Financial technology (fintech) giant Stripe has just launched a service for cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the US.
Such an important stance by one of the pillars of the global financial system is no coincidence...
Stripe first enabled Bitcoin transactions in 2018, but it wasn't long before the company pulled the plug on the newly inaugurated service.
At the time, regulators and the mainstream press were still very hostile towards crypto, so Stripe eventually decided it didn't want to attract unwanted regulatory scrutiny to its operations.
Today, four years later, Stripe is having second thoughts, deciding to offer a much broader service than the one timidly implemented in 2018, as it plans to support a wide range of different cryptocurrencies, including stablecoins.
To understand the point of this move, you have to connect the dots we mentioned in previous articles...
Biden issues an executive order to make it clear that crypto and blockchain are a matter of national interest that should no longer be obstructed on the grounds of bias.
The European Union launches clear and easily adoptable regulations for financial services operating in crypto.
Countries allied with the US adopt crypto-friendly legislation... Last but not least is Ukraine, but not forgetting Malaysia (a major US backwater that fiercely opposes China's expansion into the South China Sea), whose government spokesman has just proposed to parliament that bitcoin be declared legal tender...yes, just like in El Salvador, a country that not coincidentally has the US dollar as its official currency.
This all needs to be linked to the last dot, which is as follows....
The Federal Reserve has recently published a working paper on its plans to implement the digital dollar. And in these very weeks it is holding meetings with all the players in the financial sector to gather opinions and establish understandings and partnerships.
In short, it seems to me that Stripe's move comes at a very particular time and perhaps suggests that the company has been in constructive talks with the Fed.
One has to consider that the service just offered by Stripe would also be able to support the US central bank's digital currency.
I therefore suspect that the Fed has given Stripe an implicit "OK" to implement support for cryptocurrencies in preparation for the official launch of the digital dollar.
Finally, if we also consider the patterns of consolidation in the crypto exchange market, I begin to think that on the back of the war and the urgency to equip ourselves with all the economic weapons possible in the increasingly bitter conflict (with China, more than with Russia) the digital dollar project (in an anti-Chinese version, therefore with cryptos well integrated into the system) could have an acceleration... perhaps with unexpected developments already by the end of the year.
The other player: China
China's current "economic miracle", combining low inflation and an increase in the value of the yuan, will soon spill over into the country's trade balance, once the closure with the West is even deeper; that is, when, in a few days' time, the guidelines of the new financial system, alternative to the Western one, of the Eurasian Economic Community (China, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, plus Armenia for certain provisions) will be established.
The new system should have a reference currency whose exchange rate should be fixed on the basis of a basket of currencies of the founding member states (thus dominated by the Chinese yuan).
This financial circuit was conceived by Sergey Glazyev (Russian Minister for Economic Relations) and is intended to replace the Bretton Woods system, from which Russia was excluded as a 'sanction'.
The existence of two competing economic and financial systems should mark the final halt to globalisation and the division of the world into two parts that do not communicate with each other.
Once this phase is complete, the yuan would become the reference currency for a large part of the planet and could trigger a perennial positive balance of trade in China, just as it does with the US and the dollar.
Will cryptocurrencies really be the US-led economic bloc's weapon to counter the Chinese-led economic bloc?
Thanks for reading
CREDITS
Photo by Pine Watt released free to use