As Jack and his beanstalk can tell you, there are no magic beans. Unfortunately, those who believe cryptocurrency is their ticket to enormous wealth or financial security will soon find out that they, too, have no magic beans. What they may have is Monopoly money.
With that in mind, it needs to be said that recent actions to create a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve opens the door to potentially serious issues.
Equally chilling is the vulnerability of cryptocurrency to hackers. Media reports reveal that North Korean hackers recently stole $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency from Bybit, described as the world's second-largest crypto exchange. One can probably assume those hackers were operating under instructions from their government.
Perhaps the larger issue is that there is no "there" there when discussing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. At the core of a digital currency's existence is only an algorithmic ledger. Yet it reflects the same dynamics that have historically created speculative bubbles that leave investors stunned and broke.
Consider the Tulip Mania of the 1630s. Dutch tulip bulb prices reached extraordinary heights before collapsing dramatically. Like a cryptocurrency, it featured "value" largely driven by certified scarcity and speculative trading.
A similar bubble occurred in 1720, when Britain's publicly traded South Sea Company speculated on emerging South American trade opportunities. The eventual collapse of that pursuit was so widespread that it actually damaged the entire British economy. However, one needn't travel back centuries to chronicle the cycle of grand promises that went up in smoke.
The dot-com bubble at the end of the 1990s saw internet companies with limited revenue but rosy visions attract massive investment before the market crashed. Coming even closer to our current crypto era, there was the mortgage-backed securities crisis of 2007. Complex financial instruments obscured underlying risks to investors who were chasing illusionary profits until it all collapsed.
Now we have cryptocurrency being promoted as a parallel currency to the US dollar and other currencies.
There are any number of serious issues facing a digital currency. They include financial exclusion, where those without reliable internet access or computer literacy will have no access to their money. There are, and will remain, enormous privacy concerns. Digital currencies could enable unprecedented financial surveillance, allowing governments to track the spending of their citizens. And as hackers daily remind us, there are cybersecurity vulnerabilities through which digital currencies will face threats, from fraud, theft, loss and system failures that would compromise an entire nation's financial stability. There is no margin for currency error.
When the cryptocurrency bubble does eventually burst, I suspect one's account won't even be able to "Pass Go - collect $200."
Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.
