Purchasing power and cryptocurrencies: can they help protect against inflation?

In the world, inflation is now part of our daily lives. Is it possible to protect against this with cryptocurrencies? What are their advantages? We look at purchasing power and crypto-assets in this exclusive file.

1. Inflation: what is it and why protect against it?

Inflation is a gradual decrease in the purchasing power of a currency. As a result, the prices of goods and services become higher. Inflation is multifactorial but is often based on the amount of money in circulation.

Historically, man has looked for safe havens, which allow him to protect himself from inflation. These are assets or goods that tend to keep their value or increase it. The best known is gold: a safe haven par excellence, it was chosen to guard against the loss of value of fiat currencies.

Commodities are also historically seen as bulwarks against inflation. Grains, precious metals, electricity, and other products necessary for human life are considered essential, and therefore factors of stability. And in recent years, it’s cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) have started to be touted as another bulwark against inflation.

2. Bitcoin: an asset originally created to hedge against inflation

To understand where this comes from, we have to go back to the history of cryptocurrency, and Bitcoin in particular. The largest cryptocurrency was created following the 2008 subprime crisis. Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin, communicated at the time about his distrust of an overly centralized system that led to this disaster. He thus explained that fiduciary currencies, managed by central banks, did not allow the consumer to have confidence.

Hence a solution considered by Nakamoto: Bitcoin. The largest cryptocurrency has been designed as a trusted system that does not require the approval of centralized entities. Other mechanisms have also been put in place to guard against inflation and limit risks.

Bitcoin has a limited supply of 21 million coins: its rarity thus theoretically allows it to be in demand, and not to be “diluted”. From there to see it as a bulwark against inflation and a way to preserve purchasing power, there is only one step. But is this really the case?

3. Can we preserve our purchasing power thanks to cryptocurrencies?

The question that arises is, therefore: can we protect our purchasing power with cryptocurrencies? We interviewed Odile Lakomski-Laguerre, lecturer in economics at the University of Picardie-Jules-Vernes. According to her, Bitcoin was created by computer scientists, not economists, and it shows:

[The creators of Bitcoin] remained on the surface on the main argument of [the economist, editor’s note] Friedrich Hayek, who said that by removing the banking system and the central bank, that would be enough to eliminate inflation.

In fact, it is more complex, largely because to serve as a bulwark against inflation, Bitcoin must be more widely adopted, again according to Odile Laguerre:

The notion of inflation means that the currency loses its value relative to the goods and services it allows to buy. […] So as long as cryptocurrencies do not make it possible to constitute a payment zone in which we would pay for everything in crypto, and where a large part of the prices would be expressed in Bitcoin for example, it makes no sense since the notion of inflation does not exist.

A larger issue?

That’s not to say, however, that Bitcoin doesn’t have utility as an alternative asset. For Alexandre Stachchenko, co-founder of Adan, the value proposition of Bitcoin goes precisely beyond the preservation of purchasing power. Cryptocurrency is challenging an entire system, and he believes this represents crucial long-term potential:

“  Preserving purchasing power is only the tip of the iceberg. Bitcoin is a refuge, not only against inflation, but also against a possible failure of the financial and monetary system, as well as against political arbitrariness. The long-term potential of these assets is anti-correlated to the reliability of the current financial and monetary system . It is also, for Bitcoin, correlated to the understanding by states of what a global and digital monetary standard means that is independent of any state.  »

Why then has Bitcoin not become the currency of the people – yet? For Odile Laguerre, Bitcoin was perhaps too precursory to have been a model of bulwark against inflation:

“Bitcoin may have arrived too soon. I think financial capitalism should have completely collapsed and we should really have switched to another type of system. Bitcoin arrived when financial capitalism was still functioning, therefore it was absorbed as an asset .

Bitcoin is indeed correlated to the stock market because it is part of a “traditional” financial system. A loss, according to Odile Laguerre:

Unfortunately, Bitcoin has mainly been institutionalized by finance and has so far failed as an alternative monetary project. It is logical to see a correlation between stocks and cryptos because the latter have become financial assets and now obey a speculative logic typical of the financial logic that is at work in the contemporary period.

But we must keep in mind that the trend is rather recent, according to Alexandre Stachchenko. He recalls that stocks and cryptocurrencies have only been correlated for less than two years:

The massive influx of institutional investors in recent years, with massive volumes, has made them import their behavior in this market. This does not limit the potential of cryptos, as it has not altered the value proposition : Bitcoin is still uncensorable, secure, transportable, divisible, liquid, global, all without a trusted third party.

As to whether the ambient gloom calls into question the long-term future of cryptocurrencies, Alexandre Stachchenko is formal:

Adoption continues to grow all over the world, so this is a jolt, as BTC has experienced many. The fundamentals are still green.