Max Keiser, the American broadcaster, filmmaker and activist, has begun 2019 with a bullish Bitcoin prediction – that it will become the world’s reserve currency. Keiser has been a noted Bitcoin advocate and critic of the established financial system for many years, stating in the past that “we have never left the financial crisis”. He recently urged French citizens to convert 20% of their bank deposits into Bitcoin, which would be enough to cause the native banks and the Government to collapse.
Disconnection from International Payment Systems
Speaking on his show The Keiser Report on RT (formerly Russia Today), Keiser and co-host Stacey Herbert raised the topic of Bitcoin’s future when discussing how governments and banks around Europe are planning to disconnect from the existing international payment systems. This would open up the possibility of a new world reserve currency being established, and Keiser sees only one sound option:
…more and more as we head into this fractured world, and this de-globalized, de-dollarized world a reserve currency will be sought and it will invariably turn to Bitcoin.
While this theory may seem far fetched to many, the seeds of discontent in the existing international payments system have already been sewn. In August last year, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas announced that Europe was working on an alternative to the SWIFT system, while in December Vladimir Putin told Russian banks to prepare to disconnect from international payment systems. The reason for this, says Keiser, is that the US has the ability to remove any government or company using the system “off the financial grid” given its prominent position in the SWIFT hierarchy, and governments are beginning to fight back. Bitcoin, he says, would be the natural replacement for the SWIFT system.
The Beginning of the End for the Dollar?
Keiser isn’t alone in predicting such a lofty ascension for Bitcoin. In an interview last year, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stated his belief that the world will “ultimately will have a single currency, the internet will have a single currency. I personally believe that it will be Bitcoin.” Dorsey however added that Bitcoin isn’t yet ready to ascend to such heights, and in fact Keiser himself has said in that past that although he believes that one day Bitcoin will “gobble up” fiat money systems, he doesn’t know if humans will be around to witness it. So, it seems we still have some time to spend our dollars while they remain worth something.
