From Alan Kohler today, who can’t make his mind up about cryptocurrency:
Much the same bafflement applies to the rest of the great and the good choppering into Davos today, and let’s face it: it IS hard to know what to make of bitcoin, and the other cryptocurrencies.
…There are initial coin offerings (ICOs) almost daily and non-crypto companies, such as Kodak, are clambering aboard the bandwagon and sprinkling themselves with crypto magic dust, often to surprisingly gratifying effect. And the country whose regulators have the most sophisticated and sensible approach to it all is … Australia!
…Late last year ASIC issued clear guidelines about how to deal with ICOs and the ATO did likewise about the tax treatment of cryptocurrencies. This is in stark contrast to the general suspicion and confusion among other world regulators, including the occasional fruitless attempt to impose a ban. It looks rather like Australia’s no-nonsense, practical approach will lead to a flourishing of ICOs here in 2018, which is a good thing, I think. Probably.
But at the risk of both sticking my neck out and burying the lead of this column, I do not believe that bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency is the future of money.
That’s not to say cryptocurrencies and blockchain won’t be important — they will probably change the world as profoundly as the internet itself did. They just can’t be money until a government says so, in which case they’re simply a new way of doing fiat.
Australia supporting the development of a new ponzi scheme…hmmm…that’s our regulators all right.
Last year Alan went all crypto-crazy at his new newsletter. Now things are looking shaky it’s all off apparently.
Or is it. I can’t tell.
All I know is that if it exists as alternative fiat to government issue then either it or the government is doomed.
You decide which.
