After fetching negative returns of up to 32% over the past year to investors, Bitcoin is currently at the brink of $30k. In fact, last week, BTC dipped down to a level that was last observed back in December 2020, and as highlighted in a recent article, the profit-taking has completed a full circle since the beginning of 2021.
Bearish phases usually trigger people from both inside and outside the community to lash out at cryptos and pinpoint all the flaws present in the ecosystem. Just a day back, for instance, FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried went on to state that Bitcoin has no future as a payments network.
Now, in what is the latest development, an ex-Fed official has stated that he doesn’t see value in cryptos like Bitcoin.
Expensive, inconvenient, unstable: Choose your Bitcoin adjectives wisely?
In an interview with CNBC on Monday, former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke asserted that he didn’t believe Bitcoin worked as money, a store of value, or digital gold. Right from inconvenience to lack of stability, the official specified all possible reasons that shaped his school of thought.
“If Bitcoin were a substitute for fiat money, you could use Bitcoin to go buy your groceries… Nobody buys groceries with Bitcoin because it’s too expensive and too inconvenient to do that.”
He went on to how it wouldn’t be feasible to price items like celery in Bitcoin because there is hardly any stability to its value. He was quick to advocate gold and went on to proclaim that it had “use value.” He added,
“You can use it [gold] to fill cavities. The underlying use-value of a Bitcoin is to do ransomware or something like that.”
Well, opinions take time to form and cannot really be changed overnight. Bernanke has always remained inclined towards the unconventional side. Nearly two decades back, for instance, he had proposed that the Fed could implement the ‘helicopter money’ monetary policy and just like that drop money from helicopters to fend off deflation.
Bottom line
Just like how every coin has two sides, bearish phases are also viewed as opportunity zones to enter the market by the other set of people who advocate the underlying tech and understand how market cycles operate.
Consider this – On the other side of the spectrum, in El Salvador, over 44 countries just met to discuss Bitcoin and encourage crypto adoption. So, perhaps years later, when Bitcoin is able to exhibit some sort of ‘proof of work’ by becoming more mainstream and widely adopted by the masses as an MoE, the rigid anti opinions of people would eventually get remolded.
So, for now, the choice is yours to make about whether or not ‘no value’ comments associated with Bitcoin should be paid heed to or not.