Bitcoin Supporter to ECB: Euro will be Gone in 10 years

Matthew Kratter, the founder of Trader University, and the best-selling author of multiple Amazon books on trading and investing, responded to the ECB's blog post dubbed “Bitcoin’s last stand”.

In his video “ECB is terrified of Bitcoin,” shared among others by the ardent Bitcoin fan Michael Saylor, he points out that the authors of the text are wrong – and gives his explanations why.

The story began after director general of the market infrastructure and payment division Ulrich Bindseil and advisor Jürgen Schaaf made numerous big claims. Among them is that Bitcoin is on the road to irrelevance, which according to them was foreseeable even before the FTX exchange went bust.

To substantiate their claims, they point out that Bitcoin is rarely used for legal transactions while also emphasizing that BTC transactions are cumbersome, slow, and expensive.

In other parts of their post, they say that Bitcoin is not a good investment as it does not generate cash flow or dividends, cannot be used productively, or provide social benefits.

The market valuation of Bitcoin is therefore based purely on speculation,” they write, adding that big Bitcoin investors have “the strongest incentives to keep the euphoria going.

At the same time, they also say that regulation can be misunderstood as approval, emphasizing the negative environmental impact of keeping the cryptocurrency domain alive and claiming that so far blockchain has created limited social benefits. They also warned the banking system against using Bitcoin as it ostensibly buries a reputational risk.

Why the fuss then?

Commenting on this blog, Kratter says that it is bizarre that the ECB, which has $9 trillion worth of assets, is concerned about Bitcoin, the market value cap of which is estimated at just $325 billion. 

Why bother then if it is so irrelevant

asks Kratter.

He goes on to argue that in fact, the euro is struggling more than BTC with inflation in the eurozone still high, while Bitcoin offers an exit from what he calls “a Eurozone inflationary nightmare”.

He also suggests that the ECB’s real concern is that Bitcoin might undermine its endeavor to launch the central bank digital currency, which Ulrich Bindseil actively promotes in his papers and is trying, according to Kratter, reinvent Bitcoin by authoring papers titled “towards the Holy Grail of cross-border payments.”

Kratter also says that the authors lied about Bitcoin not being used for legal real-world transactions and that the notion of Bitcoin transactions being cumbersome, slow, and expensive is a “beginner's critique” because Bitcoin is actually quite fast for a network that offers a final settlement.

The value is in the eye of the beholder

Commenting on the ECB's claim that Bitcoin has technological and conceptual shortcomings, Kratter calls this move ironic as the eurozone’s major shortcoming is that it is a monetary union without a fiscal union.

I suggest that he cleans up his own house first,” he said, adding that Germany's decision to shut down nuclear power plants and make their industrial base dependent on Russian fossil fuels, coupled with the decision to burn lots of coal and wood this winter, is as bad for the environment as Bitcoin.

We don't really need the energy morality police,” he said, adding that everyone can be criticized for consuming energy, including people watching videos on YouTube. It is all about the value that this consumption ultimately creates. The fact that Bitcoin has settled tens of trillions of dollars worth of value shows that somebody is actually valuing that energy usage.

The EU is built on a lie, the ECB is built on a lie, USD is built on a lie while Bitcoin is built on a foundation of absolute, cryptographically verifiable truth,” Kratter concludes, adding that “central bankers and fiat finance will be consigned to the dustbin of history and in 10 years the euro will cease to exist.

Do you agree with that statement?

Previously, The Coinomist shed light on why top crisis managers of bankrupt companies get $10 thousand a day.