A recent Forbes report states that Chicago’s Mayor, Rahm Emanuel, sees the adoption of cryptocurrencies as being inevitable due to Bitcoin’s growing appeal and the fact that the geopolitical world is unstable.
Rahm Emanuel talked about the fact that financial crises force people to move out of the use of fiat currency with the purpose of surviving, citing the Venezuela crisis as the main point. Thoughts about crypto were offered during a debate about the fintech industry in Chicago.
The Mayor of Chicago did state that he is not an expert, but:
Nation states are falling apart or receding. City states are emerging, so the political structures we all grew up under are changing. City states are emerging, so the political structures we all grew up under are changing. One day, somebody’s going to figure out – whether that’s Argentina, ten years from now, five years from now – how to use cryptocurrencies to stay alive when they’re facing a financial crisis, and then you’re going to find out that this moment has arrived.
Not much explicitness appeared in the response but it was a clear hint for cryptocurrencies offering a way to get out of the dependency to the national economies. People that live in countries where the governments are mismanaging finances, leading to huge inflation, like Turkey, Venezuela and Zimbabwe, could move their wealth and store it in a digital wallet because value is not linked to any entity. Bitcoin is highly volatile at the moment but this volatility is still a lot lower than with many national currencies in the past 10 years.
What is interesting is that Chicago is quickly setting itself up as an important US crypto hot spot. Numerous high profile industry companies, like Coinbase, now have offices in the city. Also, there are 30 brand new BTC ATMs that were added, leading the total up to 184.
Chicago was also the host of two high-profile BTC trading products through BTC futures from CME Group and Chicago Board Options Exchange.
Image Editorial credit: Gregory Reed / Shutterstock.com
