“Governments don't like cash because it's expensive and because they can't control you as much,” Rogers recently told the Stansberry Investor Hour.
“Everyone's going to get rid of cash. Governments could issue their own cryptocurrency to control people. Governments like to have all the power themselves,” said Rogers, who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1973
The creator of the Rogers International Commodities Index (RICI) isn't completely sold on bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as long-term holds.
“People in China don't have paper money,” said the best-selling author of various financial books.
“They buy a cup of coffee, put their phone on the sensor, and it's paid for. They look at me funny when I say I have cash and want to pay. They say, 'We don't want to take cash. Cash is not efficient,'" the chairman of Rogers Holding Inc. said.
"My children will never go to a bank, post office, or maybe even to a doctor when they're adults. The computer and the Internet are going to change money as we know it,” Rogers said.
Rogers also repeated his mantra of a looming economic collapse.
“The next financial problem will be the worst in my lifetime because there's so much debt,” Rogers said.
“The debt is much higher than in 2008. America is the largest debtor nation in the world. Japan has staggering debt. They have a declining population and debt that's going through the roof. If I were a 10-year-old Japanese, I'd get myself an AK-47, and I'd leave.”
To be sure, Reuters reported that cryptocurrency exchanges – where virtual currencies are bought, sold and stored – have become magnets for fraud and deception. More than 980,000 bitcoins – the most popular virtual currency – have been stolen since 2011. Today they would be worth about $5 billion.
Similar large sums are pouring into initial coin offerings. From January through September, ICOs generated $2.2 billion, more than three times the amount invested in similar startups by traditional venture capital firms, according to Novum Insights, a data provider.
ICOs can be a way for technology projects to raise money online to finance the development of new, open-source computer networks that aren’t necessarily looking to make a profit. Contributors receive new digital coins, or tokens, which they typically need to “pay” to access the new networks.
But the recent flurry of ICOs raising millions of dollars has attracted some dubious business propositions and outright scams, as well as speculators looking to trade the coins for swift gains. Authorities in the United States, Switzerland, China, Singapore and other nations have begun scrutinizing the sector closely for potentially tougher regulation.
“Most ICOs are bought by people looking to ‘flip’ their tokens to a greater fool for a quick profit,” said Alistair Milne, a co-founder of the London-based Altana Digital Currency Fund, which so far has avoided ICOs. More than “90 percent will fall to have a near-zero value in time,” he predicted.
The new cryptocurrencies function through a technology called blockchain, essentially a public ledger maintained by a network of computers.
Blockchain applications are being tested by financial services firms, food suppliers, retailers and other businesses as a way to make record-keeping simpler and cheaper. Tezos aims to be a blockchain that’s more reliable than the ones behind bitcoin and ether.
Several entrepreneurs and investors in the blockchain industry said the Tezos technology has potential because it would be easier to upgrade and may be more secure than other blockchains.
- Source, NewsMax
