…my personal view is that a practical global money might most favorably evolve through the development first of a few regional currencies of truly good quality. And then the “integration” or “coordination” of those into a global currency would become just a technical problem. (Here I am thinking of a politically neutral form of a technological utility rather than of a money which might, for example, be used to exert pressures in a conflict situation comparable to “the cold war”.)~John Nash Ideal Money
I’ve previously written about the concept of Cryptoexchangelandea which has helped me visualize a framework for how the community of internet crypto-exchanges might function in relation to each other. I’ve been meditating on this construct and especially in relation to Tether/USD and the possibility of other such fiat tethers.
I am thinking about the BCH pump that is going on for the second time in weeks and how the majority of the volume is happening on the South Korean exchanges (I read not long ago South Korea has very strict capital controls). A quick check showed that these exchanges don’t have any fiat or international tethers etc. If South Korea does have strict capital controls then it probably is discouraged in some way for the citizens to use crypto as an exit point for capital (I don’t know where to find this info).
So where is this pump coming from? I wonder if people are bringing bitcoin into South Korea and using the exchanges to pump BCH. South Korean government might even allow this to happen (probably quietly) if it meant a net inflow of bitcoin/capital.
South Korean exchanges, in a sense, don’t perfectly reside in the realm of Cryptoexchangelandea and so it would be a perfect place to try and pump the price of BCH from the eyes of international observers. On a free trading market this plan wouldn’t work as the markets would arbitrage the false rallying caused by hype and nefarious efforts.
For this reason South Korean exchanges shouldn’t carry the same weight in the international prices of crypto coins and if they wish their prices to be taken seriously they need their exchanges to join the other exchanges on the market.
So there is a concept of a metric of the quality of an exchange's price that is related to the measure of its participation in Cryptoexchangelandea. In order to be fully participating a given exchange must be at least as liquid and accessible as any other exchange.
This seems quite measurable .
It has already been noted tethers can help exchanges function closer to the realm of Cryptoexchangelandea.
It might seem counter-intuitive to bitcoin’s ethos but it seems that governments are best suited to administer tethered fiat and if there was incentive for governments to do this (ie pressure by the game theory and/or the citizenry) then there might exist many tethered fiat currencies.
This would make creating a digital basket of all major currencies quite “programmable” which may be an unexpected result and observation than anyone previously considered. This new digital coin that could rely on the guardians of tether and the supplies of each digital fiat (remember there isn’t the same incentive to over or undersupply tether to Cryptoexchangelandea because it functions on a free market basis), would serve as a far more ideal standard or unit of account than is available today.
But one cannot logically feel confident of the adoption internationally of an ideal system of currency or currencies in an achievement analogous to the achievement of the metric system or of “the euro”. Such a result would necessarily have a political content since it is the states that control and supply the various currencies that are in use at the present time. And projects requiring political support may be difficult to achieve or comparatively easy to achieve depending on elements of “political reality” which may differ considerably from the actual merits or lack of merits of the projects (as evaluated from, say, a scientific or economic or medical viewpoint).
So it occurs to me to think that that which is not achieved by a grand action of establishment by “fiat” may alternatively tend to come into existence as a consequence of a process of evolution. And of course, after a certain degree of progress by “evolution” the rest of the progress could possibly be realized by a convention or a process of “fiat”.~John Nash, Ideal Money