In order to understand why the government hates bitcoin we need to understand how money actually worksIn the history of the United States, the US dollar has been built on the "silver standard" and the "gold standard,". This means that the value of a dollar was directly tied to the country's silver or gold reserves. This is true in case of all currencies be it the Indian Rupee or The Chinese yen. A more simplified version of understanding this would be that any money you possessed could directly be exchanged for its value in whatever material it was being backed by. This is known as a commodity currency which does not exist in the current economy.
As an example, Lets say that you own a paper currency worth $ 20. Now you can take that paper bill and exchange it for gold or any other material backing it up which had the same $ 20 value.
But in the
current economy the world
runs on fiat currencies whose value is derived from the government that backs it.
Plain and simple, a US dollar has value as legal tender because the US government says it does. Though this system isn't perfect, it has served its purpose for many years.
The government loves fiat currency because it is centralized which means control is also centralized on the production and distribution of their respective fiat currencies via large central banks.
What this means for the banks They can track the currency's location in bank accounts, dictate its movement, and collect taxes on every financial transaction that includes their currency. This also helps the governments to try and keep their economy healthy by adjusting the amount of money in circulation to try and stimulate Wall Street investors or avoid a financial crisis.
Now why is bitcoin made? The
basic ideology behind Bitcoin is to use a combination of public-key cryptography and peer-to-peer networking to create a virtual analogy of gold,
that is to say, a substance that is scarce and fungible. Satoshi Nakamoto devised did arrange a set of restrictions in order to ensure that bitcoin is not misued to
an extent like the fact that there can only ever be 21 Million bitcoins ever in existence and as time progresses it will become difficult to mine bitcoins.
Nakamoto in 2009 -
The root problem with conventional currency, is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the
history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves
of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts." In contrast,
everything in Nakamoto's system "is based on crypto proof rather than trust
.
But is it really that simpleIt is not as simple as "The government likes to control and tax the movement of money" that makes them seem evil or greedy. The truth however is that if all currencies are decentralized, who would determines their value?
Bitcoin is only in the virtual form, how can we protect oourself from hackers or technical glitches? These questions are just some of the reasons why there is no telling what the future of cryptocurrencies holds, but it isn't wrong to say that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will not be replacing government-backed fiat currencies any time soon. This however does not mean that there isn't a future where cryptocurrencies will be treated as regulated global currencies. Of course if we include the corrupt institutions, politicians then we can say the government is evil and greedy.
For bitcoin to become truly succesful it must be both a medium of exchange and a reasonably stable store of value.
