A former governor for New Hampshire and three-term senator has said that bitcoin could ‘alter the world’ and ‘neuter’ central banks.
In an opinion piece published by The Hill, Judd Gregg, who served as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, gives a detailed view as to why the digital currency could be seen as the answer to the world economy.
He starts by questioning whether bitcoin is the future of money and that if it was to become so it would ‘defy the logic of time and history.’ He adds that for a currency to be viable it needs to have something behind it that gives it value. In most cases, this is a government, a nation, and an economy, he writes. In bitcoin’s case, however, it has none of these.
He writes:
People put value on it because of this opaque source of its existence — and because they want to.
Comparing the digital currency to gold, Gregg notes that that gold is accepted by large banks because it has been used as a medium of trade and commerce for years and it’s rare. He goes on to say that bitcoin is alleged to be the currency of the future. One that is ‘unattached to any nation, devoid of the politics of any government and free from the dominance of any central bank,’ he said, adding:
It sounds pretty good. In fact, it sounds so good that one is temped to say, “Throw in some pixie dust and it is off to never-never land.” However, that would be too traditional a view. Bitcoin could indeed alter the entire world of commercial transactions.
He believes that if people accept that bitcoin or any of the other cryptocurrencies have value ‘then it will herald in a new era.’ This, in turn, would mean that governments and central banks would be ‘greatly marginalised in their roles as the arbiters of the world economy,’ he explains.
In a world where Bitcoin or its successors are generally used, the central bank is to a large degree neutered.