They Want Dollars, Not Dogecoins

Dateline: San Francisco, 24th October 2024.Andy Warhol once said about money that it has a kind of amnesty. He said “I feel, when I’m holding money, that the dollar bill has no more germs on it than my hands do. When I pass my hand over money, it becomes perfectly clean to me. I don’t know where it’s been – who’s touched it and with what – but that’s all erased the moment I touch it”. Unlike Bitcoin, of course, which retains the entire history of all transactions in public and in perpetuity. which is one of the reasons that while it may be an interesting new kind of digital commodity that in certain circumstances can exhibit money-like behaviour, it is not money.ShareElection Prediction: Crypto Does Not MatterIf you spend time on X, as I do, you’ll have the impression that everyone is talking about cryptocurrency and that a great many people are cryptocurrency owners. The figures, however, tell a different story. Two Federal Reserve surveys put US adult crypto ownership in the range 8-10% respectively in 2022, while Nielsen Homescan data has it a little higher (around 12%). Pew has American crypto ownership at 11-12% in early 2023. The Bank of Canada calculates bitcoin ownership there similarly around 10% in the same timeframe, while the Ontario Securities Commission put it at 13% before the crypto winter.Subscribe nowBitcoin is not MoneyBitcoins are not evenly distributed. There are something like 50 million non-empty Bitcoin wallets out there but nearly half of all…They Want Dollars, Not Dogecoins