In this interview with CalvinAyre.com, technology pioneer John McAfee explains why Bitcoin users have nothing to fear, except for government that are trying to stop people who use cryptocurrencies—even though they cannot.
No other technological invention has caught the attention of the World Wide Web and its users like Bitcoin—the cryptocurrency that was created to solve the problems plaguing the banking industry.
The days of traditional banking are numbered given the steady growth of Bitcoin, whose underlying blockchain technology promises to cut out the middleman—along with their outrageous fees—and help secure transactions using a distributed ledger system, resulting in decentralized transactions with relatively low fees.
This lack of a central exchange puts governments, which make their income by taxing the movement of money, in a bind, said MGT Capital Investments Inc. chief and technology pioneer John McAfee.
“Our income taxes are the greatest source of revenue, but if everybody’s using Bitcoin, the government doesn’t know what your income is. They can’t tax it, and if you choose to say I didn’t have anything, they cannot prove otherwise,” McAfee told CalvinAyre.com. “It will eventually frighten every nation state, but it doesn’t matter what they do, there’s no way you can create a law or to legislate something that will stop Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency because technically, you cannot.”
But that’s not to say that the cryptocurrency space can exist in an unregulated environment. What the sector needs, according to McAfee, is self-regulation to prevent people from fraudulently taking money from other people, such as in the case of initial coin offerings (ICOs).
“China is right about one thing, the ICOs, the initial coin offerings, there are lots of scams, lots of people who are fraudulently taking money from other people, so that’s got to stop. But I don’t think governments can stop it. We as users and the bitcoin community have to be self-regulated,” he said.
The sector is still young and dealing with different issues—from security and education to forks and governments trying to get in the people’s way—that it has yet to delve into the issue of self-regulation. Bitcoin users, however, have no reason to fear, according to McAfee.
“The fear is in the fear of governments and central banks, like JPMorgan, which is America’s largest bank,” he said. “The CEO is so concerned that he acted like a madman and called Bitcoin a fraud, said someone is going to get killed eventually. It’s like, what are you talking about? It’s nonsense. So banks and governments are the ones that have the fear. Well they should have some fear. They have taken control and power away from their citizens for hundreds of years. It’s time that we, as citizens, took that power back.”
