People usually buy Bitcoin in hopes that they would be able to sell it to others for higher profits. But for a celebrated financial expert like Robert Kiyosaki, Bitcoin is an opportunity to break away from government surveillance.
The ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’ author delivered a tweet Wednesday morning in which he said that he would buy Bitcoin because of his anxieties over “digital yuan,” a federally-controlled version of Bitcoin, put to trial by the People’s Bank of China on Tuesday after taking years for developing it.
China announcing government crypto today is good news for Bitcoin. Would rather have Bitcoin than government fake surveillance crypto. Buying more Bitcoin.
— therealkiyosaki (@theRealKiyosaki) April 7, 2021
Bitcoin versus Digital Yuan Battle Heats Up
In retrospect, Digital Yuan falls in the category of central bank digital currencies, or CBDC, whose sole purpose is to put a national currency atop a private blockchain ledger. Bitcoin serves in contrast as a decentralized cryptocurrency, managed by not one but hundreds of thousands of entities — aka miners.
As usual, no government or central bank gains control over Bitcoin’s source code, making it more independent than a regular CBDC.
But with China’s involvement in the CBDC space, things have become more about gaining virtual control over people’s financial lives. In his statements to the Financial Times, a Wall Street banker noted that President Xi Jinping’s authoritative regime would use digital yuan or digital renminbi to bring people’s everyday transactions under its radar — a thing it is already doing via its strict internet policies.
“The [digital renminbi] is heavily about the [Chinese Communist] party’s ability to exercise control,” also said Samantha Hoffman, senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Such fears alone have prompted people to opt for Bitcoin. While every transaction on Bitcoin’s blockchain is traceable, its backers tend to hide behind gibberish alphanumeric identities, thus gaining a thin layer of security from regulatory watchdogs.
Nevertheless, they risk being traced if even one entity in their long chain of bitcoin transactions reveals itself either by using a wallet that has gone through a know-your-customer process or just by practicing human negligence.
But…
…despite its limitation, Bitcoin appears better than a digital yuan to many. Mr. Kiyosaki is one among them.
“I would rather have Bitcoin than government fake surveillance crypto,” he said Wednesday. “Buying more [of the cryptocurrency].”
Shark Tank investor and software entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary also said in an interview with CNBC that he would rather buy Bitcoin than China’s “blood money,” citing carbon issues related to the cryptocurrency mining process in the country.
Many also see Bitcoin as a de-facto Chinese currency. More than 65 percent of the cryptocurrency’s mining pools/companies operate from China, according to Statista, giving the Jinping regime unprecedented — and potential — access to its supply to the rest of the world.
According to Mr. O’Leary himself, investors remain concerned about China’s excessive control of Bitcoin. They remain put off by the cryptocurrency, he noted.
The cost of one Bitcoin has increased twofold in 2021 due to institutional interest. The cryptocurrency was trading shy of $57,000 at the time of this writing.
