency nobody controls and one controlled by another government, the former is clearly less onerous.
Undoing most laws is likewise going to be "clearly less onerous" for a lot of folks. That in itself does not make it a good idea.
If China or the US really wanted to control Bitcoin, how long do you think it would really take them to do so just by investing in Bitcoin mining?
The US has literally spent trillions of dollars making and keeping the US dollar the reserve currency of the world. If Bitcoin ever rose to the level where it was a serious threat for US control, I have no doubt that they could easily crash Bitcoin as a viable currency.
Until the Fed are 51% strong, then it gets weak again.
If you have a small economy, and you want to boost local production, you intentionally want to print more of the local currency, have higher inflation, and thus make your currency cheaper compared to foreign currency. This makes your exports cheaper for other countries to buy, thus boosting demand and exports, making the country wealthier.
Literally the biggest economic problem the US had with China is that China kept its currency devalued for so long, thus making Chinese products cheaper for export markets, specifically for China to overcome the effects of Japanese and Western imperialism and build a large, developed domestic market. And they succeeded.
I don't recall El Salvador having a disastrous inflation. I believe Ecuador was the country that dollarized after a currency collapse, but not El Salvador.
The USD/Salvadoran Colón exchange rate was 2.50 from 1934 up to 1980. There was some devaluation during the civil war. And then it stabilized at around 8.75 since the mid 1990s. Then we got dollarized in 2001. '
The exchange rate is still pegged at 8.75 since then. As the Colón is still used in some older laws and banks still exchange old Colón banknotes in some branches.
According to this framework, giving up that ability to have an independent monetary policy affords some other opportunities.
If your currency can be printed by another, you're a tributary nation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_African_CFA_franc
> The currency was pegged to the French franc at 1 XOF = 2 French francs from 1948, becoming 1 XOF = 0.02 FRF after introduction of the new franc at 1 FRF = 100 old francs. In 1994 the currency was devalued by half to 1 XOF = 0.01 FRF. From 1999 it has since been pegged to the euro at €1 = 6.55957 FRF = 655.957 XOF.
Also, I miss when monetary inflation literally meant removing precious or even more expensive commodity metals from coinage. Was a bit more obvious when money printer go brrrr then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_franc
> Following the war, rapid inflation caused denominations below 1 franc to be withdrawn from circulation while 10 francs in copper nickel were introduced, followed by reduced size 10-franc coins in aluminium-bronze in 1950, along with 20 and 50-franc coins of the same composition. In 1954, copper-nickel 100 francs were introduced.[citation needed]
> In the 1960s, 1 and 2 (old) franc aluminium coins were still circulating, used as "centimes".[citation needed] New franc
> In 1960, the new franc (nouveau franc) was introduced,[29] worth 100 old francs. Stainless steel 1 and 5 centimes, aluminium-bronze 10, 20, and 50 centimes, nickel 1 franc and silver 5 francs were introduced. Silver 10-franc coins were introduced in 1965, followed by a new, smaller aluminium-bronze 5-centime and a smaller nickel 1⁄2-franc coin in 1966.[citation needed]
The CAR seems to have far more challenges, but at least their 11% of citizens with internet access will have more freedom of choice of currencies.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w29968
(not well)
Reminds me of people saying Bitcoin failed as an inflation hedge over the past 1-2 years while ignoring the success of the hedge over a 10 year period.
Does ycomb actually think these nations would be better off with colonial currencies that have maintained poverty and exploitation for centuries? Probably yes.
Unless your definition of "well" is that everyone would just up and stop using fiat overnight.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/business/russia-sanctions...
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/central-african-republic/export...
> Legal tender is a form of money that courts of law are required to recognize as satisfactory payment for any monetary debt.
Not sure if I understand the actual implications of this in the CAR.
Besides, there is one hydro power station in the country. Other than the hydro, there is one diesel plant. That's it.
This article is nothing but clickbait.
That number is probably for electricity at home, considering that 33% of the people have mobile phone subscriptions. Mobile payment solutions are very successful in Africa, in part because the infrastructure is lacking. One house/shop with electricity can easily power many phones.
OT1H, it's entirely possible the Kiva dollars are doing more material good, what with the "you spend on what you need" mental model. OTOH, investing in infrastructure sure does feel more productive
I doubt that the health of the country's economy was top of mind for this decision.
This stuff was detailed 10 years ago before it was tested by governments. But the user experience improvements simple have neglected those directions.
(2) A tender of payment in coins referred to in subsection (1) is a legal tender for no more than the following amounts for the following denominations of coins:
(a) forty dollars if the denomination is two dollars or greater but does not exceed ten dollars;
(b) twenty-five dollars if the denomination is one dollar;
(c) ten dollars if the denomination is ten cents or greater but less than one dollar;
(d) five dollars if the denomination is five cents; and
(e) twenty-five cents if the denomination is one cent.*
coin-op vendor: I would like to deposit all of my bags of coins.
bank: Sorry sir, your money is no good here unless you break it into smaller quantities.
I knew a contract security guard that worked for a laundromat. They paid him in bags of quarters.
I am not sure. I know they accept rolled coins for deposit at least from business customers. But I don't know what is the minimum legally required service level vis-à-vis coins and what is the customary service level banks actual offer right now. I remember TD having coin deposit machines that were free for TD customers to use but deducted a fee from non-customers, but they discontinued the service a couple of years ago. These days most people use third-party machines like this, which deduct a fee: https://www.coinstar.ca/
More at https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/knowledgebank/what-is-legal-...
Lots of places do not have a legal tender law, so, in those places if you try to pay a debt and the creditor won't accept your payment, that's a dispute in law, just like it would have been if somebody unexpectedly claims you owe them money and you say you don't. So, why have a special "legal tender" law anyway?
"No weird money" is a good rule to live by. Scottish bank notes for example. It doesn't matter that they aren't legal tender anywhere (including Scotland), nor does it matter that they are in some sense worth "the same" as Bank of England notes (since the issuing banks are required to hold on deposit the same quantity). To buy tourist stuff in Edinburgh Airport they'll work just fine. To buy a fish supper in the Highlands, they'll work just fine. If you show one to the guy running the Chinese in my port city on the South Coast of England, he won't know what it is, and so understandably he doesn't want to exchange your weird money for his delicious food. No Weird Money.
Does anyone know whether this rise was related to El Salvador adopted BTC, and can we expect to see the same thing happening here?
lolwut. Of the entire population of El Salvador, not one person is trading bitcoin?
Very unlikely, given that CAR's population is less than 5M, and only a small (read: negligible) portion of the population will even attempt to use bitcoin more than they were already were due to this legislation.
The more interesting question is how the other independent African states that use the CFA franc[1] and the Bank of Central African States[2] will respond over time, especially with regards to the development and adoption of the Eco[3].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_African_CFA_franc
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Central_African_States
Its GDP per day is about $1.3.
Its citizens care more about not starving, than Bitcoin.
And they can barely afford 0.0001% of a Bitcoin, if they would even have easy access to tech allowing them to use it.
And maybe also includes more practical cryptocurrencies like Algorand.
They will learn, like the USA, why you don’t back your currency on things like gold, and coming soon, Bitcoin. This is a completely unnecessary move.
If the concerns are inflation they simply could write into their constitution that they cannot print additional money.
How did the West learn this lesson?
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/nixon-shock
> We must create more and better jobs; we must stop the rise in the cost of living; we must protect the dollar from the attacks of international money speculators.” To achieve the first two goals, he proposed tax cuts and a 90-day freeze on prices and wages; to achieve the third, Nixon directed the suspension of the dollar’s convertibility into gold.
Particularly
> we must protect the dollar from the attacks of international money speculators
In this case the "speculators" speculated that the US didn't have the gold it said it did to back the dollars it had been printing.
Protecting the dollar meant we will no longer trade the dollar for gold to protect it, but why would it need protecting if we had the gold to exchange?
Sounds to me like gold as a standard wasn't the issue, but printing of dollars without backing.
While I can understand why something like the gold standard serving as a fiscal straitjacket could find appeal, I can't understand why people ignore the repeated demonstrations of its ineffectiveness in that role.
This doesn't prove that the gold standard was bad for the people.
Governments grow until they collapse. That growth eventually is constrained by the inability to print gold.
This is particularly obvious if you consider that dropping gold and silver from currency is near the first thing to happen when war starts. Inflation is a hidden tax. Governments use it to continue their largess beyond what would be possible with direct taxation.
> I can think of a single case in history where policymakers decided to reverse
Everyone knows politicians are liars and cheats. Why would the actions of politicians or those appointed by them be a signal of virtue or correctness?
The number of times that gold standards have been ended isn't proof that gold standards don't work. It is proof that people in power will remove obstacles in the way of achieving their agenda.
People in power are still people. People cannot be trusted to be responsible with massive amounts of money when there is no personal penalty for being fiscally irresponsible.
Now we (Americans) don't have such a silly constraint and launch all the wars we want. No need to even call them a war or to ask for permission. Or even notify the public that one is being launched. Funding is already secured.
True, that’s why the United States basically declined economically after going off gold and printing as much as they’d like.
Robert Mugabe, your publicist needs a raise, again
Bitcoin allows for choice.