Are Right Wing Regimes Going to Take Down Cryptocurrencies?

By Sumedha Bose

Someone once said, you can either be right or left, there is no middle ground, there has never been one.

I don’t know if I can bring myself to agree with that statement, but the political climate of the world today makes it far too easy to discern between those right of center and those left of it. Jair Bolsonaro, the newly elected president of Brazil, is definitely one on the right.

Recently, he declared something that isn’t going to make the cryptocurrency loyalists too happy. He announced via his social media that he is going to shut down a project that would have seen Brazil launch an “indigenous cryptocurrency.”

Considering the campaign that Bolsonaro ran to get to the chair, it comes as no surprise that the new Brazilian President is making some radical decisions that might piss off certain sections of his constituents. However, the rate at which cryptocurrencies have spread across the world, hindering that growth could only hinder the growth of the nation’s economy.

This decision was made in line with his ongoing criticism of the “BNDES black box”, in the context of the contracts attached National Bank for Economic and Social Development, a federal public company associated with the Ministry of Development, Industry, and Trade, that oversees and tries to contribute to Brazil’s growth by encouraging financial projects.

This raises some important questions. Questions that should concern the entire cryptocurrency industry and those that want the technology to be here for the years to come. One of these questions is, will far right leaders try to impede the growth of cryptocurrencies?

Well let’s look at all the advantages of having cryptocurrencies around, which would be a problem for anyone with far right ideology? To begin with, the idea of decentralization could fuel social democracy, that is opposed by right wing parties.

Cryptocurrencies will allow people to bypass borders when it comes to monetary transactions. Cross border payments will become the new norm. This too, will be hard to swallow for those with right wing ideology, considering their obsessive need to maintain territorial integrity and control all the wealth that flows in and out of the borders.

In the case of Brazil, the $12 million project for the “indigenous cryptocurrency” was halted, since it was assigned by a direct contract signed by the National Indian Foundation (Funai) and the Fluminense Federal University (UFF). So technically, Bolsonaro is trying to undo what has been done by the previous government, but in that process, he is standing in the way of some serious financial development.

It remains to be seen that with the likes of Trump and Bolsonaro turning their backs on cryptocurrencies, what does the future hold for digital currencies?