But there's a crucial difference, one of a kind

You can't change the supply of a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin other than by consensus. But even in that case, it would seriously undermine its value proposition. Put simply, Bitcoin will no longer be Bitcoin. On the other hand, Nixon ended the dollar convertibility to gold single-handedly, and it didn't kill the dollar. In a nutshell, just declaring that some CBDC will be hard-capped won't suffice unless there is a working mechanism in place to enforce and ensure this cap, the one which can't be removed arbitrarily on some dubious pretext

Tossing a coin was an extreme example

But it served a purpose. While tossing a coin, you can be more or less certain that your chances are fifty-fifty. However, this is not the case with trading. The point is, you may think that your odds are good, say, 90%, but the real odds (at least as far as probabilities are concerned) can be quite different, and sometimes entirely different. In short, you may not know the real odds, and that seems to be the case with the majority of traders most of the time

This is not what we should concern ourselves with presently

We should better hope that the vaccines will be effective in the first place. And with this type of virus, which is highly mutable, a separate vaccine may be required for every strain, with the implication being that there will be no working vaccine, by and large. That's not a good news. Other than that, personally, I have no doubts that if there will be a 100% working vaccine (despite all odds), it will be made available to everyone very cheap or or at no cost at all for the simple reason it is an economically sound solution

That's a topic for another article

Bitcoin has lost this battle because it is "good" money (and fiat "bad"). So even if we removed all technical obstacles like confirmation times and transaction costs as in free and instant transactions for all, this wouldn't mend matters. People would still continue to hoard bitcoins, and probably even in larger amounts

And personally, I don't believe that with a CBDC you will be able to make cross-border payments like you do them with Bitcoin, i.e. without any restrictions as if borders didn't exist. If we assume that, it would mean that central bankers went nuts. They will never let go of this milk cow (and our handcuffs at the same time) that international remittances are

This is not my site, I was just asked (and, well, paid) to write on a topic which is familiar and interesting to me


I don't actually think that the Bank of England deliberately distanced itself from any crypto association

Rather, they were at first kinda paying tribute to blockchain and Bitcoin, but with time, it became obvious there's simply no need for blockchain technology in a CBDC. Bitcoin may have pushed central bankers toward developing such currencies but nothing beyond that. Anyway, no CBDC has been released yet, so it is a moot point


Whatever they come up with in the end won't address fiat's major issue, which is relentless money printing ("they love to print money")

I bought a boat half price... It was on sail

There's another issue which I decided not to touch in the article

If the idea of a CBDC is utilized to its full potential, it will strike against today's bankers (not central bankers, though). Really, if people will be able to transact directly through a central bank (as Roubini suggests), what is going to happen to commercial banks? Indeed, if they are no longer needed, it will free one hell of a lot of resources (read, it is a good thing), but I don't think many bankers will be happy (read, it's unlikely to happen)


I don't agree, and I explained that point in the article. CBDCs will be a new payment system essentially, not new money. So how can they hurt Bitcoin beyond what regular fiat already does? People will see the advantages of a CBDC, but these are also the advantages of Bitcoin, divorced from the CBDC's disadvantages (most important, inflation)

That's not necessarily the case

If some whales are selling, other whales may be buying. And it is not in the least established that smaller whales are buying from the bigger ones. As far as I remember, the coin distribution is heavily skewed toward huge wallets, i.e. the ones with over 1k bitcoins (note, I don't refer to exchange wallets here) and, most importantly, this imbalance tends to become worse over time. That pretty much means that big fish are eating small ones (as well as average Joes)

It is a waste of time

But only if you have just one account. However, things may start to look amazingly different if you have a dozen of such accounts (a few hundred would do even better). Then, developing a bot to claim free doges can be quite entertaining, I daresay. To set things straight, I have two accounts at Wolf.bet, while I use and have been using only one to gamble (I needed two accounts to check translations without having to switch back and forth from one language to another)


With a bot and an army of accounts, it is no longer an overkill

As a follow-up post, many people seem to erroneously assume that CBDCs are going to be blockchain-based. Although we don't know that for certain as no central bank digital currency has been launched yet (with China presumably now testing the digital permutation of its currency), there is little doubt that these currencies will be heavily centralized (read, no blockchain will be used). As a result, it is not so much about introducing a new currency in its own right but about developing a new payment system for the existing one

And China is also looking to become a major regional player

Okay, more people will be entering this market

And how is it going to help whales lose their grip on the market? The supply of Bitcoin is fixed (capped), and you can't sell more bitcoins than there are in circulation (well, technically, Bitcoin futures and other derivatives could in fact expand its effective monetary base). So the only way they can lose their manipulating power is through selling their coins. And this is another issue. If they have more purchasing power than the average Joe, they would likely start buying, not selling

My article published on stealthex.io. Feel free to comment

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Central Bank Digital Currencies: a Threat or a Blessing?

Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) have been in the rumors since 2013, with China allegedly developing in secrecy a government-issued centralized cryptocurrency to fight off increasingly popular Bitcoin. But it wasn’t until September 2015 when the Bank of England had publicly discussed for the first time the use of a blockchain-based central bank currency as a way to implement negative interest rates, and March 2016 when the phrase "central bank digital currency" had been coined.

To be sure, CBDCs have been a scarecrow for the cryptocurrency community for quite some time now. But how real is the danger? And couldn’t it in fact turn out to be a blessing in disguise for Bitcoin and its brothers in arms over the long haul? A sober look into the reality of CBDCs and their seemingly brewing stand-off with cryptocurrencies is due and invited.

A New Twist on an Old Tune

As soon as CBDCs started to make headlines across major news outlets in 2019, a new wave of soothsayers has risen. This time, Bitcoin skeptics and haters alike have gotten something looking solid on the surface. CBDCs came in handy to scare the cryptocurrency public into fear and depression for being touted as an ultimate weapon that would destroy Bitcoin. Aside from the regular fear mongering that has been following cryptocurrencies through years, there are a few apparently rational considerations that could, at least in theory, herald the autumn of cryptocurrencies.

As it happened, the first proposals on CBDCs were in fact inspired by Bitcoin and the idea of a distributed digital ledger underpinning it. Moreover, they were actually suggesting the use of blockchain technology in one way or another. Today, this is no longer the case, and the concept of a digital fiat currency as it presently stands has little to do with blockchain. But how much would then a CBDC be different from conventional fiat which is already digital almost everywhere but in a few exceptionally backward countries?

A number of mainstream economists try to address this issue, with Nouriel Roubini, a professor of economics at New York University and former senior adviser to the White House council of economic advisers and the US Treasury, leading the assault on Bitcoin. He goes as far as to claim that CBDCs are going to replace most private digital payment systems like PayPal and its likes by allowing anyone to transact directly through the central bank. That would reduce the need for cash and make traditional bank accounts along with digital payment services obsolete and unnecessary.

In his view, cryptocurrencies are no more than a pile of overhyped blockchain technologies promoted by a bunch of “starry-eyed crypto-fanatics”. Roubini reasons that once CBDCs arrive, they would instantly displace cryptocurrencies, which, as he senses them, are far from scalable, cheap, and secure, nor they are actually decentralised and anonymous according to him. Whether his prophecy of an impending doom for crypto has any real ground remains a matter of scrutiny, which takes us to the next part of this essay.

Much Ado about Nothing

The argument in favor of CBDCs taking over cryptocurrencies is essentially based on misunderstanding Bitcoin’s primary value proposition. Although the advantages and benefits of CBDCs may be real, to a varying degree, the idea of a central bank digital currency doesn’t part ways with the original idea of fiat money itself. In other words, CBDCs will always remain a somewhat enhanced or updated version of fiat. As such, every major flaw or fault that fiat has ever revealed can be rightfully ascribed to this form of a centrally-controlled currency.

Most importantly, CBDCs don’t seek to address the arbitrariness of their governing bodies, that is to say, central banks, in the majority of cases. Whatever has been said positive toward CBDCs can be reversed through the misuse and abuse by the monetary authorities. It is just a matter of time till they start turning advantages of CBDCs into disadvantages as has always been the case in the past, but now more efficiently and with a vengeance. And this is in stark contrast to Bitcoin which sets forth a distinctively different governance model by removing any central authority from the equation.

This point has been reiterated and emphasized by many notable and well-known figures in the cryptoverse. For example, Barry Silbert, the founder of venture capital firm Digital Currency Group and a major investor in the blockchain space, strongly believes that central banks won’t be capping the supply of CBDCs because they “love to print money”. In this manner, CBDCs aren’t going to fix broken monetary policies carried out by most, if not all, central banks. Then we are instantly back to square one.

And that comes down to a simple but time-proven truth that fiat currencies, no matter what form they may take, are set to depreciate and lose value over time. There is no way around this, and CBDCs will be of little help here, if ever. On the other hand, these currencies allow central bankers to gain more power over financial activities of the general public by requiring common people to use the financial system based on a CBDC, and, by extension, subjecting them to other forms of control in their efforts to maintain state supremacy over money – in addition to its costs and restrictions.

Put shortly, digital currencies issued by central authorities cannot on their own pose a real threat to Bitcoin and undermine its value proposition coming from its decentralized nature and capped supply, especially in the long term. But could it play out in an altogether different direction? Could CBDCs actually help, in some convoluted or even controversial way, non-central bank currencies such as Bitcoin, and contribute to their mainstream adoption and wider acceptance? As it turns out, it is not totally impossible, and this might be the most interesting piece of the CBDC puzzle.

A Blessing in Disguise

Now that we established that CBDCs are unlikely to hurt Bitcoin, it is time to explore the opportunities they could offer the crypto space. Barry Silbert says that the efficient and cost-effective infrastructure every financial institution will have to build in order to safely store and support CBDCs happens to be the same infrastructure that could be used to transact with and provide support to cryptocurrencies. Consequently, Bitcoin will benefit in the long run from the world’s central bankers issuing their own digital currencies – when these currencies start to fail at the end of the day, which is inevitable with any form of fiat money as many economists claim.

At a fundamental level, CBDCs, if they kick off for real, are set to compete not so much with Bitcoin and the rest of the pack but rather with other central bank currencies, digital or otherwise. Whatever nation launches such a currency first, the others will quickly follow. You don’t exactly need a master’s degree in economics to understand who will benefit most from the dog-eat-dog fight that will without doubt ensue, just like fiat currencies benefit from cryptocurrencies competing with each other.

It would likely mean even greater wealth inequality

First off, what makes you think that big holders are going to part with their precious coins that would become even more precious once governments "adopt" cryptocurrencies in one or another way? Then, as I see it, mass adoption would actually contribute to hoarding instincts of a typical Bitcoin holder. And deep pockets have a lot more purchasing power anyway (that's the crucial point here), and thus they can buy and stash away more bitcoins, right?

Becoming a vegetarian was a big missed steak

I think we can make it even easier to see the difference between the good and the bad. The good is everything that makes you happy or at least happier in the long term (preferably, for lifetime). On the other hand, the bad is anything which undermines your long-term wellbeing (and happiness). In this way, drugs are bad even if they can make you happy for a while. Casinos (since we are talking about them here) can be both depending on our personal inclinations and attitudes. They can ruin one's life, but they can also make one happier for offering enjoyment and fun (with a bit of adrenaline)

The times were different

Spanish flu started right after World War I when millions of people had died or been killed, and human life didn't amount to much. Aside from that, the world was a pretty separated place back then, and no one cared if a few million people fell victim to some disease halfway across the world. How many of us really care if a million people die from hunger somewhere in Africa if that many people die there year in and year out?

I don't think it is dead, dead as a doornail

With that said, however, some businesses are certainly going to bite the dust or have already croaked. But that's just life. On a more optimistic note (if I can say so), the businesses that will survive will come out stronger of this mess and will face less competition in the future when the economy goes back to life. And it will get back to life eventually, as it happened countless times before in the past. Put simply, there's nothing new under the sun

I had to take a second job working in the bakery. I knead dough

That remains to be seen

I don't know where you are from, and the life expectancy in your country may well be substantially below the average lifespan in developed countries, after all. But since phasing out physical cash is mostly a task for advanced countries, with good healthcare and high living standards, people born in 1970's will be 75 years old by 2050 (again, on average). That's not much unless we succumb to something by far more lethal than today's Covid-19 in the coming years. If anything, Trump is 74 years old now, and it doesn't look like he is going to kick the bucket any time soon. So don't be surprised to see him still sticking around in 2050

Ironically, cryptocurrencies are quite different in this regard

There's an adage in many European languages, and it says that shrouds have no pockets, with the meaning being that you can't take your wealth into the afterlife (read, it is not a good idea to hoard money while you are alive). However, it seems like crypto is radically turning the tables, and you can in fact take your precious bitcoins with you when you step into the grave. But seriously, how many coins have already been irretrievably lost this way?

Personally, I am not complaining

But then they could just force users to enable 2FA right at registration, right? However, there would be even more complains than right now, and some people would likely not use the casino at all. So it looks like my assumption is not every far from truth after all, i.e. making 2FA mandatory for the 7-Day Streak bonus is a subtle way of prompting all Wolf.bet gamblers to enable 2FA