"The deflationary aspects of a free market avalanche of investment capital into cryptocurrencies is terrifying, especially for a world that is drowning in debt represented by existing national currencies.
Here's the frightening scenario : you owe several hundred thousand dollars or yen or euro on your mortgage and other debt. Your employer is pretty hip and they start paying you in this new cryptocurrency because they see the currency rising so they have transferred all the company's cash assets including payroll into a cryptocurrency. They hope the transfer will lead to increased bottom line earnings for the company, since the cryptocurrency keeps rising and that means the company may enjoy a currency arbitrage profit as their former currency not in crypto keeps rising and providing profits.
For you, the new payments in crypto are great, because by the time you finish paying your bills each month your paycheck has risen in value...so its like getting a bonus with every paycheck ! What's even better, you easily transfer enough cryptocurrency each month into dollars because the mortgage servicer who you sends your mortgage to specified in the mortgage agreement that your payments will be in dollars. So too did the credit card companies. So you translate some of your crypto paycheck into dollars and pay your debt bills.
Here's where it gets interesting...
The mortgage servicer and the credit card banks receive your dollars as planned. But like you, they are having to start transacting more business in cryptocurrency as the world marches toward the brave new world, and so the dollars they are being paid by you to settle your debts with them are becoming less and less powerful in terms of how much cryptocurrency those dollars can buy. In real buying power terms, the banks you owe money to start losing buying power when they have to translate dollars they are paid into cryptocurrency, and that is causing the banks to suffer loses to its overall earnings.
When banks start losing money, they become more cautious and lend less money. There will be the constant losses doe to currency translation from dollars to crypto, along with risk managers in the banks cautioning not to make new loans in crypto because the more the crypto rises in value against existing currencies, the more likely will there be a correction in crypto value that means the crypto collected on the new loans will be worth less than the crypto lent.
When banks reduce their appetites for making loans, economies slow down and suffer. The gain that indebted consumers made from the cryptocurrency translation resulted in offsetting losses for banks. Since there are a lot fewer banks than borrowers, the gains for each individual borrower are a lot smaller than the huge losses that the banks will take in receiving loan payments in a currency that is in free fall because of the supply-demand equation for the more favored crypto. What you then have is a mortgage crisis like in 2007, magnified several times over. In the mortgage crisis, individuals received small benefits by living in homes without paying mortgages, while banks and holders of mortgage backed security liabilities died a death of a million slashes as they absorbed all of the defaults. This time it will be far far far worse.
What makes this scenario even more catastrophic is that in order to stay in business, the banks will need massive capital infusions from governments, just like last time. But since governments cannot mine cryptocurrency like they could print currency, whatever infusions of liquidity they make to the banks to save them will simply serve to push the value of cryptocurrencies higher, causing this entire process to multiply to the point of runaway reaction. Cryptocurrency mining procedures are just too small and difficult and time consuming to be useful in a liquidity starved world.
The solution, of course, is to pull the cryptocurrency plug once the problem appears. But as we see time and again in financial crises, by the time the problem appears its way too late to take corrective action that would avert a catastrophe.
So that's where the world unwittingly is going, and because governments have lost so much trust in their constituencies, and also because they have shown an incredible set of blind eyes to work on fixing problems, this deflationary firestorm will occur and destroy the world's financial system. There is a huge amount of money to be made on all of this, just think about who gets hurt if the major banks really fail and the governments are unable to save them. Bank stocks, industrial stocks, home builders, home furnishers...basically everyone. This is the one scenario in which the stock market could not even be saved by the government printing press...what an interesting idea !
So from an investment standpoint, the growing wave into cryptocurrency will provide the investment opportunity of a lifetime. Its the perfect storm...it combines the seemingly universal dislike of government intervention to prop up highly overvalued stock markets so the rich get richer while the working person cannot get a decent raise, with the also seemingly universal desire to keep the internet free and beyond the clutches of government regulation. It gets rid of these dastardly Central Banks that have done nothing to help anyone but that same wealthy one percent that benefits from zero percent interest rates, and individuals love the perceived strength that a currency freed from government entanglement means to a free world. Everyone sees the nirvana, but hardly anyone understands the devastation that deflation has on a world so over-leveraged on debt.
Interestingly, the winnings from this deflation have nothing to do with whether you decide to put a few thousand dollars into Bitcoin so you can look cool to your kids and co-workers. No, the profits in this one will be in the old school avenues, assets denominated in the old currencies that crypto is looking to replace. Imagine shorting Goldman's stock and actually seeing it drop and stay down. Or seeing Berkshire Hathaway put that old man who has been a beneficiary of his time sink into oblivion and turn the old wizard into an old fool.
The most interesting times in the financial world occur when the world moves from one age to another. Think of agrarian to industrial, industrial to government/military, and now government/military to information age. At all of these interfaces, the seams were sharp enough to cause a terrible rip in the fabric of the world economy, and winter came in the form of global depressions to wipe away the old leaves and dead wood. Cryptocurrency will be the death knell of the government/military age, because it takes government out of controlling the money. There will be a new money with millions of new overseers and a free market that replaces the dominance of small cabals of government bureaucrats who dictate the terms of commerce in the world.
That seam is going to be greater than most in the past, because of the magnitude of what is being replaced and the terribly ripe condition that exists to be replaced. The interface will be epic, the transition states along the way will be horrific. Remember what Brad Pitt cautioned in The Big Short :"...for every one point rise in the unemployment rate, 40,000 people die". That relationship will rise when this nightmare takes hold.
It’s so interesting how a development led by young people - the advent and expansionary use of cryptocurrency - still will be subject to the old rules of society. The axiom "may you live in interesting times" - originally intended to be a cautionary advisory - along with the caution to "be careful what you wish for as it might come true" both ring in my ears as I contemplate how cryptocurrency will be the bleach that washes away the excesses of a dying age in favor of the birth of a new one.
Economic depressions are magnificent social colonics, as they wash away all of the filth that accumulated in the prior age. Every bad thing that you saw on display in the lead up and psot script of the financial crisis is about to be gutted and burned. Yet the world will enter its new economic age hamstrung by the pains of paying a severe penance for its foolishness of the age it is putting to rest. The best thing about economic depressions is that the greatest transfers of wealth - usually from the haves to the have nots - occur in these times.
So if you really believe that cryptocurrency is here to stay and the next big thing of the future, then take precautions now and get yourself in position to be one of these beneficiaries of the transferring wealth. Have your plan ready, you will know when its time to execute. Fortunately for the foolishness of the Gods of the old world, they have put up the prices of assets so high that you will have plenty of time to get onboard when the train starts heading down the mountainside.
Enjoy the ride !" -Harry Lightning
Submitted June 01, 2017 at 08:33PM by jetrucci http://bit.ly/2qFHIdw
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