Civic Issues | Kevin Gardner

Cryptocurrency is likely to replace the US dollar in the near future, except not in the United States. The Marshall Islands has already taken steps toward creating and implementing their own legal tender in the form of cryptocurrency. The Parliament voted to approve the cryptocurrency known as Sovereign . As outrageous as it sounds to make cryptocurrency legalized tender, the Marshall Islands is not alone. Source: World Maritime News Recently, Venezuela created its own cryptocurrency known as the Petro, which is the first example of a country creating official tender in the form of cryptocurrency. The goal is to improve the economic state of the country, which is in a state of despair, but through potentially illegal methods. The move to create cryptocurrency is a way to impede U.S. Financial Sanctions according to Stratfor . Something that Russia and Iran have discussed doing as well. However, the Marshall Islands currently use the US dollar and are not looking for a way to dodg

Is our government getting on board with the idea of Bitcoin? Cryptocurrency is a major issue around the world recently as Bitcoin's value skyrocketed last year. This brought to the attention to governments the many illegal uses of cryptocurrency, such as tax evasion and money laundering. However, there was a Senate hearing by the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday February 6, 2018 that was very positive when it came to cryptocurrency. The chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Christopher Giancarlo, discussed the dangers associated with investing in Bitcoin, but also praised the blockchain technology. Then later he discussed how Bitcoin and blockchain are difficult to separate. They are essentially one and the same. Without Bitcoin there would be no distributed ledger technology—known as blockchain. Source: Tech Crunch This positive tone in the Senate hearing likely was the cause of the increase in Bitcoin's value after it plummeted below $9,000