According to Steve Forbes, Bitcoin helps people around the world to stand up to governments that want to control or damage them.
Steve Forbes is the president of Forbes Media Group and on Sunday he participated in a podcast of ARK Invest. Although the episode was dedicated to traditional markets, towards the end of the podcast, Cathie Wood, managing director of ARK Invest, asked Forbes what he thought of cryptocurrencies and, in particular, Bitcoin.
“Bitcoin has performed a very important role in helping people in distressed situations around the world: getting around governments (institutions, really) that want to control you, starve you, and hurt you”.
“Bitcoin is what you might call a high-tech cry for help”.
Forbes’ stance on Bitcoin is entirely new in the traditional financial environment, denoting a deep understanding of its mechanisms of use and its role in today’s financial ecosystem.
It is not at all common for a leading exponent of traditional finance to admit that in many cases the role of governments is to place citizens in difficult situations, and it is quite possible that the concrete reference was to situations similar to those that have been raging for some time in countries like Venezuela.
Often the role of Bitcoin as an outsider in these scenarios is seen negatively by traditional finance, which prefers assets controlled and regulated by governments themselves. Forbes, on the other hand, points out that in some cases the absence of governmental control, or even the impossibility for the government to intervene in any way to control or block financial transactions in BTC, can be actually positive.
He also admitted that the challenge for Bitcoin is to become a reliable tool like traditional money, and that this can only be achieved by remaining an unassailable system, as well as becoming an asset with less volatility.
