In a Squawk Box session on CNBC, the former chief officer of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Brian Brooks, shared a distinction between the fiat dollar and cryptocurrencies and gave some reasons on why the latter is becoming a better store of value than the dollar.
He said,
The dollar may not actually be backed by anything…but cryptocurrencies are actually backed by something. They are backed by underlying networks and what you are buying. When you buy a crypto token, whether it’s Bitcoin or anything else, you are buying a piece of a financial network that’s been built to transact all kinds of stuff.
Brooks also mentioned that while different cryptocurrencies use the networking concept to perform different activities, Bitcoin was the first token to use the networking in conducting several financial activities as opposed to at the bank.
The level of adoption of Bitcoin and the size and number of transactions done on the network shows that even people who used bank services have now turned to Bitcoin. Brooks particularly brought to notice the $61 billion worth of transactions that the Bitcoin network settled on March 25.
Like every trending innovation, Bitcoin has both people who believe in it and also those that are skeptical about it or even in opposition to the whole concept. The former OCC chief mentioned in the interview that while a handful of the public view Bitcoin as speculation, many are flocking to it using it as a store of value.
While commenting on why Bitcoin is a better store of value than the Dollar, Brooks recounted one of the Federal government activities that reduced the potential of the dollar to be a good store of value.
He narrated that by increasing the supply of USD in 2020 by 40%, the dollar is now “a 40% less good store of value than it was a year ago and that is one of the reasons people look to Bitcoin.”
Brooks formerly worked at Coinbase and led a number of notable regulatory moves in favor of Bitcoin during his stint as the OCC Chief.
Perhaps alluding to why he backed those moves, he told CNBC, “I believe in the wisdom of crowds personally and I think that there are kind of like forces of the future at work here and then forces of the status quo. I think the crowds are telling you that these networks are where finance is going in the future and I wanna be part of that.”
