Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are finally finding solid footing amidst the global COVID-19 crisis and could prove to hold on tight far into the future.
COVID-19, The coronavirus, SARS-COV-2, whatever name you know the superbug by, whatever country you find yourself in- chances are, you’re at least a little familiar with the virus that’s infested the globe in well under a year. While the safety measures taken may vary greatly depending on where you find yourself in the world, a few universal truths seem to exist. Stay away from people. Wash your hands regularly. Limit your contact with shared surfaces.
While Bitcoin can’t help you wash your hands more often, or get any of us to stop touching our faces, what it can do is help us lead comfortable lives, all while maintaining a safe distance. Largely thanks to easy to navigate trading platforms like Bitvavo, that make it easy for anyone to utilize. Whether you’re a personal investor, have a stake in a business, or are new to bitcoin entirely. Cryptocurrencies may have finally found their time to shine, and we could all use a little light at the moment.
Keeping it Clean
Cryptocurrencies offer many things that fiat currencies can’t- one of which that is of particular usefulness currently is the fact that they are virtual. These currencies are intangible. Which means that while they do exist and are worth a genuine value, you can’t exactly hold them in your hand. And neither can anyone else.
Which is great news during this time. Think about money. The bill or coin that you hold in your hand is the exact same bill or coin that has been held by millions of other people. Money is exchanged and never really washed- except for the odd bill that winds up in the pocket of your jeans during a wash.
If someone sneezes, it’s rare that they run to the nearest sink and give those grubby hands a good scrub before paying their barista. Or when they cough, scratch a bug bite or rash. Money compounds any number of pathogens, organisms, and trace elements of all types of filth. In fact, paper money has been compared with carrying more germs than a household toilet- including feces.
So whether there’s a pandemic currently circulating, bitcoin is much much cleaner than paper money, and should probably be used more often on that platform alone.
Closing Distance
With economies all over the globe in shambles, and business owners left to carefully count and consider every single penny that passes their coffers, cryptocurrencies could prove useful in protecting their livelihood as well. The thought and implementation of a globalized economy has been around since the 1970s. Since that time, even small local businesses have come to rely on one type of global market or another in order to thrive.
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Whether it’s getting a hold of products or supplies to create products- most businesses in the world will participate in the global economy at some point. The way that the novel coronavirus has affected economies throughout the world means that supply chains have been disrupted, businesses have had difficulty keeping up with demand and securing supply without having to skyrocket prices. So businesses now more than ever, just to maintain afloat have to be extra clever when it comes to cost-cutting.
One way that businesses get stuck with an unnecessary bill is when they deal with businesses that use different monetary systems from their own. Fees will apply to multiple steps of the process of converting one fiat to another. More fees will pop up should your financial institution have to confer with institutions that are outside of their networks. These fees can build to a point that can really start cutting into revenue, making these necessary transactions start to take a bite out of consumer’s wallets.
Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are borderless payment systems, which means that they often circumvent these types of compounding transaction fees. Instead, most have a single small fee that only occurs when a transaction is added to the blockchain.
Preparing for the Future
So bitcoin can easily protect your physical health and your business’s health- while at the same time helping to advocate better prices for your customers. Which is all basic economics. Bitcoin may also prove incredibly useful when it comes to the future of currencies themselves.
Many bitcoin investors remarked that because of the industry’s nascenty, Bitcoin and other crypto’s had yet to prove their staying power. With the earliest adoption of cryptocurrency being just after a major financial crash, the market hadn’t really seen any devastating global downturns. Cryptocurrency had never survived a genuine recession. Until now.
During the first few weeks that COVID-19 hit, all markets and assets were parties to an unprecedented bear run. The Dow, NASDAQ, S&P, Oil, US securities, and even gold were hit, given quite the gut punch by the virus. However, bitcoin has recovered quite well, even as other historically solid markets like Oil refused to bounce back. This may give many investors the insight they needed to decide if it really was a trustworthy market to invest in.
While the cryptocurrency market still remains wildly volatile, which many would argue is part of their appeal, they have without a doubt proven that they are here to stay and may well provide much-needed solutions to the problems we are sure to face in the future.