The Future of Digital Currency: Bitcoin, CBDC or Both?

In this episode of Swan Singal, Erick Townsend, hedge fund manager and the host of MacroVoices podcast, talks with Yan Pritzker, co-founder and CTO of Swan Bitcoin. They discuss the future of digital currencies - will Bitcoin be the world's next reserve currency, or will it be replaced by something that enables a certain degree of central control?

Erik Townsend expresses his disbelief that a monetary system like Bitcoin could possibly become a global currency.

"I think the place we disagree is not whether a money system designed by the people for the people like Bitcoin should win that race but its a question of who's likely to really win that race when corrupt governments who have guns and power are in charge. I don't think its Bitcoin, unfortunately."

"I don't think it's realistic to expect governments to allow that to happen, even though it should happen for the betterment of the world," he adds.

Meanwhile, Yan Pritzker agrees that it is unlikely that Bitcoin will take over the world in the next 25 years.

"I think of Bitcoin more like gold. It's certainly a lot smaller than the market for national currencies but it exists side by side with them. Whenever national currencies are abused, whenever people are seeing devaluation of the currency, whenever they are thinking that the government might default on debt, whenever they are worried about inflation, they use gold as this kind of hedge thing... To me, Bitcoin is more like that. I call it a "stash of freedom cash,' Yan admits.

The conversation was live-streamed on September 9, 2020.