There is a substantial market for that - the financial exchanges and stock markets.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Sat Nov 26, 2022 4:01 pmI can see the value of the regulation underlying the pound, which I reckon must be a pretty stable currency by global standards? (Thank you for the explanations of economics folks, it's not my area.)
But there might be quite a large market for people who would prefer to take their chances with a stable-ish crypto than trust their assets to the central bank of their own country. There are some quite populous economies that occasionally have big swings against e.g. USD. Also, some central banks are untrustworthy. (Or can everyone everywhere invest in foreign stuff pretty easily?)
You might also expect bet hedging away from central banks during times of crisis, such as during a pandemic or region-wide conflict. Once such cycles were predictable, they would become self-reinforcing.
If a government or economy collapsed, as they occasionally do, it wouldn't take that many people to accept some crypto coin of choice for a country's economy to slowly move online to a parallel economy, rendering the central bank defunct. This could also be a cool "bloodless coup" method, e.g. in Iran. They could do it over Starlink.
Would it be completely unreasonable for people to opt for crypto if the central bank they're forced to use has been long-term sh.t? Or put, say, 10% in a crypto and 90% in your central bank, just in case? Could've been a decent move around the Brexit referendum, for instance
Those people can already buy shares in companies of various sizes, buy Treasury Notes of multiple countries, speculate in foreign currencies, derivatives and commodity futures.
All of which can be bartered for each other, or for goods and services.
This is why I keep referring to crypto as shares in a company with zero turnover and zero assets (except in the case of stable coins).
You can go to an investment bank (not necessarily your main one), and open an account in a foreign currency, or an investment account.