"The managing director of the IMF talked up the potential of virtual currencies to supplant traditional monies in coming decades. Lagarde devoted a third of her talk, which envisioned how financial tech may reshape the world by the year 2040, to the subject of cryptocurrency."
"JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and billionaire hedge fund founder Ray Dalio recently disparaged Bitcoin. Now Lagarde shared a rosier vision of the general technology's future with attendees of a Bank of England conference in London..."
It seems it has come the time when financial elites are staring down their noses at BTC. I am from Argentina, so I know pretty well what IMF's interests are. In fact, cryptocurrencies may be the way to entirely displacing government with the market as proposed by anarcho-capitalism.
So, what does this mean for our community? Is bitcoin going to rise? Would this be good for bitcoin holders but bad countries?
Lagarde talk
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"Let us start with virtual currencies. To be clear, this is not about digital payments in existing currencies—through Paypal and other “e-money” providers such as Alipay in China, or M-Pesa in Kenya.
Virtual currencies are in a different category, because they provide their own unit of account and payment systems. These systems allow for peer-to-peer transactions without central clearinghouses, without central banks."
"For instance, think of countries with weak institutions and unstable national currencies. Instead of adopting the currency of another country—such as the U.S. dollar—some of these economies might see a growing use of virtual currencies. Call it dollarization 2.0."
"And yet, why might citizens hold virtual currencies rather than physical dollars, euros, or sterling? Because it may one day be easier and safer than obtaining paper bills, especially in remote regions. And because virtual currencies could actually become more stable."
"Four dollars for gardening tips from a lady in New Zealand, three euros for an expert translation of a Japanese poem, and 80 pence for a virtual rendering of historic Fleet Street: these payments can be made with credit cards and other forms of e-money. But the charges are relatively high for small-value transactions, especially across borders.
Instead, citizens may one day prefer virtual currencies, since they potentially offer the same cost and convenience as cash—no settlement risks, no clearing delays, no central registration, no intermediary to check accounts and identities. If privately issued virtual currencies remain risky and unstable, citizens may even call on central banks to provide digital forms of legal tender."
http://fortune.com/2017/10/02/bitcoin-ethereum-cryptocurrency-imf-christine-lagarde/
