The last century of financial regulation within the world’s largest economy, in the United States, has bred a literal treasure chest of regulatory bodies that look more like an alphabet soup than any cohesive form of governance.
It is difficult to tell if one made-up group of regulators are just created to boost national employment numbers, protect the proletariat, or to check another set of fact-checkers who guard a larger, established thiefdom.
Speaking of thiefdoms, private companies like The Federal Reserve, in association with federal organizations like the SEC and the Treasury Department have crafted a new annual report under a group name called the Financial Stability Oversight Council, or FSOC. This report focuses on the safety and overall health of the U.S. economic system and has done so for the past five years.
Negative fodder
This year, Bitcoin and its blockchain technology are featured under the inclusive section labeled “Potential Emerging Threats and Vulnerabilities.” To sample the report in its 161-page entirely, click here. In this small ebook of impending economic doom-and-gloom, this is what the cabal had to say about the new technology known in the report as “distributed ledgers," or blockchains:
“…..Although distributed ledger systems are designed to prevent reporting errors or fraud by a single party, some systems may be vulnerable to fraud executed through collusion among a significant fraction of participants in the system.”
When it comes to Bitcoin and what it brings to the table, the FSOC regulators found negative fodder to focus on, referring to the extended blockchain transaction confirmation times.
“For example, in recent months, Bitcoin trade confirmation delays have increased dramatically and some trade failures have occurred as the speed with which new Bitcoin transactions are submitted has exceeded the speed with which they can be added to the blockchain.”
Bitcoin is at Gandhi's stage 3
While it is clear that Bitcoin is no perfect financial panic at the present time, after just seven years serving the world, I would need a few thousand paragraphs to go over the economic errors and strife U.S. regulators and organizations have committed in the same timespan, after a couple of centuries of practice. This report is itself a sample form of a mea culpa of economic issues facing the U.S. both now and in the future.
Time for a rhetorical question. Does anyone remember the time when Bitcoin was beneath the scope of the mainstream media, much less U.S. national economic threat reports?
This annual report certainly did not mention Bitcoin, or its blockchain technology, 3-4 years ago. Yet, in 2016, they must be included, in their own section, no less.
This is no glowing review of Bitcoin and its underlying technology, like the one the Bank of England produced last fall. It seems designed to be more of a more common operational scare tactic for government officials. Alas, you know what they say, “There is no such thing as bad publicity.”
The steady progress Bitcoin continues to make into the greater mainstream of macroeconomics reminds me of the famous quote by Mahatma Gandhi. It goes: “First, they ignore you. Then, they laugh at you. Then, they fight you. Then, you win!” Bitcoin seems to be deep into Stage 3 of this natural progression towards its ultimate acceptance.