Pieces of eight or bitcoins? The real de a ocho.

There is a traffic jam of cryptocurrencies forming right behind bitcoin with the likes of litecoin, peercoin, and what I will admit is my favorite coin of them all, if in name only, honk honk beep beep, it's dogecoin, slow down or you'll run him over! Any day now I expect to start hearing barks and snarling coming from the checkout counter confirming my suspicions of a super canine intelligence behind that one. Even with a dogecoin in play it's still getting pretty obvious digital money is here to stay. Clearly defining regulations and outlining a path by which a digital currency can achieve status as legal tender alongside the dollar could make sense. Attempting to slow or outlaw digital currencies would most likely only succeed temporarily, similar to what happened during the prohibition on alcohol consumption. Prohibition did however succeed in generating higher levels of demand and illicit profits for mobsters before it's repeal. 

As has been the case with other industries revolutionized by technology, there will be considerable disintermediation as a result of digital money technologies. While some financial service sector jobs will be lost, the opportunity to unlock capital flows and create new value added services exist. Wall street is awash in a vast ocean of stagnating capital desperately chasing return and which is now totally dependent upon artificial and unsustainable means for achieving it. Central to the problem is the policy of quantitative easing which artificially depresses US interest rates down to levels approaching 0% and as a result exports inflation around the world in an attempt to reflate the US and global economy. 

Even more disturbing is the large scale diversion from main street to wall street of this nations most talented individuals. Armies of PhDs with the combined brain power to pull off projects like splitting the atom or developing clean energy are instead tasked with the noble cause of inventing even more grotesque and distorting mathematical mirrors for the financial fun house. Many of this country's best and brightest have succumb to the intoxicating allure of wall street fast money and foregone careers in industry, engineering, science and medicine. If the US is to stand a chance at retaining it's leadership position in the world, it probably won't happen through the creation of even more complex and systemically dangerous financial derivatives, but by returning the country to it's manufacturing heritage and focusing more talent and leadership on the production of real goods.