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Donald Trump, former US president and businessman, on Sunday, told Fox Business that he considers Bitcoin as a ‘Scam’ – affecting the value of US dollar.
In his statement, Trump said,
“Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam,”
“I don’t like it because it’s another currency competing against the dollar.”
He added that he wanted the dollar to be “the currency of the world”.
Trump’s statement came after the news about El Salvador planning to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender.
It is notable that the price of Bitcoin has been falling since early May. The prime reasons behind the fall in value of Bitcoin could be that of China’s banks and payment firms banning services related to cryptocurrency transactions and the Tesla’s halt on cryptocurrency acceptance for payments.
It is also noticeable that Elon Musk, the billionaire businessman and the CEO of Tesla Motors has disrupted the Bitcoin and crypto market through his continuous commentary on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general for which he has also received a threat from the renowned hacker group ‘Anonymous’ through a video message ‘Anonymous message to Elon Musk‘ which is doing rounds on the web ever since it was uploaded i.e. June 5.
Besides this, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency has always been a controversial subject in itself considering the volatility, risk and decentralized approach that establishes a potential threat to centralized currencies. A couple of months back, the central government of India has also proposed a crypto bill called ‘The Cryptocurrency Bill 2021 India’ to regulate cryptocurrency in India.
Justin Urquhart-Stewart, co-founder of Seven Investment Management and the Regionally, an investment platform, says that Bitcoin has a potential threat of destabilising currencies,
“because it has taken off in such a way that it’s created a popular appeal without any sound financial strength”, said Stewart in a statement.
In a statement to BBC, Stewart said,
“Bitcoin is dangerous because it’s trying to create a level of credibility to unreliable and wholly unfounded value,”
“Quite often, unsophisticated punters are drawn in at the wrong time to something they think they can make a quick buck on – to them, it doesn’t matter what it is, whether it’s Bitcoin or GameStop or AMC, it’s something you can bet on.”
Justin says that a rising trend of young people who are somewhat tech savvy, “like hobby technologists”, are taking huge risks because they haven’t been educated about finance properly,
“What we have now is a young generation of punters who have no knowledge of financial planning and development,” said Stewart
“They understand how to buy and sell things, but they have no concept of how to create longer-term wealth.” Stewart added
On the other hand, Neil Wilson, chief market analyst for Markets.com, said that Bitcoin is not a currency and in order to become a currency, it must have three functions: A unit of account, a good store of value, and a means of payment.
“I call Bitcoin more of a security, like a stock or bond,” said Wilson in a statement
“Although it’s appreciated massively, it’s far too volatile to be a currency – it moves around more than most stocks do.” Wilson added
Disagreeing with Trump’s claim, Neil said,
“The means by which America exerts influence over the world is predominantly by the dollar, and it’s not going to give that up, so I don’t see Bitcoin as a threat whatsoever,”
Wilson also stressed,
“Governments don’t like other people creating money – they’ve seemed to tolerate crypto-currencies for some time, but they will eventually get their own digital currencies established and will squeeze Bitcoin out into the margins.”
