According to a webinar, stock market expert Dirk Müller believes that Bitcoin is only the door opener for a fully monitored digital central bank currency. Is there anything wrong with this theory?
The Focus recently hosted a webinar where “Mr. Dax “Dirk Müller gave a lecture on the social consequences of Corona. Amazingly, it was also about cryptocurrencies.
Müller is convinced that “cryptocurrencies will be our future currency” when “the crisis” is over. He is not referring to the corona crisis, but rather a general crisis in the financial system that will transition into a “reset phase” “around 2030”. After this major crisis, everything will be rebuilt with a digital currency. However, they will only serve old wine in new bottles: a digital euro or digital dollar, in any case a “digital central bank currency”.
Bitcoin as a Trojan horse
Unlike the ” Friends of Bitcoin ”and crypto currencies would like this, according to Müller, these new digital currencies will not be“ private means of payment ”, but will be completely monitored and controlled. “Every euro and every cent” that one has ever spent is documented “in these ledgers”. The digital currencies will eradicate all financial privacy with dull and style.
Bitcoin is to blame for this. Because the first crypto currency was the “door opener”. For Müller, Bitcoin was never more than “a marketing tool that you can use to prepare people for something like this”.Everyone likes Bitcoin, but it is not Bitcoin that will become world money, but what comes in the next step: the digital currencies of the central banks. These will of course replace cash. Instead of paving the way to freedom – or to a cryptoanarchy – Bitcoin is becoming the first link in a chain that leads to mass surveillance. Bitcoin has different options for working, and a huge amount of information is displayed in the public domain, for example https://cryptoine.com/what-is-bitcoin-and-how-does-it-work/, everything is available, a lot of detailed information is described and the relevance is always at the highest level.
Could Miller be right? Or is that just an epilogue to his “power quake” in which he already speculates that Bitcoin was invented by the NSA or another US secret service in preparation for the great global cash abolition? Or even the umpteenth footnote to his first article about Bitcoin, in which he dismissed the cryptocurrency as a bubble at the end of 2013?
Three steps back to take one step forward
Die Müller’s hypothesis sounds a bit absurd: A state creates Bitcoin around twenty years later to introduce its own digital currency, which is exactly the opposite of Bitcoin, but still prevails precisely because Bitcoin paved the way. Bitcoin itself will probably somehow vanish into thin air along with its ecosystem and technical children.
The creation of unprecedented monetary freedom through Bitcoin, the theory could be shortened, was only the first step in a plan, which aims at the monetary enslavement of everyone. To achieve your goal, you have to take three steps backwards.
But let’s look at the individual building blocks of Müller’s theory and try to create a consistent building from them.
A strange plan
Since it is not known who invented Bitcoin – or at least it is highly controversial – Müller’s assumption that the NSA or another secret service developed Bitcoin cannot of course be refuted. But it would still be absurd.
Bitcoin HAS wrested sovereignty over money from governments. It is a fact. Thanks to Bitcoin, people can own money in a way that governments cannot expropriate it through banking networks, and they can store value in a money-like form that is not subject to monetary policy inflation. Bitcoin itself may not be as private as many initially thought, but many advancements, from mixers to Monero, ensure that money flows become private again.
Should Bitcoin be an invention of the secret services be, they have cut deep into their own flesh. Secret services and governments want control. Bitcoin takes this away from them. Should Bitcoin really be a state invention, then the plan failed at the latest when mixers and privacy coins were formed.
Inflation or deflation?
Also the idea that Bitcoin is only the door opener is not really convincing. If Bitcoin establishes itself as an alternative to the euro and dollar – why should people give up sovereignty over money to governments again? It is possible that you will use stablecoins in everyday life. But with Bitcoin, the escape from fiat money is always just a click away.Why should an obvious alternative help digital fiat money?
Perhaps you get closer to the answer if you ask yourself which crisis and which reset Dirk Müller means. Since I haven’t read his book, I don’t know the answer. Should it be a crisis in which the euro and dollar and so on lose massively in value, this would of course undermine confidence in these currencies – and make Bitcoin even more attractive as an alternative. How should a dollar and euro issued as a digital central bank coin gain the necessary trust after such a crisis? And how should he prevail against Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies in the big “reset”? Wouldn’t it be much more likely that the next really big bang would end with central bank money being just one currency among many?
Dirk Müller’s prophecy, on the other hand, would make sense if the big crisis were deflationary . In that case, trust in euros and dollars as a store of value would be maintained and possibly even increase, while the real economic problem would lie in the inadequate circulation of money. A digital central bank currency could possibly solve this problem, as it increases the circulation and maybe enforces negative interest rates if necessary.
However, Dirk Müller clearly warned of the dangers of approaching inflation only a few months ago. Therefore, this assumption is likely to be wrong.
Much confidence in the competence of the government
As a stock market trader, Müller earns his living by investing in the creativity of entrepreneurs. Measured against this, his trust in the creativity of individuals is surprisingly low: He does not believe that an individual could have invented Bitcoin. Nor does he believe that the Bitcoin scene will be able to establish Bitcoin as a currency in ten years. And he does not believe that the individuals of this world will consciously choose Bitcoin in order to escape the destruction of value (predicted by him) through politically instrumentalized money.
Instead, Müller demonstrates an impressive trust in the competence of state institutions: He trusts that state organs were able to invent Bitcoin, and he trusts that they will manage to issue working digital central bank money.
The reality shows that Müller does not trust individuals enough and states too much. The private sector around Bitcoin is years ahead of government agencies and the established banking system: While banks are only just beginning to think about a digital euro, Bitcoin companies have long been issuing stablecoins; and after the state watchdogs slowly understand how to watch Bitcoins, the scene with mixers, CoinJoins and privacy coins changes the rules.
In order for Müller’s prognosis to become a reality, the governments have to face the private actors make up a lot of land.But how are they supposed to do that?
Will Bitcoin be banned?
Of course, governments could simply ban Bitcoin. But after an inflationary crisis this becomes rather problematic. After all, a certain part of the citizens will then probably have received their values in Bitcoins, and among them will probably also – perhaps especially – be politicians and bankers. This is unlikely to be enforceable in a democracy. So will the “reset” also abolish democracy?
Or does Müller assume that Bitcoin will still be a niche currency in ten years’ time? That the world now has this technology, but is dutifully waiting for the central banks to use it in the way that is maximally unfavorable for the citizens? And even if Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies would continue to exist as a more private and inflation-resistant alternative.
A strange mix
So it would take a strange mix to make Müller’s prophecy come true: First, it would have to be the great crisis that he predicts will not be inflationary, but – somehow – maintain trust in fiat money over the long term. Second, neither Bitcoin nor any other cryptocurrency is likely to establish itself across the board as a means of payment by 2030, and if so, then without taking the privacy improvements we already have today. Thirdly, people would have to run into a fully monitored monetary system and give up cash without even thinking about switching to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Perhaps that will happen.Rather, this raises the question of how a government organization that has forged such a shaky plan should have the competence to invent something as brilliant as Bitcoin. Or whether Dirk Müller has really dealt enough with Bitcoin.
