Hyperbitcoinization: How Currency Crises Are Driving Nations to Crypto
Cointelegraph
Published Jan 01, 0001 00:00
Updated Sep 02, 2018 15:31
Venezuela, Turkey, Iran and Zimbabwe: these countries are all facing ongoing economic crises. They’re suffering from high levels of inflation, and as a result the people living within them are increasingly turning to crypto as a store of value and a means of exchange. Their recent troubles have heightened the distant possibility that, at some point in the future, hyperbitcoiniztion will take place, with Bitcoin (or some other coin) replacing the bolívar, the lira, the rial and other struggling national currencies, and perhaps even becoming the world's dominant form of money, as predicted by the likes of Steve Wozniak and Jack Dorsey.
However, as encouraging as such developments are for Bitcoin’s reputation as a store of value, it's unlikely that the moves of Turkish, Venezuelan and Zimbabwean citizens toward it and other cryptocurrencies are an immediate precursor to the kinds of blanket adoption processes outlined in the noted 2014 “Hyperbitcoinization” article by Daniel Krawisz. Even though they're conspicuously increasing, the BTC volumes traded in the affected countries above are not significant enough relative to global volumes, while the isolated nature of most of these nations means that adoption has little chance of spreading outward.
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Written By: Cointelegraph
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