For those who don’t know most stable coins are backed by US government debt and this means they’re the perfect way for the US government to subsidize its spending some would say it’s the only way given that historical bulk buyers of US treasuries like China aren’t too keen on buying these days.
The European Central Bank or ECB is acutely aware of the threat that the adoption of US dollar stable coins poses to the euro especially as the Euro continues to collapse in value against the dollar.
Besides the economic issues that the Eurozone is facing as a result of sky-high energy costs another driver of the Euro’s depreciation has been The ECB’s Lax monetary policy which saw interest rates drop to zero and then go negative during the European debt crisis in the early 2010s.
Not surprisingly dropping interest rates to zero caused the cost of housing in Europe to go off the charts as informed investors took on massive amounts of debt to invest in real estate.
Institutions also took on record levels of Leverage to grow and speculate including many European Banks.
The ECB’s recent decision to raise interest rates by a whopping 75 basis points could therefore spell Doom for all the over-leveraged entities in Europe.
The same way the FED’s massive rate hikes will spell Doom for over leveraged entities in the United States except worse.
The catch is that it takes time for the monetary policy of central banks to be felt in the real economy, the rule of thumb is that it takes about a year for interest rates to squeeze individuals and institutions and the only reason the markets crash right away is because investors are pricing the future.
The thing is that Europe the United States and most of the rest of the world are already on the brink of a recession if not in one already.
Raising interest rates into a recession is basically guaranteed to do even more economic damage the full effects of which will not be felt until later next year at the earliest.
What this means is that we’re likely to see something much more serious than another Garden variety recession and some economists believe it could be just as bad if not worse than the Great Depression that happened over 100 years ago.
The Silver Lining is that this period of economic pain should only affect the stock market and crypto market for the next two years or so which is coincidentally consistent with the length of previous crypto bear markets interesting given that crypto has become heavily correlated with stocks.
If you’re wondering why central banks are raising interest rates so aggressively the answer is of course inflation caused by Rising energy costs around the world especially in Europe where Russia just confirmed that it will be keeping the Nordstream pipeline shut until sanctions are lifted.
To clarify there is still some gas making its way into Europe from Russia through other pipelines and it appears that Europe continues to purchase Russian oil and was purchasing Russian coal until just a couple of weeks ago.
What this means is that Putin could still bring more pain to Europe as winter approaches and the recently passed proposal by G7 countries to put a cap on Russian oil come December seems to have guaranteed that Russia will pull the plug on other resources Europe requires for energy.
What’s especially concerning is that the US treasury Department warned that the United States will sanction any individual institution or nation-state that makes quote significant purchases of oil above the price cap imposed on Russian oil.
These activities are only increasing the likelihood that countries will opt to break away from the Western World Order and Ally themselves with Russia, China, India and others in the east.
This will further complicate Supply chains creating a level of inflation.
That’s likely to persist even after the energy crisis has ceased and at this rate.
It looks like the energy crisis is going to get much much worse before it gets better.
The effects this will have on crypto are straightforward.
It’s going to be really really bad because central banks will continue to raise interest rates to crush demand to the point that it comes in line with the limited supply of energy to paraphrase FED chairman Jerome Powell.
The wild card in this equation is that sanctioned countries could start adopting cryptocurrency to continue their International operations – something that the Iranian government had earlier announced.
It would start doing this month although this means that crypto is likely to come under even more scrutiny.
It will simultaneously prove that crypto can be used on an international scale.
This could set the stage for adoption by other countries facing similar economic pressures.