Morgan Stanley’s head of emerging markets and chief global strategist, Ruchir Sharma has stated in an extensive article that Bitcoin could replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
“We see fundamental reasons to believe that — regardless of where the price of Bitcoin goes next — cryptocurrencies are here to stay as a serious asset class. One is growing distrust in fiat currencies, thanks to massive money printing by central banks. Another is generational: younger people hear the “crypto” in cryptocurrency as new and improved, an exciting digital advance over metal coins. The worst knock on cryptocurrency as a store of value is its volatility, but unflinching demand from millennials has helped lower the volatility of Bitcoin, even during the pandemic.
The open-source software behind Bitcoin makes it more transparent, transferrable and trustworthy than paper money printed by governments. Before the United States, only five great powers had enjoyed the coveted “reserve currency” status, going back to the mid-1400s: Portugal, then Spain, the Netherlands, France and Britain. Those reigns lasted 94 years on average.3 At the start of 2020 the dollar’s run had endured 100 years, which was reason enough to question how much longer it could continue.”
He also stated concerns that most Bitcoins are held as investments instead of a means of payment leading to illiquidity, a characteristic of a bad money candidate. But he expressed his optimism about the adoption of Bitcoin by financial transaction giants like Paypal, saying that they could provide the intuitive user experience that would make it easy for people to transact with Bitcoin. He anticipates that this can solve the illiquidity problem, putting the crypto currency in a great position to challenge the dollar, both as a store of value and as a means of payment.
Victor Nnadi is an Independent Economics Researcher and a Securities Trader.
