I am shaking my head. This classification is clearly wrong, however, why do this and why now?
I speculate that this might be a sign of desperation. However, it might also be a sign that the American government might do another round of attacks against the cryptospace because the digidollar is coming soon hehehe.
Michael Lee of the Federal Reserve Bank of New YorkAn editorial for the New York Federal Reserve’s Liberty Street Economics blog just classified Bitcoin as “another example of fiat money.”
In a post entitled “Bitcoin is Not a New Type of Money,” New York Fed Research and Statistics economist Michael Lee and Research and Statistic’s group Senior Vice President Antoine Martin envision money in three categories: fiat, asset-backed, and claim-backed.
Lee and Martin classify “fiat money [as] intrinsically worthless objects that have value based on the belief that they will be accepted in exchange for valued goods and services.” Incredibly, they assert that central-bank issued currencies are not pure fiat because of their “legal tender status.” They then go on to label Bitcoin, which the CFTC has classified as a commodity, as a fiat currency.
“Examples of fiat money without legal tender status include Rai stones or Ithaca HOURs. And Bitcoin is just another example of fiat money.”Read in full https://decrypt.co/32940/new-york-fed-bitcoin-fiat-moneyWow, this is clearly a huge stretch. Fiat etymologically means that the money has certain value because someone said so. Due to its roots in Christianity, the way I see it this someone is not the market by a central authority. Not to mention that fiat is not just limited to etymological meaning. All fiat money is centralized and regulated, it has no limited supply and the value is carefully manipulated. Bitcoin is the opposite of those things, so I am surprised someone from the Federal Reserve Bank would say such a thing.
If that is how they looked at bitcoin, they it will be subject with the same regulation of fiat.
I clearly disagree with it for simple reason reason, fiat is centralized while bitcoin is decentralized, without a centralized system we can transact with bitcoin and that separates us from fiat.
The thing is, those regulators has no or little knowledge about bitcoin so they make a wrong judgment about bitcoin, I guess they need to educate themselves first, understand the basics before making some comments about it.
Actually, regulating Bitcoin as 'just another fiat' could be a great thing, as it would mean that only income tax is applicable, whereas currently Bitcoin is heavily taxed in the US.