Hi Todd,

Thanks for reading and commenting on this article - I appreciate it!

When you say:

“…This prediction [banning cryptos] doesn't make any sense. Yes it is inevitable that nations will give their legacy banking/fiat system a cryptocurrency-based technological upgrade. But that's all it is. …So why exactly would nations suddenly decide to ban public cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and the rest just because they gave their fiat currencies a tech upgrade?? The two do not compete…”

You need to understand the reason why we have a central bank which controls a given nation’s currency. The central bank must control the money supply to ensure they can respond in times of crisis, like a recession when millions of people are fired by employers... the goal of the US Federal Reserve is to manipulate the money supply with two main goals - keep inflation within a given range, and keep employment as near to full as possible.

This is impossible if a significant fraction of wealth or financial transactions occur outside of the central banking system.

No government wants to expose themselves to the whims of economic cycles and let millions go unemployed and hungry just because some people like an anonymous, decentralized, digital “currency”. So yes, BTC and other cryptos are a direct threat to Fed control of the economy.

This idea of banning cryptos is not new and many on Medium and in the general media have written about this coming ban and the destruction of cryptos which is already underway around the world in all countries in one way or other:

https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/why-bitcoin-could-be-banned-or-criminalized-in-the-coming-years-278b46b9fe86https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/19/why-central-bank-digital-currencies-will-destroy-bitcoinhttps://cryptobriefing.com/central-banks-recommended-ban-stablecoins/https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/94740/india-to-ban-crypto-investment-completely-report

As I’ve said before - get out of BTC before it gets ugly. Let the big companies who are hoarding cryptos end up holding the (empty) bag - personally you should be diversified in broader and safer assets like stock index funds. (Meantime BTC may continue to go up, but remember, in any bubble you cannot predict what will pop it, or how long the insanity will continue. You can’t cry afterwards - you can only live with the consequences).

You also said:

“…Fiat currencies in crypto form will continue to be the normal spending money of the world, while Bitcoin will continue to move into its role as a store of value global reserve currency like Gold but much better (and of course it'll be used some for transactions as well), and then you'll have smart contract platforms disrupting the global finance space, with no doubt established financial companies attempting to make their own smart contract platforms to compete with the open public platforms…”

It seems to me, Todd, that your concept of currency reserve and store of value are about 4-5 decades old, and do not reflect current reality. Check this out:

https://www.worlddata.info/currencies/goldreserves.php

No one in their right mind should view BTC as a store of value - there is nothing to store! It is digital information, that someone decided to spend money on, hoping that someone later will spend even more on - that is pure speculation and not true value. BTC holders are holding air. There… is… no…. value… in… a… BTC.

This is the ultimate Emperor with no clothes - and people wondered why the emperor could march along thinking otherwise… well here we are with a perfect example hundreds of years after the fairy tale was told as a cautionary tale. But people never learn….

Then you said:

“…No where in there do I see a reason for nations to ban bitcoin and the like. And good luck politically trying to ban Bitcoin in the US, for instance, once Wall St and US corporations literally hold trillions of dollars worth of value in Bitcoin alone, not to mention tens of millions of citizens having savings and investments in Bitcoin…”

Check it out Todd... The US government has done this in the past (examine the history of holding gold and how the US government successfully outlawed it - and gained an immeasurably faster-growing economy for it).

You claimed:

“…Sure, monetarily oppressive nations will ban bitcoin. Free nations won't. In fact it'll be a good litmus test in the years to come to see which nations are economically oppressive and which are economically free by seeing the few that do end up banning Bitcoin. It'll only end up hurting those nations by taking away economic spending power from their economy…”

No, Todd, you can’t define a country as oppressive by them doing something specific you don’t like, like banning cryptos. Any action any central government takes will have some intended as well as unintended winners and losers. If you hold cryptos, and you (now) know that cryptos are detrimental to central government’s ability to maximize employment for their citizens, you are being warned now that you are in harms way by holding them. Many are telling you that… and that you, the emperor, are wearing no clothes, that your BTC has no value. You can be the emperor and insist you have clothes… or…

You then said:

“…It's similar to trade, sure you can be afraid of other nations making money off trading with you, but if you isolate yourself and close off your nation from the world economy (or part of it in the case of Bitcoin) it's only going to hurt themselves.

The prediction that the world will ban Bitcoin is as disastrous a prediction as the prediction that the very popular car company that is bringing the EV market to the forefront, named Tesla, would fail. When you bet against the obvious future (EVs, bitcoin/cryptocurrencies) you just set yourself up for failure.…”

Hopefully you can see that Tesla’s value as a stock is grounded on their phenomenal engineering and manufacturing of an outstanding product that is selling exponentially. That is value. BTC, by comparison, is clearly worthless.

I have no illusions that I have argued well enough here to make you change your actions - I don’t think anyone can argue well enough once someone has made a financial decision they think will make them wealthy. You’re bitten by the gold bug (or the Bitcoin bug). I don’t care about winning arguments. I just don’t want anyone - you or any individual here - to get financially hurt.

Good luck out there.

SD