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Critics definitely claim that cryptocurrency has no real use – except to pay ransom demanded by cybercriminals like Bitcoins paid to those who hacked and crippled Colonial Pipeline ($ 5 million) and JBS Meat ( $ 11 million). Or to pay drug and gun traffickers. Or the runners of prostitution rings. Or other shady underground scams.
Routine activities such as paying bank loans or paying school fees or simply shopping for groceries use fiat currencies.
In the area of my job, agriculture, I have yet to see a farmer paying crypto tokens for, say, fertilizer, hybrid seed, shallow tube wells, basic hoe, or poison. rat that a farmer sometimes needs to control rodents in the silos. No small animal breeder has successfully struck a feed deal against Bitcoin. Or Ethereum transaction for yellow corn. I’m not familiar with the buying history of the big farmers – being the poor version – but I have yet to hear a wealthy farmer pay crypto tokens for his deep plow tractor or the premium 4×4 pickup truck obligatory. which separates the big farmer of my kind, the small agricultural class.
And we’re talking about agriculture, the sector that still employs nearly 30 percent of the entire Filipino population despite the diminished contribution to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). If cryptocurrency has no use in the industry that employs more people than any other industry, then you must be wondering what is driving all the hype about being in the crypto industry, or the attraction of owning crypto tokens? What is driving all the hype that this is a liberating currency, circulating like a bidding above governments, beyond regulation and control, the ultimate libertarian nirvana? You can’t match that hype with the fact that it can’t even be used to buy rat poison.
What drives the ups and downs of its prices? Soar after Elon Musk accepts it as a form of payment for Teslas, then drop after Musk takes back his approval? The world has not seen such volatility in the movement of fiat currencies throughout our contemporary history.
(OK, crypto prices rebounded after El Savador, a Central American country whose name roughly translates to “The Savior,” literally saved crypto prices from a free fall after the country adopted as legal tender, the first country in the world to It is a country of about 6 million inhabitants with a turbulent history and whose GDP, about 27 billion dollars, is less than 10 billion of dollars to the gross state product (PSB) of Wyoming, the least populous state in the contiguous United States.
The one stable and constant thing about crypto, it seems, is the relentless, relentless and over-the-top techno babble that has been the norm in all crypto talk. And the passion of the so-called techno nerds who promote it. Crypto people are a “cult that should not be laughed at,” tweeted Paul Krugman. If you dismiss techno gossip, as Nobel Laureate in economics Mr. Krugman recently did in a New York Times column, prepare for an onslaught of hate messages.
The Philippines is why crypto is a relevant talking point, officially moved to be part of the crypto hype and craze in 2018, when the Cagayan Export Zone Authority (CEZA), an agency of State, has joined forces with a foreign group. to create what was then known as the CVA or Crypto Valley of Asia. CEZA, which gained notoriety as the former largest clearinghouse for used cars and imported SUVs, may have wanted to shed that image in favor of a futuristic image – a thriving haven for fintech and crypto mining instead of a clearinghouse for fossil waste. . Not that kind of pedestrian call center / BPO either, but the fintech and crypto kind.
The press release that announced CVA’s status as a locator in the valley promised to create a tech hamlet that would add to the mostly pedestrian tech-related activities at the time, mostly related to BPO and nascent venture capital and emerging for startups.
And what happened to the CVA is a question worth asking? Is it now a major regional player in crypto mining and distribution? Have dozens of crypto companies – players and shakers in the crypto world – really made CEZA their home base? Was CVA’s crypto exit part of the cryptocurrency bull run a few weeks ago, before prices fell, falling back to earthly levels?
We do not know the answer to these questions. After a serious effort to seek answers, search engines gave nothing but CVA-related stories – of course, promoting the arrival of crypto heaven in the valley, dating from before the pandemic. No further updates after the hype of 2018. There is another possibility, of course, that the CVA was really a big hype and that only online games flourished at CEZA instead of the crypto heaven hoped for in The valley.
If nothing came out of the CVA, so much the better.
Although the original concept behind the creation of the first export zone in Mariveles Bataan has undergone some changes, it remains true to its roots – manufacturing goods that will be used by the company: clothing, sporting goods, light industrial products intended for to export market. Workers who flocked to Bataan to work at EPZA’s original sites came from all over the country, transforming Mariveles and its surroundings into a babel of languages: Tagalog, Bisaya, Waray, Ilocano, Kapampangan and many more. ‘other. What the Mariveles Freeport attracted were not symbolic miners and crypto-nerds, but skilled workers trained in assembly and manufacturing work.
It’s now called the Freeport Area of Bataan (FAB), and it has stayed true to its vision: a job creator and a melting pot.
Clark Freeport and the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority are more mixed-use areas. Clark is the de facto alternative gateway to Ninoy Aquino International Airport and is a thriving BPO host. Export zones serve the national purpose best when they operate under their original mandates, not harboring tech gossip and libertarian derps.
A Wall Street Journal article that recently wrote a fair review on crypto said: “The chances of Bitcoin one day becoming real money or making a productive contribution to society [are] close to zero. The same is true of many things in life. “
“It may end up as another unnecessary – but not entirely worthless – side of the great human adventure.”
But other reviews are not of this kind. After cases of ‘pump and dump’ crypto – which means pumping up worthless crypto stocks on social media, then throwing them away after signing up to angst with small investors who bought into the pumping – were reported , a magazine writer called these worthless crypto tokens, “Crap Coins.”
By the way, was it Warren Buffet or Charlie Munger, forgive me for my senior moment, who called cryptocurrency “rat poison”?
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