Political posturing or not, UK Treasury Chief George Osborne has issued a warning to Scotland that it if does go independent, it unfortunately won’t enjoy the wonderful benefits of the Pound. Pundits will call this a keen political move, adding further fuel to the fire in the Campaign of Fear. Nothing like scaring a bunch of pensioners, many of whom are voters.
However, this is a blessing in disguise. A true, huge, massive blessing from above.
Why? Because it allows the Scottish Nationalist Party to move on from its silly semi-unionist idea of sticking with the Pound and giving the people of Scotland a grander vision: that of a Tech Currency. An alt currency, a crypto currency, call it what you will. Now is the time to embrace the NEW and rid the OLD.
The whole idea of a shared currency is a mistake in the first place. Scotland can not have a truly independent state and have a shared currency. The Bank of England’s monetary policy for the Pound will clearly be based on benefitting the large population to the South, which will be reliant on imports in an ever dwindling Empire.
In fact, going with a government-controlled currency is just bucking the trend and is a mistake in and of itself. Cryptocurrencies will rise to disrupt currency as we know it today. This trend of P2P currencies will be as prevalent as P2P messaging in a few short years. It is time to embrace the new. Scotland has an unprecedented opportunity to become the first crypto state with a new Scottish Community Cryptocurrency, or, a Scottish Community Currency.
But you see, it’s not just about creating a new currency. It’s about increasing the wealth of the Nation through this move alone. Take a look at Bitcoin, limited to 21 million coins in supply. If one had invested a pound into Bitcoin a few years ago, it would be worth thousands of pounds today. And this trend is not going backwards. Some have predicted that Bitcoin could be worth millions in a few short years.
The experts tell me that none of the cryptocurrencies are yet perfect, in fact, Dodgecoin is the best yet, but it still has a long way to go technically. Bitcoin as its problems. There is room for improvement. Tons of innovation lies ahead in tech currency technology and security.
Develop a cryptocurrency that is superior, and even backed by some commodity such as oil, fresh water, or the land of Scotland as I have discussed in my previous post and the country will pave the way for unfathomable wealth. It could leave Norway in the dust. Currently most tech currencies are backed up only by algorithms. Still, bitcoin is trading at over USD 400 per coin, down from a high of USD 1200 or so. Experts predict that the price could easily exceed USD 10,000.
In such a scenario, The Scottish Government should open the door to all currencies, crypto-, government- or other, and allow them to be used in the country, while working with an entrepreneur or pool of entrepreneurs to put forth the official Scottish crypto currency. This would then be distributed to the people.
At their option, the people of Scotland would have the opportunity to buy into this new cryptocurrency at a ground level prices. In fact, the new crypto P2P network would grant each resident of the new state a certain amount of the currency to get the ball rolling. Perhaps GBP 200 worth, as is proposed in Iceland.
This activity in and of itself would increase literacy — technical literacy — of the people of Scotland, from the young to the old, as the transmission methods would change. In turn this would lead to further creativity and innovation across the country.
Backed up by a trust and a government, this new crypto- could easily become the standard and most popular currency in the world. It could replace the Dollar and easily the Euro as the standard currencies of trade. There are various reasons for this, with the first being greatly reduced transaction costs, which was the whole reason for the argument for the Euro in the first place. With an algorithm of limited supply, the comparative price of a unit of the currency has nowhere to go but up as worldwide adoption increases rapidly, and it well would. The end result of this is that the people of Scotland, who bought low, are able to sell high. How high? We have no idea. But just consider that a 1 GBP worth of Bitcoin purchased a few years ago could be worth 10,000 GBP in just a few short years.
The Academic Entrepreneur is NOT making investment recommendations here, and such should not be contrived as such. But investing GBP 10,000 into a new crypto currency could produced GPB 100,000,000 in wealth holdings within a 10 year period. This is not out of the question. We just don’t know. It’s an exciting time as Dogecoin just increased $40 million in value following the open of the Chinese Exchange.
The Academic Entrepreneur is convinced that currency policy could be the innovation policy of greatest impact in terms of imparting new wealth to an independent Scotland. Thus we will continue our discussion on currency. There is risk in not adopting a cryptocurrency as well. Alt currencies WILL eventually replace government currencies as the preferred unit of exchange. It’s not a matter of if, but when. The central banking model is broken. We are at the very beginning of a very disruptive technological phenomena that will sneak up on many players on the global scene. It will disrupt central banks and governments themselves and wreak havoc as some react and try to control the inevitable.
The Scottish Government and the Scottish Nationalist Party should RUN from the pound that at best might increase in value a few percentage points a year and embrace a community of entrepreneurs, technologists, software developers, data miners, security analysts, and network specialists and get to work on developing an innovative community that will cook up the world’s best crypto currency, or decide to embrace a current one such as Dogecoin, and blaze the way towards an example-setting crypto-state that will make her people wealthy beyond all imagination and make the rich pensioners of Norway look like peasants. The people of Scotland are ready for a vision of the future, not a petty argument over a dying fiat currency of a dwindling empire and government-controlled bank. Its time to return the power to the people after centuries of centrally controlled printing presses that benefit the rich at the expense of the poor.
Out with the Old, in with the New.
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