Crypto is here to stay?

That is the theme of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:

One reason for the rise in Bitcoin’s price may have to do with the U.S. and China and the trade war. It no longer seems that China will join the international economic order as that term might have been understood 15 years ago. Instead, there will be an ongoing cold war; China will not liberalize, and capital controls may persist. In that world, Bitcoin will continue to prove a useful way of getting funds out of China. The Chinese Communist government may or may not crack down on that practice, but outright liberalization would have ended this use of Bitcoin altogether.

For related reasons, a China that does not liberalize may influence the broader tenor of the global economy away from freedom, again giving Bitcoin additional uses around the world for evading central authorities.

A second development is that the Democratic Party in the U.S. continues to shift to the left, including on the possibility of a wealth tax. As America’s fiscal deficits grow (due often to the Republicans, I might add), there will be a long-term need to restore fiscal sanity. Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, for one, advocates a 2% wealth tax (over $50 million) toward this end.

No matter what you think of this idea, it likely would boost the demand for Bitcoin and other crypto assets, as cryptocurrencies are potentially a way to store assets out of reach of many tax authorities. And the U.S. is hardly the only nation that may be looking to a wealth tax in the future to balance the books. In essence, the new and higher price of Bitcoin is telling us that fiscal solvency will be hard to come by, and the wealthy will not give up their assets without a fight.

Do read the whole thing.

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