BLOCKCHAIN 2020
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THE STATE OF BLOCKCHAIN 2020 & OPPORTUNITIES FOR SMALL REGIONAL MARKETS Blockchain 2020 has finally arrived. It’s time to take a closer look at the current global landscape and for the rest of 2020. WRITER: KIRK PHILLIPS, CPA, CMA, CFE, CBP, MANAGING DIRECTOR GLOBAL CRYPTO ADVISORS, INC.
THE BIG STORY Libra, the Swiss based foundation led by Facebook, announced their white paper and plans to release a stablecoin in June 2019. This was one of the biggest news stories of 2019 in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space, and even global financial markets in general. A stablecoin is simply a digital currency pegged to a respective fiat currency like USD or the Guilder, a commodity or some combination (e.g. 1 stablecoin = 1 USD). The big announcement turned into an “incendiary event” waking up central banks and especially the US Congress focusing on some disruptive tech about to shift the balance of power in world reserve currencies. Facebook Founder, Mark Zuckerberg, was grilled by Congress in October 2019 when Congresswomen Maxine
CURAÇAO BUSINESS | EDITION 1 | 2020
Waters called on Libra to bring their stablecoin project to a grinding halt. INCENDIARY The event is incendiary because Bitcoin has been plugging away and sufficiently decentralizing itself over the last 10 years gaining superpowers along the way that Libra will never have. It’s not like Bitcoin has gone completely unnoticed, however many incumbents have largely dismissed its capabilities allowing the grassroots tech to secure itself as the backbone of the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem. Bitcoin is an alternative universal store of value with a fixed supply governed by math recorded in an unstoppable ledger. It deserves far more attention than Libra from a potential disruption perspective. For example,
Maxine Waters would have failed if she “called on Bitcoin” to testify to Congress because it’s not a company, has no CEO and no corporate offices. There are no stakeholders in the traditional sense. BLOWING OFF THE DUST Meanwhile, after the Libra announcement, the People’s Bank of China dusted off their central bank digital currency (CBDC) project from prior years going full steam ahead in a secret bunker full of developers. A Forbes article, “Central Banks Are Not Issuing Digital Currency Soon”, released in January 2019 reported on a Bank of International Settlements (BIS) survey. The BIS stated, “although a majority of central banks are researching CBDCs …. over 85% of central banks see themselves as either
