Crypto As National Currency? Maybe Not A Good Idea – InsuranceNewsNet

InsuranceNewsNet — Your Industry. One Source.™

Sign in
  • Subscribe
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Contact
Home Now reading Newswires
Topics
    • Life Insurance
    • Annuity News
    • Health/Employee Benefits
    • Property and Casualty
    • Advisor News
    • Washington Wire
    • Regulation News
    • Sponsored Content
    • Webinars
    • Monthly Focus
  • INN Exclusives
  • NewsWires
  • Magazine
  • Free Newsletters
Sign in or register to be an INNsider.
  • INN Exclusives
  • NewsWires
  • Magazine
  • Free Newsletters
  • Insider
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Editorial Staff
  • Contact
  • Newsletters

Get Social

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
Advisor News
Newswires RSS Get our newsletter
Order Prints
May 19, 2022 Newswires No comments
Share
Share
Tweet
Email

Crypto As National Currency? Maybe Not A Good Idea

Herald-Mail, The (Hagerstown, MD)
The world's also-ran nations are always looking for an angle, be it as a tax haven, an opaque repository of foreign assets or as home to some oddball tourist attraction, like swallows or sea turtles.

El Salvador, trying to get the jump on other nations, decided it could make a splash on the world scene by being the Bubba of Bitcoin. Whoops. It made a splash all right, the same sort of splash a dead sailor makes when they throw him overboard.

The financially beleaguered nation went all-in on cryptocurrency in September by making Bitcoin its national currency and floating a $1 billion crypto bond.

In other words, El Salvador took its entire economy to Las Vegas and put it on red. And we all know what happened. Actually, El Salvador is lucky. Bitcoin is only down 50%. Some went entirely down the flume. If you had $1 million in Luna yesterday, today you don't even have enough to buy a ham sandwich.

Fortune favors the – RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

What? You mean a financial investment hyped by Mike Tyson and Kim Kardashian turned out to be a sham? No.

Employing someone, who has famously blown through multiple fortunes, as a pitchman for financial planning is, even by American standards, nutty beyond belief.

Normal Ohioans meanwhile have to be breathing a sigh of relief that Republican voters rejected the senatorial candidate who wanted to make the state "pro-God, pro-family, pro-Bitcoin."

Because nothing says "family" like rooting around in a dumpster together searching for fish bones. And how you equate God with Bitcoin, I can't even begin to say. It wasn't like Jesus cast the money changers out of the temple so he could put his cash into Ethereum.

None of this is unique to the American condition, obviously. In the 19th century, a horse-drawn wagon would roll into dusty backroad communities and talk its citizens into spending their last three cents on Dr. Caldwell's Syrup Pepsin instead of groceries.

Last century it was penny stocks. You could buy 50,000 shares of Cressen Consolidated Mining and Milling Co., and maybe a year later you would get notice as an official registered shareholder that aforementioned entity was now officially insolvent and had liquidated off its last remaining assets, which at that point amounted to six folding metal chairs and half a jar of Sanka.

Very, very infrequently, one of these companies would turn into Microsoft, at which point the lucky investor would – being all too aware of the odds – stop investing and start selling a correspondence course advertised in the back of Popular Mechanics magazine with a guy in a plaid suit saying, "I made a zillion dollars in penny stocks and you can too!"

Can, but won't.

And sure enough, there is no shortage of true believers today. You can't swing a cat without hitting a cryptocurrency, none of which you've ever heard of, with names like Tron, ZCash, Tezos, Neo, Dash, Ox and literally thousands of others.

Hey, if it's your thing, knock yourself out. But most people are going to be reluctant to put their life savings into a global currency cooked up by a kid in his parents' garage wearing a T-shirt with Taco Bell stains.

I acknowledge these might be brilliant people. But the American monetary system is the one thing the government does really, really well. It dominates the globe. If the goal is to launder drug money or scam senior citizens, it might not be perfect, but if I put a dollar in the bank tonight I know it's going to be there tomorrow, which is a lot more than you can say for these geniuses who think they can do better.

So if they want to start a revolution, maybe they should focus their talents on something that actually needs fixing, like the health insurance industry or the Department of Motor Vehicles.

BitLicense. That's something I'd buy into.

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

 

Older

Educational Services & Consulting (ESC) Announces the Release of Their Final Blog in Their Latest Series

Newer

May 2022 Investor Presentation

Advisor News

  • Where inflation is going to hit you the hardest
  • The Federal Reserve is raising rates. Here’s what it means for your financial future
  • Social Security: celebrate independence with Social Security
  • XML Financial Group merges with Samson Wealth Management Group
  • Teach your clients effective strategies for today’s retirement
More Advisor News

Annuity News

  • Investors Heritage launches new fixed index annuity
  • Bobby Bonilla, king of the annuity owners
  • Winning $300 million Powerball ticket purchased in Middlebury
  • Sammons names Kevin Mechtley to newly created product innovation role
  • Athene completes pension group annuity deal with Lockheed Martin
Sponsor
More Annuity News

Health/Employee Benefits News

  • Best’s Special Report: 2nd year of COVID-19 hurts health insurers’ earnings
  • Advocates call on Congress to extend health insurance subsidies before 5,000 West Virginians lose coverage
  • Democrats want to raid Medicare to pay for Obamacare – again
  • BlueCross of SC CEO retires from state's largest insurer, replacement named
  • Companies could face hurdles covering abortion travel costs
More Health/Employee Benefits News

Life Insurance

  • Penn Mutual introduces new accumulation indexed universal life
  • Alex Murdaugh, alleged hitman Smith indicted on money laundering, drug trafficking charges
  • Five people with ties to the Murdaugh family have died mysteriously
  • Wisconsin seeks policyholders of insolvent Time Insurance Co. products
  • 4 things to know about the return of premium life insurance
More Life Insurance

- Presented By -

How to Write For InsuranceNewsNet

Find out how you can submit content for publishing on our website.
View Guidelines

FEATURED OFFERS

It’s time for John Hancock Insurance • See how our cutting-edge solutions can help you grow your life insurance business. Get to know us.
Grow your life insurance business with John Hancock • It’s time to see how our cutting-edge solutions can help you and your clients get to know us.

Press ReleasesAll press releases

  • iPipeline® Provides Advisors Excel with Unified Path Toward Accessing Core Data Analytics in Financial Services
  • iPipeline® Adds Speed of Underwriting to Quote Engine with Ethos to Deliver Insurance to Agents in Minutes
  • National Life Will Host Annual Investor Call
  • RFP #T01622
  • OneAmerica Commits $1 Million Toward Financial Literacy
Add your Press Release >

Topics

  • Life Insurance
  • Annuity News
  • Health/Employee Benefits
  • Property and Casualty
  • Advisor News
  • Washington Wire
  • Regulation News
  • Sponsored Content
  • Webinars
  • Monthly Focus

Top Sections

  • Life Insurance
  • Annuity News
  • Health/Employee Benefits News
  • Property and Casualty News
  • AdvisorNews
  • Washington Wire
  • Insurance Webinars

Our Company

  • About
  • Editorial Staff
  • Magazine
  • Write for INN
  • Advertise
  • Contact

Sign up for our FREE e-Newsletter!

Get breaking news, exclusive stories, and money- making insights straight into your inbox.

select Newsletter Options
Facebook Linkedin Twitter
© 2022 InsuranceNewsNet.com, Inc. All rights reserved.
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • AdvisorNews

Sign in with your INNsider Account

Not registered? Become an INNsider.