If you’ve been reading BBC news then you probably know that they have a weekly podcast called “A Point of View”. This Valentine ’s Day Adam Gopnik (the usual host) had an interesting opinion regarding Bitcoin and money and money in general.
Adam starts with a little introduction of his opinion on what is money. He speaks of images that are on the face of the paper cash making a comparison of the founding fathers cult that represents the US dollars and how euros have the non-specified images of construction.
The host proceeds to state that visuals on cash are much more than pictures. These represent what people believe money are worth, what is keeping them, what’s supporting them. What idea or concept is closer to the people who use these pieces of paper.
Yes, this is the first point in his monologue. Money are just pieces of paper with pictures on it. They exist only so far as people believe in them. Of course, it’s been a long time since merchants and buyers had agreed on the fact that seashells or gold nuggets can be exchanged for goods and services. Even more modern money have been here for quite a while. Now every dollar or euro or any other unit of currency you own is simply air. It has worth as long as government says it does.
Next, Adam makes a reference to cryptocurrencies. He understands the dreadful meaning they hold to the central banks, as they make show that economic system can regulate itself without officials getting their hands into our finance, controlling every step of every deal we make. A network that is only supported by the proof-of-work principle – if you have the resources to maintain Bitcoin mining rigs day and night, you get your reward in the not-so-crunchy but still valuable cryptocurrency, The whole community relies entirely on itself.
Adam predicts that Bitcoin and other Altcoins would have a bright future as from his economic background he compares governments to households, where later has a tendency to support two completely opposite economic systems.
In the end of podcast Adam finishes his thoughts on the subject by making another bold claim that in the future families will have their own micro-currencies circulating in the household, custom and personified:
“And so it will go, house by house and family by family, making our micro-currencies like morning poems. For what is money, after all, but a game we have decided to play, a study in mutual confidence, a medium of exchange?”