The creation of bitcoin, during the economic turbulence of 2008 and subsequent years, had much to do with the origin of that crisis. Initially triggered by mortgage loans without adequate backing that fell into default, the deterioration began affecting the solvency of financial institutions. Notable cases of renowned entities going bankrupt without being rescued, giving rise to a state of panic that quickly spread to other institutions, and jeopardizing the stability of the US banking system.
The disruption in payment mechanisms, combined with a lack of confidence in the system and in the effectiveness of monetary policy, created conditions conducive to the emergence of an alternative mechanism, independent of financial institutions and beyond the reach of central banks. The bitcoin offered a novel way of doing transactionsand receiving and making payments, self-regulated by the participants themselves based on mathematical principles that guaranteed the legitimacy of holdings and limited the total number of bitcoins created.
That original goal of bitcoin it was obscured by its later use as a speculative instrument, and was hoarded to take advantage of rising prices, inspiring dreams of fabulous profits, made possible by the feature of having an issue cap, which made it a suitable scarce commodity to invest in it. Its use in transactions it was also obscured by its use in criminal activities covered by anonymity.
But events have given the bitcoin a new opportunity to fulfill its initial objective. Many Russians who were abroad or had to travel found that their credit cards, issued in Russia, stopped operating due to sanctions. The lucky owners of bitcoins, however, only needed to have their keys on a USB stick to access them and continue as if nothing had happened.
