Will Bitcoin replace the current banking system? Is Bitcoin the life raft of the coming Bretton Woods system collapse? Signs of growing currency crisis, Venezuela.
Transcript
[AUDIENCE] What kind of system, in your opinion, would replace the current banking system today? [ANDREAS] What kind of system will replace the current banking system? I have no idea. I do know that it is not Bitcoin which will necessarily cause the current banking system to need replacing.
Part of the argument, from our perspective, is that "Bitcoin is fighting against the banks!" But for the most part, they don't really know we exist, except for a few people who have noticed. "Guys, look over there! We are in trouble." [Laughter] The banking system is more worried about the fact... that the world economy is lying on the floor with no [pulse], for a long time.
They have now applied one hundred electric shocks and it is still not moving. Twenty-four central banks have a zero interest rate and they are now thinking, 'Well, we have never tried negative rates. What happens at -5%? Who knows, let's try it.' 'But people will take their money [out of the bank] in cash and put it under their mattresses!' 'I don't know, let's ban cash!
That sounds like a good idea.' The world's currency systems are in the deepest crisis they have ever been in for the last two centuries. It is not about Bitcoin, it is about choice. We don't know how this will play out. We are only following one part of the equation; the other part of the equation is outside of our control.
The choice we do have will not [come up] this year or next year, but maybe in ten years from now, when the central bank says, "Hey, we have 550% hyperinflation." "But we will all stick together, right? Nobody leave! Everybody follow this sinking ship to the bottom." Maybe a third of the population will say, "I don't think so, I will be over here in the Bitcoin life raft." "You do whatever it is you're doing..." In Venezuela, it is starting. They have already arrested some Bitcoin people.
Because "bitcoin is used by criminals," which has nothing to do with their hyperinflation of 550%, I'm sure. This will keep happening. One day, there will be enough people saying, "No, I am opting out." And then the world has changed. In fact, the world has already changed.
It will just be a matter of that change propagating to enough people. We will see dramatic change over the next thirty years. Only a small part will be related to Bitcoin [directly]. A big part will be related to how the Bretton Woods central banking and free-floating currency system...
died at the turn of the century, and the repercussions will be enormous. I don't know what banking will look like in a century [from now], but it will be different.