Some thoughts on financial freedom.
Separate the State from church, and you will have religious freedom. Separate the State from money, and you will have financial freedom.
Countries worldwide are enacting legislation either in favor or against cryptocurrencies. The citizens must be able to decide what to do with their hard-earned money, not the government. After you have worked for your money, you have the right to spend your money as you see fit. If you earned money that was already taxed, it shouldn't be taxed again because that is racketing from the government, but taxes are taxes, and if you can't avoid them, you have no choice but to pay them or end up like John McAfee, dead.
In the United States, you can buy pretty much every cryptocurrency you may want. Still, you have to pay capital gains on your earnings if and only if you sell your assets, so many investors are considering borrowing against their assets to avoid capital gain taxes. In China, the crackdown is intensifying because the government in that country is seeking to implement its digital currency and probably doesn't want any competition from alternatives they can't control.
The government will crack down on cryptocurrencies, and we will know if cryptocurrencies are decentralized that day. We will also have to try if cryptos will pass its significant threat to government regulations. Let me make it very clear governments don't fear digital currencies. What they fear is the loss of control over the money. The power to print currency is what governments seek to protect when they enact crypto regulations.
If you use cryptocurrencies to speculate on the future price and not use it to buy goods and services, then you are not helping. You are only making the debt problem even more significant. To acquire goods and services, you must always exchange them into a fiat currency, which will mean that the government will continue to print money, and it doesn't matter how much your assets grow in fiat value. It will consistently devalue because governments have unlimited printing rights while cryptos don't. And even if you invest in crypto, your money won't be safe even if it goes up in value because the fiat system is still printing, you will still have the problem of inflation, and you won't be fixing anything.
Bitcoin was created as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system with a minimal supply so that against fiat currencies, it always increases in value. Still, if you are not going to use it as its primary designed goal, then that will mean you will only use it to speculate on the appreciation of price against fiat. While banks and governments can print unlimited money supply, the general public can't. It means that the store of value narrative goes out the window once your customers don't have any more money to put in the market. Those that buy Bitcoin as regular citizens with jobs or businesses don't have unlimited resources, which will mean that for Bitcoin to be a store of value, it will need governments to print money and buy the asset.
Regular citizens can only pump the price so much, including the rich and their corporations. Still, suppose the government keeps on printing at some point. In that case, the fiat growth won't hold to the money printing levels unless governments decide to buy Bitcoin. Then, it could become the ultimate store of value because the government will print to buy more BTC from the public. But the government doesn't need Bitcoin because they can print money, and their printed money is the current store of value. It is regular citizens that need Bitcoin to fight against government-created inflation.
As long as money fiat has a value, the government doesn't need to buy Bitcoin or any other altcoins because they can print whatever amount they need, and the government doesn't pay for the nearly created bills. The citizen pays the price in the form of inflation and sometimes even hyperinflation. Only governments that can't print will benefit from buying Bitcoin, those that print don't need it because what they print is being accepted by everyone else. You only need a new printer once the one you have is broken. Same for governments.
If you hear about regulation, remember that it is about trying to know how much crypto you have and where because the government wants its share of the pie. If for some reason, cryptos start to take over the whole economy where people are all dumping fiat, the government will increase the taxes on crypto assets so that prices come down. Governments don't want you using crypto as a peer-to-peer currency because they know that once you start doing that, they can't follow the money and don't know who to tax.
And if they don't know who to tax, that asset becomes more attractive to investors, and fiat becomes worthless, which governments can't tolerate. If people lose faith in the dollar, then the United States, with all its mighty army, becomes just a kiddy because without the control of currency, a government can't govern, and that is the result when you separate money from the State. The transition won't be easy, but it will be good.
Do you think you would have freedom of religion if the church were part of the government? Do you think you have financial freedom if money hasn't been separated from the government?
