Bitcoin is the solution to world trade – Bitcoin Magazine
This is an opinion editorial by Heritage Falodun, a Bitcoin analyst and data scientist based in Nigeria.
I believe humanity deserves a detailed elucidation of the intensifying concerns our economies face today. Solutions to world trade problems will not be sufficient if engaging in transnational trade, promoting social progress, multilateralism, influencing bilateral exposure and enabling bottom-up prosperity are not paramount to human existence.
The freedom to implement and promote free, fast and objective trades at individual, community, provincial and nation-state capacity in a seamless approach regardless of the entities involved will be the first step towards achieving a global, friendly, efficient and competitive trading mechanism.
All this considering that the liberating innovation capable of solving and breaking world trade barriers cannot be anything less than a solution that enables instant and transparent cross-border transactions. This will foster freedom from oppressive restrictions imposed by government on people’s lifestyles, behavior and economic prowess in the world market. Simplicity around building long-lasting import and export rails is better achieved by materializing free and fully decentralized trade technologies and tools against protectionism. We live under an archaic and centralized trade policy, particularly known for harming the people it is meant to protect, by slowing economic growth and increasing inflation on a global scale. This is a problem that became even more apparent after COVID-19 before the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and of course more so now.
The traction shown in the international trading system has accumulated over decades, reflecting the actions, policies and attitudes of various world unions. Many are concerned that not everyone follows the agreed multilateral rules. High levels of government support and protection remain in key sectors, while new multilateral rulemaking does not keep pace with today’s business realities. These are just a few problems facing today’s economy.
The question before us is: “How do we address and resolve these trade barriers that are created, planned, organized and supported by human error disguised as governing rules?”
We need to actively reclassify economies and enable the integration of a monetary structure free of error and human incompetence. There has never been a better time for positive transmogrification against the globalization of trade and transaction techniques than now. It is important to emphasize the education of what money was, what money is, and what money should be, as it is the cornerstone of sustaining all trading activity. The more impeccable money becomes, the more seamless it is to achieve a sustainable economy accompanied by a flawless trading mechanism. Money has taken many forms throughout human history. Gold and cowrie shells served as money in the 14th century, but could not meet all the characteristics and functions of what money should be. Gold and cowrie shells were scarce, but supply capitalization was not limited while the convenience feature was not achievable due to the weight of these items. More gold and shells were easy to find, which in turn leads to a level of market saturation.
As a way of correcting and solving disadvantages of these former commodities known as money. Money was developed and transmogrified into gold coins, fiat notes, bank account values and credit cards. Sounds interesting and innovative right? To feed your curiosity, this improvement has been able to get rid of some of the previous problems like ease of use, but they have not been able to solve the problem of unlimited supply. The uncontrolled and consistent production of money (fiat) remains persistent as everyone hangs in the air of trust in third parties called banks. Not surprisingly, banks remain subject to federal regulations. Pathetically, this new form of money acts as a gateway to new trade problems. Some examples of these are “non-uniformity of money”, long settlement procedures and strict regulations amid undersecurity in some jurisdictions.
These problems remain clear and glaring after the transition from money to fiat, hence the need to mitigate the effects. Some of the approach to deal with this backlash despite the recognized optimization of money for ease of use necessitated the existing monetary body known as the “Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication,” or SWIFT. SWIFT solves part of this problem by facilitating cross-border money transfers in a way that can be classified as fast in a structured message way, but not exactly instantaneous as transactions should be.
The incomplete solution also brings considerations to stay in line with the centralized financial regulations that govern each jurisdiction. Mainly, the apparent refusal of the World Economic Forum (WEF) to enable the decentralization of money is based on greed. I disagree that it is due to the experts’ inability to understand the concept of decentralization of money and democratization of transactions. The WEF rejection is an economic concept guided with full focus on maintaining governments’ addiction to power – by peppering trade and investment with local currency barriers to slow the flow of products and services between nations.
Some of the consequences of the fragmented global economy and the autonomy of central banks against consistent and increasing supply of local currencies are indelible and evident in our society:
- Decline in wages and the purchasing power of currencies in both high- and low-income economies.
- Facing the trade-offs between the risk of a debt crisis and securing food and fuel in countries with developing economies.
- Worsening food insecurity over time – particularly in the Middle East, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
- The highest inflation rates in history are affecting many countries, not excluding world trade powers on every continent.
Allow me to ask “Can the root cause of these challenges be addressed to revolutionize the monetary context to promote global trade without blemish?”
Quick response – yes it can, let money be money and all trading problems will become obsolete.
To solve the trading problems, considering that the root cause is connected to all this previously incompetent money, a monetary innovation called Bitcoin was created to solve the current error. Many of the features it has like limited supply, immutability, transparency, ease of use, censorship resistance, sharability, fungibility and portability. The juicy and most effective part of it is its ability to dispense with trust through a decentralized peer-to-peer trading mechanism backed by mathematical calculations rather than physical properties like gold or cowrie shells. The characteristics of good money are durability, portability, divisibility, uniformity, limited supply and acceptability. Bitcoin owns everything. I noticed “Satoshi knew better“, when he created Bitcoin in 2009 as good money in response to the 2008 financial crisis. Trades should be made with money that the corrupt cannot abuse or influence. Global and local trades should be made with money whose purchasing power is determined by markets, regardless of governments and political parties Satoshi Nakamoto said:The main problem with conventional currency is all the trust required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is littered with breaches of that trust.” Truth be told, the ball is now in each individual’s court to decide and accept this innovation as a solution to the long-standing trade problems.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Nikolai Tjongarero also known as “Okin”, who is a business mogul and bitcoin lawyer in Namibia. I wanted to find out, despite the Central Bank of Namibia announcing Bitcoin as an acceptable payment option, is the government implementing policies to enable it as an official currency for import and export purposes? He said “no.” After much brainstorming, I concluded that policymakers in countries that have not yet moved away from import-substitution policies and direct government control should implement structural adjustments quickly to restore growth, promote brisk trade, and restore creditworthiness. These countries can grow by changing bitcoin to politics achieve open and free trade by using and adopting global currency as a medium of exchange, unit of account and store of value Bitcoin is the global money for an interconnected world Using and adopting money that doesn’t care religion, country, race or creed is the first step towards solving trade biases.Interestingly, the only method against the madness of this content is to understand, digest and implement the message instead of tackling the messenger.
This is a guest post by Heritage Falodun. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
