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In the crypto vs gold struggle, new battle lines are being drawn
The finance world is in flux, with stablecoin issuer Tether investing heavily in the metal it has been trying to usurp as a primary means of exchange
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Anthony Rowley is a veteran journalist specialising in Asian economic and financial affairs.
At a time when cryptocurrencies are being promoted aggressively by none other than US President Donald Trump, among others, it is significant that the price of gold is leaping to record highs nearly every day. It is arguably even more significant that one leading cryptocurrency group, Tether, is investing heavily in gold, the same metal that cryptocurrency aspires to replace and which economist John Maynard Keynes once described as a “barbarous relic”.
These developments are symptomatic of growing disorder and instability in the global economic and monetary order. They also suggest cryptocurrency practitioners are resorting to similar tactics to those pioneered in Britain in the early 1970s by so-called asset strippers, who used synthetic wealth to acquire real assets.
One apparent way to get rich quick is to create and hype an asset – be it cryptocurrencies or glamour stocks – and then use the purchasing power these confer on holders to acquire “hard” assets, whether they are companies, real estate or, as is the case now, gold.
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