Congress and politicians appear to be getting in on the bitcoin and cryptocurrency game a lot more over the past several months. Recently, Republican representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota commented that bitcoin is about to get a lot stronger and much more relevant in the coming weeks.
Tom Emmer: Bitcoin Is About to Get a Lot Tougher
Bitcoin has had a very strange year in 2020. The currency initially started in the high $6,000 range but spent the first few days of the year rising into the low to mid-$7,000 positions. It would rise to $10,000 the following month, but eventually fall into the high $3,000 range – losing roughly 70 percent of its value by mid-March – following the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, which ultimately took a serious toll on the world’s financial markets.
However, the currency began to rise quickly again once people saw it in a different light. As a means of hedging wealth, bitcoin was a powerful tool when it allegedly came to diversifying one’s portfolio and protecting their financial futures. Many began purchasing bitcoin and cryptocurrencies quickly as a means of keeping their money safe, and as a result, the currency rose into the $9,000 range by May.
Now, the world’s number one cryptocurrency is about to strike the $12,000 range. It is currently trading for just under $11,900, and Tom Emmer thinks the asset is about to make a serious mark on people’s views of money. He states:
As we come out of the crisis, bitcoin isn’t going away. [Bitcoin is] going to get stronger. You just watch. It has value, and when something has value, people are going to take risks and it’s going to advance.
Thus far, massive changes have been made, perhaps the biggest (and most recent) one being that banks are now able to provide customers with crypto custody services. This is huge in that the gap between both centralized and decentralized finance has been bridged. It also suggests that banks now see cryptocurrencies as financial tools of the future and products that aren’t going away anytime soon.
Centralization Has Got to Go
Emmer is also critical of how banks and financial institutions operate. He says that the way banks have operated in the United States have remained the same for more than 40 years, and so long as banking remains centralized within the nation, there will not be enough positive change. He states:
There are things happening that are going to disrupt the centralized nature of our society. We’re about to blow that whole thing up because of the pandemic, I believe… I think we’re just moving into that next phase, which is why crypto, the area, excites me… We’re not going backward when it comes to the internet superhighway. We’ve got to go forward… Bitcoin isn’t the problem. Centralized control is.