A new Ron Paul Twitter poll revealed that a large majority of his followers prefer cryptocurrency over traditional assets.
A wealthy person gifts you $10,000. You get to choose in which form you’ll accept the gift. But there’s a catch: You must keep the gift in the form that you choose for 10 years without touching it. In which form would you accept the gift?
— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) November 15, 2018
Ron Paul, a United States author, physician, and retired politician has been a consistent force in the liberty movement and fight for sound money over unsound fiat currency. He has traditionally argued for gold and silver, but has recently become more favorable towards cryptocurrency. To recognize the significance of the poll, it is important to realize that he gained many of his follows in his 2008 and 2012 presidential run, which was before Bitcoin existed and was widely known, respectively. Thus, many of his follows were considered to be gold and silver bugs, but this most recent poll indicates that sentiment is shifting towards cryptocurrency.
It should be reminded that a Twitter poll can have an inherent bias towards younger individuals more likely to use Twitter and since Twitter does not allow for a standard survey that can filter respondents, the demographics or characteristics of the respondents is not revealed. The poll did achieve over 94,000 respondents, which is a great sample size. Nevertheless, the poll can still shed light on how individuals view investing money and wealth and their discounted opinion of the future economy.
Benefits of cryptocurrency over alternatives
A chief appeal of precious metals is its hedge against inflation since it cannot be artificially created, but cryptocurrency now enables that same feature by limiting the supply of a specific coin through mathematics, code, and having miners validate transactions. As an added feature, cryptocurrency is easier and cheaper to transfer between individuals, especially when in large amounts. Additionally, individuals cannot earn interest on their gold or silver unless they lend it to another individual and thus place trust in that person and take a risk that they may not get their investment back. However, cryptocurrency can allow individuals to earn money more safely through smart contracts and allowing individuals to take more direct control of their money and wealth.
As most fans of Ron Paul know, the interest rates in the US and much of the world is artificially manipulated by central banks, which creates malinvestment and creates an unbalance of savings and consumption. One of the effects from this is an extremely low savings rates, which economic theory details will limit future consumption since it is being discounted to the present. This makes treasury bonds unattractive, except to avoid fears of recessions, and the low interest rates create inflation risks, which thus makes dollar savings less attractive. Mark Mason, who personally transitioned from a gold/silver bug to cryptocurrency, illustrated this point.
“For the last decade we have a generation that has no incentive to save due to record low interest rates at high street banks. Market sentiment for precious metals is at an all time low. Is it any wonder why Ron Paul’s results and youth of today now look towards Bitcoin as being the best performing future asset. In time of crisis and future investment, when central banks fail, cryptocurrency is now proving to be the preferred method of medium of exchange and store of value as they know it’s government-proof, borderless and decentralized. Even though Bitcoin won the poll, in terms of returns, we are seeing increasing people turn to Dash as not just a form of store of value but also as a passive income.”
Dash improves upon the features of Bitcoin by creating a DAO network of miners, masternodes, and a treasury to enable better usability and adoption through improved and decentralized governance. Masternodes provide a service to the DAO network by staking 1,000 Dash to help secure the network, enable features like InstantSend and PrivateSend, and voting on which proposals to fund. In return, masternodes receive compensation to the tune of 6.7% per annum, currently.
Dash provides sustainable outlook
Individuals are moving away from fiat-based investment options due to their increasingly recognized instability, however, precious metals and other cryptocurrencies provide everyday usability issues. Additionally, millennials are also demanding more “socially responsible investing”. Dash helps mitigate these issues through its unique structure that enables it to have a fixed amount of coins between 17.74M and 18.92M, InstantSend transaction confirms in just over a second, and over 4,000 merchants worldwide. Dash’s DAO also enables community outreach groups to receive funding to educate individuals about Dash, which has allowed countless individuals in inflationary and oppressive countries to opt-out of the system.
For those that want to invest in Dash, but may not have the capital for the 1,000 Dash required to set up a masternode, there are alternative options created by the Dash community. First, Neptune Dash and CrowdNode have created public pooled masternode groups to enable individuals to contribute a smaller amount of Dash and receive their respective portion of the masternode reward. Second, Neptune Dash is also a publicly traded company that can be invested in to seek returns from the operation of their own masternodes. Dash leverages these feature to make it stand out not just against unbacked fiat currency investments, but also against precious metals and its peers in the cryptocurrency sector that do not have as well of an organized movement that emphasizes decentralized and peer-to-peer currency in everyday transactions.
