The cryptocurrency market has exploded over the last two years, with almost 1600%, and for the last 12 months – with around 600%. That is tremendous growth, especially for Bitcoin that is heating up discussions and “worries” from governments around the world about its plausibility and future in numerous industries.
According to cybersecurity expert, John McAfee, shared his opinion on what he believes is the reason for banks and governments to question bitcoin and other digital currencies.
What bitcoin does, as based on the technology blockchain, is completely decentralizing the market, eliminating banks and financial intermediaries, reducing costs of all kinds, and “smoothing” the process of recording information and transacting with data. The process is efficient, fast and accurate. These three qualities make cryptocurrencies a huge rival for banks, since this is what consumers want in numerous industries. In addition, the wide application of the blockchain technology is impressive, with current disruption in sectors like real estate (Dubai), Russia (ICOs), Germany (mobile apps), USA (education) and others.
Investing in bitcoin, transacting with cryptocurrencies and running your day-to-day operations with digital currencies may be affecting an individual’s ability to be taxed and “monitored” by the government about the tax level and liabilities to the country they live. This is a potential loss for the government and is a huge one, since taxes represent one of the biggest chunks of revenue for any government in the world. So, with the advancement of cryptocurrencies, the income of people will be hard to track, as reported by RT.com and technology pioneer and head of MGT Capital Investments John McAfee.
According to RT.com, McAfee shared:
“Our income taxes are the greatest source of revenue, but if everybody’s using Bitcoin, the government doesn’t know what your income is. They can’t tax it, and if you choose to say I didn’t have anything, they cannot prove otherwise. It will eventually frighten every nation state, but it doesn’t matter what they do, there’s no way you can create a law or to legislate something that will stop Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency because technically, you cannot.”
He also commented on China’s actions of banning ICOs, saying that “some regulation is needed in this booming market. RT.com reported:
“China is right about one thing, the ICOs, the initial coin offerings, there are lots of scams, lots of people who are fraudulently taking money from other people, so that’s got to stop. But I don’t think governments can stop it. We as users and the bitcoin community have to be self-regulated.
The fear is in the fear of governments and central banks, like JPMorgan, which is America’s largest bank. The CEO is so concerned that he acted like a madman and called Bitcoin a fraud, said someone is going to get killed eventually. It’s like, what are you talking about? It’s nonsense.”
Hinting at the fear of JPMorgan and Jamie Dimon, the CEO of the bank, McAfee presented his opinion that ICO’s may be in generally fraudulent, but the government is essentially not able to stop the whole process.
With clashing opinions on cryptocurrencies, it’s interesting to see the prices and upcoming applications of the “people’s currencies” in our lives for the next two to three years.