Our key account manager on why ‘sovereign’ cryptocurrencies serve governments, not people.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin promise to enable economic, political and social freedom, if we implement them properly.

But the emergence of “sovereign” cryptocurrencies — issued and backed by governments — contradicts everything that blockchain stands for and hoped to fix.

In an opinion piece written for VentureBeat, our Key Account Manager Alexandre Poltorak explains why “the very essence of what cryptocurrencies are, of the opportunity they represent to revolutionize the world economy, is crumbling in the hands of governments.”

The public blockchain advantage

Bitcoin’s decentralized blockchain system shifts the trust and risk model from people to software. It is immune to political influence or warfare, with a network that was built to resist to human greed and malfeasance.

With centralized private blockchains, however, Alexander writes that power is heavily concentrated, with their proprietors maintaining majority control over the entire network. This impose dangerous limitations on our civil freedoms, including pervasive anti-privacy measures.

A new economy, built by and for the people

It is our belief that governments and their central banks should not resist the power of public, permissionless blockchains and their cryptocurrencies, and instead facilitate their potential to transform the world economy for the better. We need to all work together to build a new digital economy that serves every single global citizen, and not just their leaders.

Read Alexandre’s full opinion piece here