The Scandal of Money

George Gilder points out -- "Basic challenge of the world economy today, is to address the scandal of money. We today have 5.1 trillion dollars of every 24 hours of currency trading, and this currency trading accomplishes nothing, except to endow central banks with the right to steal from the future in order to consume in the present, and steal from future generations, and I believe, the real reason for the trade war is not trade or industrial machinations, - it’s the collapse of money. So, 5.1 trillion dollars a day of currency trading – it’s 25 times all global GDP, it’s 70 times all trade in goods and services, and it doesn’t even prevent constant hedging of every transaction across the border, it doesn’t prevent trade conflicts, it doesn’t really accomplish its goal. So, I think that the great contribution of blockchain, is to allow a new global currency, that plays the role that gold played for a hundreds of years of the fastest growth of the world’s economy… and it’s what really what blockchain [can do]: not only a new Internet architecture, but also a new global architecture for the world economy.

"You don't think it's virtual wealth only? Just like the stockbrokers?"

"It's not wealth itself. It's the measuring stick of wealth, that guides entrepreneurial visions and creativity -- you gotta have a measuring stick: just as you need to measure the 'second', the 'kilogram', the 'ampere', the ‘mol’ – all the various measuring sticks that make it possible to make a chip in Taiwan and incorporate it in a smartphone in Shenzhen, and send it to Cupertino for marketing into Israel for amplification – all of that is made possible by common measuring sticks: the nanometer is the same in Shenzhen as it is in Timbuktu, but money, which is a critical measuring stick, is different all around the world, – is being manipulated by national central banks -- so we have a chaos of money… and that’s why the world economy is slowing down now, why trade is no longer growing, why countries are constantly fragmenting and fighting over valuations."

Simply put, each currency, even each blockchain is like a rope, but we don't have a "meter" to measure their value objectively. The value currently is set through supply-demand equilibria - currency wars, trade wars, valuation wars, that are inherently subjective.