Last week, JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon said “I personally think that bitcoin is worthless” during an Institute of International Finance event. The utter hypocrisy in that statement is telling of the global bankers in general since bitcoin is actually more controlled and valuable than fiat paper currency like U.S. dollars.
As countries left the gold standard in an effort to ease worries about runs on federal gold supplies, a lot of international currencies are now known as fiat. Fiat currency is printed by a government or federal reserve bank and not backed by anything, just the illusion of value by public confidence in trading the paper money with each other for goods or services.
Recently, Dimon also told Axios that bitcoin has “no intrinsic value” and that “regulators are going to regulate the hell out of it.”
Unlike dollars, cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are highly durable, highly divisible, highly secure which cannot be counterfeited, highly scarce with a predictable supply, highly decentralized and also highly programmable or “smart.”
In 1994, economist Paul Volker said, “It is a sobering fact that the prominence of central banks in this century has coincided with a general tendency towards more inflation, not less. If the overriding objective is price stability, we did better with the nineteenth-century gold standard and passive central banks, with currency boards, or even with ‘free banking.’ The truly unique power of a central bank, after all, is the power to create money, and ultimately the power to create is the power to destroy.”
In fact, the Federal Reserve has printed about $29 trillion, and a staggering 40% all U.S. dollars in existence today were printed over the past 2 years alone. This is an obviously alarming rate that has increased monumentally since COVID-19 began.
With all of the uncertainty in the financial system, how can a small business in the U.S. grow?
The term “crowdfunding” was first used by FundaVlog founder, Michael Sullivan in 2006. However, the concept of raising money online started in the late 1990s as a way to sponsor events. Recently, the pandemic has caused a major boom in crowdfunding by small businesses looking for alternative funding sources.
The Jump Start Our Businesses Startup Up Act – JOBS Act, which was signed into law back in 2012, paved the way for debt-based and equity crowdfunding. Rewards-based and gift-based crowdfunding have both been very effective tools through SEC-regulated online platforms where anyone can invest in startups or small businesses with strict government guidelines.
The benefit of startup crowdfunding without big corporate donors has never been greater. This “democratizing” of fundraising through everyday citizens allows a company’s mission to be untarnished by Wall Street. Just like the presidential campaigns of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and former Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, millions can be raised from individuals who want to support the spirit of small donations over bowing to big business.
Companies that directly serve the best interests of the small donor, just like a political candidate with a strong anti-Wall Street platform, reaps the two-fold advantages of providing a good product people want to rally behind to begin with.
This summer, we saw average investors take on the banks using Reddit groups buying stocks like Gamestop and defeating Wall Street short-sellers. In the same vein, most people want the economy to flourish without a Wall Street monopoly of a few financial institutions ruling over them.
Cryptocurrencies have never been more popular worldwide. The freedom individuals have to take back power from regulated stock markets and fiat currencies will not stop but only increase as new coins are introduced and more countries begin allowing cryptocurrency payments.
This is a pivotal moment for the world economy as governments try to tax and regulate cryptocurrencies. Crowdfunding crypto-related businesses has to be the goal for the future of a free market.
With statements like Dimon’s, it’s up to average citizens to stand up for the future of our livelihoods by defending decentralized cryptocurrency markets while bankers like Dimon promote endless trillions in money printing to pay for our children’s inevitable looming crash.
Ian Kane is Co-CEO of Unbanked