Mirror, mirror, on the walk

“There is an urgent need for cross-border collaboration and co-operation to address the technological, legal, regulatory and supervisory challenges. Crypto’s cross-sector and cross-border remit limits the effectiveness of national approaches. Countries are taking very different strategies, and existing laws and regulations may not allow for national approaches that comprehensively cover all elements of these assets. Importantly, many crypto service providers operate across borders, making the task for supervision and enforcement more difficult. Uncoordinated regulatory measures may facilitate potentially destabilizing capital flows.”

Tax dodgers, the lot of them

This is taken from the IMFs statement calling for a coordinated approach to regulation on crypto currencies, which is to be expected. But what is interesting, is that many of their arguments for regulation based on the ability to supervise ad the potential for destabilizing capital flows, are the same issues that multinational corporations have been taking advantage of for years in order to not pay taxes at the location the income was earned. With teams of specialized accountants using creative accounting practices and a multitude of national and international loopholes, much of the tax obligation companies should carry, just never gets paid.

Essentially, the largest "tax dodgers" in the world are the companies that earn the most money, leaving the local communities to cover the burden. But, this is further compounded by the income earned locally coming from those people and then, moving offshore to go through the wringer, to squeeze as much profit out by lowering the tax incurred as possible.

At the national levels, the tax systems and economic mechanisms have not done a good job of handling this global business shift, with most implementing practices near a hundred years old that assumed tax paid locally, as internationalization of business hadn't yet taken hold. This means that as the continued globalization of corporations and conglomerates continued, the local "national approaches" have lost access to an increasingly large percentage of the consumer income.

However,

The IMF is wary of the ability cryptocurrency has to bypass traditional constraints between countries, warning the “borderless” payment system could soon become a problem for those in power with the responsibility to manage economic systems.

Panic Alignment

None of this was an issue for "those in power" to really deal with in any coordinated way, until cryptocurrency arrived and gave the ability for average people to control their own "capital flows", rather than just the very wealthy and corporate entities. The reason is due to the immense overlap between those in control and those entities. Why regulate when all the personal incentives are to keep the loopholes for corporations open and keep milking the local taxpayers for increased amounts?

But just remember

Crypto is a scam.

None of this matters of course because according to these very same organizations calling for regulation with a fair bit of panic in their voice, only a year back they were saying that crypto is a non-starter and will lead nowhere, because they don't back it.

Times have changed, as this year, even though the markets have been trading relatively sideways, more wealth has been pouring into the scene to the point that it is becoming of significant concern that it could indeed, have a destabilizing effect on capital flows.

However, what is interesting is that I am yet to read one article in the mainstream media (I have written a couple) that looks at why the average person is investing and building in the cryptosphere. Yes, they have mentioned how people are unable to afford to for example own a house, but none have identified the complete failure of "those in power with the responsibility to manage economic systems" to provide conditions where the average person is able to not only survive, but make some modest gains. Instead, they have done the opposite and have increased debt obligations and are disenfranchising an increasing number of people, cutting them out from economic improvement near totally.

The human response

Crypto is a response to the gross mismanagement of those who had the responsibility to manage the traditional markets, that allows for individuals to have agency for themselves. With even the slightest glimpse of their own reflections, it should be painfully apparent what has led to these conditions and the current attempt by people suffering to improve them, rather than let them degrade further, trapping an increasing number as economic prisoners, suffering with no way out.

Moving wealth into crypto and redefining what value in general means, allows for a redistribution of wealth by changing the supply and demand models that are so skewed at present, that it just keeps increasing the peak of wealth at an ever-faster rate. Reimagining what classifies as an asset and building new mechanisms to distribute for ownership, gives opportunity for people who had zero chance in those national systems, to compete in the economy at a global level with those corporations who have been taking advantage of the lack of global legislation for decades already.

Not only this, the competition is not in just the flow of capital itself, but far more importantly the ability to affect the supply and demand processes, shifting the capital flows of the consumer and redirecting it to where they want it to go. This is definitely going to have a destabilizing effect on the economy, but this is not a bad thing, as many of those in power would have us believe. For the economy to get healthier, it has to change, it has to be destabilized.

Shadow to light

What they fear though is what happens once the traditional economy becomes highly volatile, without people moving out of it and into what is currently a micro shadow economy. Because while the traditional economy destabilizes, this doesn't mean that everyone is worse off, if there is another economy that is ready to gather support in order to stabilize. What happens though, is that the people in power and the corporations they enable to increase their profits, become far less powerful with far less profit, as the shift in economy facilitates a redistribution of power and wealth, putting more in the hands of the many.

This doesn't kill government or corporations at all, it just lessons their ability to control the masses and makes them far more accountable for what they offer, because if they do not offer "value" they will not have access to capital flows. No one who is currently benefiting from the economy as it stands, wants to lose their ability to provide trash at a premium.

A vote to walk

Regulation however is pretty much inevitable, but what has to be negotiated is how the distribution of wealth is handled by the regulation, because if the average person doesn't feel it works for them, there are a growing number of alternatives to bypass the system in some way, and more will arise. Currently, there is no easy "opt-out" of the economy, even though it is detrimental for most in their quest to have even a slightly better experience in life. The ability to "vote with the feet" is crucial for a healthy society, because if there is no ability to leave, it means that it is a prison.

If the IMF and all of those groups were to look in the mirror, they would discover that we are tired of being economic prisoners trapped within their fences and we will never stop looking for a way out. After all, while they are incentivized to keep making gains no matter the costs to the majority, the majority is incentivized to escape control that doesn't provide security. They think people are worried about the volatility of the crypto markets, when in actual fact, this is the thing that attracts people because it gives the opportunity, as it means that there is a chance for better, unlike the conditions of the current economy, where failure is close to guaranteed.

While we don't likely have direct access to making the legislations themselves - we can affect the processes by controlling our capital flows and making consumer decisions that empower, not enslave us further. It isn't an easy decision to make, because it means disrupting our habits, learning new and destabilizing what we know today.

We all need reflect on this.
We all need to act.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]