Could Ethereum Be The World’s Reserve Currency?
By: Andrew Zuo
Tags: Ethereum Blockchain, Reserve Currency, Ethereum, Ether, Cryptocurrency

So I was watching this YouTube video and then I got thinking. Could Ethereum be the next reserve currency.

OK, look. It’s no secret that since Covid hit governments the world over have been printing tons of money. And everyone is freaking out because of inflation. And I got this sense that the world would be needing another reserve currency.

So now we use the USD as the international currency. Planet Money has a good article on why. But with Covid as well as some particularly unpopular political moves perhaps that’s about to change.

So who or what to replace it with? I looked at crypto currencies? No, too volatile. Maybe the Chinese Yuan. Maybe.

I was so confident in the Yuan I bought a stake in CHNA.B. But I pulled out when I learned of some controversy with Didi.

Good thing too as there was a massive Chinese tech crackdown resulting in the Chinese stock market dropping 10% in a single day.

So that convinced me the Yuan is not going to be the next reserve currency. So what would be then?

Fast Forward To The London Fork

I heard about the London Fork. It’s like Ethereum’s version of the Bitcoin Halfening. Well, not exactly the same thing. In Bitcoin the entire system just gets less efficient (for the miners that is). In Ethereum they just ‘burn’ a bunch of the tokens.

Crazy. But the details of the London Fork are not that significant. What is more significant is that they managed to pull this off at all.

Half Your Cake And Eat It Too

It’s surprising because crypto currency is supposed to be decentralized. That means that you need 51% agreement on everything that goes on in the network. If you don’t have that what will happen is that the crypto currency basically will split into two. Two separate blockchains: one for the new version and one for the old version.

That did not happen here. Which is surprising because the London Fork is basically an OTA update. They changed the code of Ethereum right under the network’s noses. This is not supposed to happen in crypto currency. This is supposed to be impossible. But they did it.

This is like that time where Apple updated everyone from HFS+ to APFS with a software update. Wha- how?

What This Means For Ethereum

This is actually a little scary because it means Ethereum isn’t the beacon of rationality I thought it was. It can change. And is subject to mob rule- oh, I mean ‘democracy’.

But it also makes me optimistic about Ethereum. This means they can add things after the fact. They can make updates. Like the proposed update to make it proof of stake rather than proof of work.

Before the London Fork I was like, “Sure, whatever. Good luck.” But now I’m cautiously optimistic they may actually be able to pull this off.

This instantly makes Ethereum the most interesting crypto currency. More interesting than Bitcoin and lightyears more interesting than doge coin.

Why Ethereum Could Be The Next Reserve Currency

With the London Fork I am confident that Ethereum can patch any issue that appears. Now or the future. And with the upcoming proof of stake change we could be looking at the best crypto currency bar none.

And once that happens I see Ethereum having a shot of being the next reserve currency. Yeah, it’s still very volatile. But there will always be people willing to take the risk.