Saturday, November 04, 2017

True freedom from hidden currencies. Paradox.

"Eugene Mutai's Nairobi apartment is filled with the sound of money. That would be the hum of a phalanx of fans cooling the computers he's programmed to mine cryptocurrencies around the clock," wrote Russo and Gebre. Mutai is 28 years old, high school pass, and with no formal training in coding. He taught himself on his uncle's computer. He has set up computers in his apartment to mine crypto-
currencies round the clock. His electricity bill is $200 per month. Many prominent people have denounced cryptocurrencies as scam. "For Mutai, the appeal is simple: It levels the playing field in global markets that don't give people like him many breaks. An opposing view is that what this young man is doing is wrong or stupid, sucking up massive amounts of electricity to create a software- fabricated asset that's traded anonymously in a lottery criminals find irresistible." Our Prime Minister badly wants India to become cashless, so that he can track every transaction of every citizen, but if people, especially the young, take him literally he will suddenly discover that he has no control over a large part of the economy. Forcing us to become cashless means forcing us to pay more, wrote R Clark. "The Boston Consulting Group estimates that banks and payment companies such as Visa and Mastercard currently make $1 trillion worldwide in fees -- currently paid by the retailer -- for processing electronic payments." In India there is an initial fee to get a debit card and annual fees for usage, plus taxes. There are charges for every card transaction. The Indian government has set up various digital payment systems, which means it will collect charges every time we buy something, including from the poor. So, demonetization and the hunt for black money is basically a sly way to tax the poor. Ingenious. Fortunately, Indians trust cash and, although there are 700 million debit cards, the public still has over Rs 15 trillion in cash. This is about the same that was in circulation before demonetization, as reported by the Reserve Bank. Meanwhile, the share market in India has become the most expensive in the world, based on price-to-earnings ratio. Traders must be salivating at extra earnings from cashless transactions. A Barman compared our markets to Mary Poppins, a movie for children, in which humans were levitating through air, while singing songs. "India story has been derailed," wrote Kapil Sibal. He was a minister in the previous Congress led government which presided over a succession of scams and gave us inflation rates of over 12%. If your currency is truly crypto, no one will know what you have. That will be real freedom.

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