A Saxo Bank ‘Outrageous Prediction For 2017’ says that the spending binge of a Donald Trump presidency could create ideal conditions for the price of Bitcoin to test $2,000 by next year, as the possibility of the US dollar skyrocketing could force emerging markets to seek alternatives.
It projects that the Trump regime’s fiscal spending binge may increase the circa $20 trillion of US national debt and potentially triple the current US budget deficit from approximately $600 bln to $1.2-1.8 trillion or some 6-10 percent of the US’s current $18.6 trillion economy.
This may cause inflation to skyrocket, forcing the federal reserve to accelerate its hikes and the USD dollar to soar, creating a domino effect in emerging markets and forcing people worldwide to look towards alternative forms of currencies and payment systems not tied to central banks.
The report adds:
“If the banking system, as well as sovereigns such as Russia and China, move to accept Bitcoin as a partial alternative to the USD and the traditional banking and payment system, then we could see Bitcoin easily triple over the next year going from the current $700 level to +$2,100 as the Blockchain’s decentralized system, an inability to dilute the finite supply of Bitcoins as well as low to no transaction costs gains more traction and acceptance globally.”
China to exceed growth expectations
On Dec. 1, China restricted the importation of gold in order to prevent capital leaving the country. The country still plans to regulate the importation of gold to avoid the Chinese yuan from leaving the country.
As a huge determinant of the eventual quasi-synchronization in price between Bitcoin and the yuan, the Chinese trading volume will correlate with the price of Bitcoin in the coming weeks even as the Chinese central bank and authorities struggle to recover the value of the yuan which has fallen 5.8 percent against the dollar already this year.
Saxo Bank notes that China is expected to exceed growth expectations in the coming years, adding that the country’s current slowdown has been predictable due to elevated investment levels of around 50 percent of GDP while total debt has swollen to an unsustainable 237 percent of GDP.
Through massive stimulus from fiscal and monetary policies, and by opening up capital markets even more, the country successfully steers a transition to consumption-intensive growth surpassing current expectations and reaching eight percent growth in 2017.
Remember Kim Dotcom?
Trump’s ascendancy will be confirmed in January - a time in which Kim Dotcom hopes to launch his Megaupload 2.0.
Saxo’s projected three-fold increase in the current price of the digital currency - currently at $760 - is similar to Dotcom’s prediction that Megaupload and its potential Bitcoin wallet Bitcache system could take the price of Bitcoin to $2000, based on the claim that the file sharing product would overcome Bitcoin’s scaling problems.
The anonymous cloud sharing, anti-surveillance, video hosting, Bitcoin-caching online service, that will serve the equivalent to the population of the Philippines (approximately 103 mln), is slated for a release in late January. Let’s hope he can pull it off.
India is ready for Bitcoin
Bitcoin’s price increased following the recent demonetization of the Indian rupee. Following this, there were suggestions that the government could be planning a ban on the importation of gold as the precious metal reached two-year highs in November. This, coupled with the growing awareness of Bitcoin in the world’s second most populated country and the Indian government's resolve to work on Bitcoin and the Blockchain framework before 2018, could push it to a tipping point.
In its Payment and Settlement Systems in India: Vision-2018, the Reserve Bank of India notes that it will be monitoring framework for new technologies/innovations in order to “ensure that regulations keep pace with the developments in technology impacting the payment space, the global level developments in technology such as distributed ledgers, Blockchain etc. will be monitored and regulatory framework, as required, will be put in place.”
This will improve the country’s payments ecosystem, it says, which has been evolving dynamically with the advancements and innovations taking place, particularly in the area of FinTech.
In a chat with Cointelegraph, a spokesperson for Zebpay agrees that there's been no talk of Bitcoin without the mention of India lately and this will continue for a little longer because Bitcoins are the new game changers in the era of cashless economy offering billions of Indians the ability to go cashless using digital currencies.
The spokesperson says: “We skipped the landline generation and have a modern mobile phone infrastructure. Similarly, India has the potential to skip the plastic money generation and build a modern financial infrastructure on this revolutionary technology.”
For Coinsecure CEO Mohit Kalra, India is rising to Bitcoin and 2017 seems promising for its adoption and usage.
Kalra says:
"In terms of use, we are hoping to see more merchants start accepting Bitcoin in India. Demonetization and going cashless can definitely help boost adoption rates across merchants, businesses and individuals alike!"