Recently when Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed spoke out against Bitcoin he joined an illustrious group of dissenters from Warren Buffett to Jamie Dimon. All these men claiming Bitcoin to be a repeat of tulip mania, a mirage or an all out fraud. But could their dependence on the fiat system, that is the main denominator of their wealth and power, be blinding them to the revolutionary and disrupting factors that Bitcoin and cryptocurrency presents?
In response to the comments from Prince Alwaleed, the reason why oil rich countries will see and hope for the demise of Bitcoin is because of the implications it has for the petrodollar, or even petroyuan, and Saudi power through oil. Bitcoin is a direct threat to debt based fiat and central banking, the petrodollar and Saudi interest.
The comparison to Enron or even .com era stocks is a mismatched comparison. Enron was a centralized company, Bitcoin is a decentralized ledger that allows people to hold wealth and transact outside the banking system.
What makes Bitcoin fundamentally different is the scope of the disruption. Also, due to something called Accelerating Change, which I write about in my book, End Game. Technology by its nature is parabolic in growth on the linear curve.
The .com era was just setting the foundation for what we are building today. Which means on the linear curve the next stages of technological growth will be extremely fast. That is why Bitcoin is rising so quickly and crashes almost monthly. The recurring 40% (+/-) drawdowns mean that the 'bubble' pops regularly. What it really means is that Bitcoin is not a bubble, it is accelerating through growth cycles faster than people are used to.
Its decentralized nature means that sovereign nations can regulate against it but to their own peril. It would be like regulating against the internet. It is in their best interest to adopt it and to be first to the table.
It would take a united move globally to stop it. All nations would have to agree to make it illegal. Not possible with the current state of geopolitics. Maybe after a world war could nations come together for a new financial system (like Bretton Woods) were the IMF can issue their own centralized blockchain based currency.
What is happening here is systemic revolution that exceeds the internet and impacts the core of all economies, money, and the future monetization of the internet.
So... people can compare it to past events/models but this is unchartered territory, it is not one sector but a systemic revolution that will alter the world.
